A suggestion for those that are concerned about grade based teams (and I am).
Expressing concern anonymously on a website may feel good, but it is not going to solve the problem that the prior poster very well identified: large lacrosse clubs (predominitly in Maryland) manipulating the player age restriction rules for their own benefit at the cost of player safety. It is irresponsible, but the fact that it is irresponsible is not sufficient to change things. The Clubs (and parents of "hold backs") are not going to change unless they are forced to.
The real “goat” in this is US Lacrosse. This is an organization to which all of us are forced to belong and support through dues and whose mission is to promote the sport of lacrosse (and supposedly player safety). US Lacrosse is “leading from behind” on the critical issue of player safety and it really should (and if it is going to be a relevant organization, it needs) to take a strong, unambiguous position as to age based versus grade based teams. So far, US Lacrosse’s position is to tepidly support age based teams, but to hide behind the argument that “there is nothing it can do” as clubs move more to grade based teams. There is in fact a lot that US Lacrosse can do (if it wants to), including, for starters, taking a strong, unequivocal position in its magazine. By taking this position US Lacrosse would of course risk offending various interests, but that is the price to pay if US Lacrosse is in fact going to lead rather than to be impotent. It is more than ironic that US Lacrosse’s headquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland.
In fairness to the Green Turtle Club this is really not a Green Turtle issue and emails relating to class based teams really do not belong in this forum. Happily BOTC has a forum dedicated to this topic. If you go to the BOTC Main Forum and then look for forum titled “Age Verification” you will find a very thoughtful on-going conversation. There are also links to US Lacrosse in that forum. I would encourage anyone interested to go to the Age Verification Forum and to also contact (as I did) US Lacrosse.
