AHH you live in LA-La land. One thing is to be seen and another is being fair. there are "clubs" out there that play there teams down age bracket and also have kids who are older playing on a younger team. they do this so they can show how many of there teams WON the tourny's and how great their club is by doing this move. If you think this does not happen....you are in La-La land. If the playing field is equal in all aspects, I think you would see a lot of teams going down and others moving up in the tourny's.
One of the things that lacrosse does "well" is the mixing of two age groups in some tournaments to create more balanced competition. This is rarely seen in soccer to its own youth development detriment. Creating "two year" age bracket tournaments is one of youth lacrosse's strengths.
However, we do point out that the player pass issue is independent from the structure of the brackets. What you do want to avoid is a club gaming the system by playing players or a whole team "down" for no good reason.
Coming back to the soccer point, the only time BOTC/BOTN can recall having seen age-group mixing on a regular basis was the East Meadow Covanta Cup flight which matched premier level U/16 and up teams. This mixing is more often seen in lacrosse and is actually an overall positive for development.
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