Over the course of time the great debate has been what defines level of play. What is the true definition of an A team? Is a team that goes 0-4 in an A bracket but loses games by 1 or 2 goals not an A team? Is a .500 record good enough?

The louder the mothers the more of an A team it is.....See, 91 Crush.

A true A team will almost never lost to a B team and win most of those games by a very wide margin. The biggest difference is the speed of play.

Look at the US Lacrosse document here for example (US Lacrosse does have these docs for other ages):

http://www.uslacrosse.org/Portals/1...aches/practice/u13-tryout-guidelines.pdf

Mix in speed, agility, work ethic of players, and experience/quality of coaching. That is your answer and you can easily find the docs for the age group you are interested in.

No need to go into which programs are A, B, or even C.

That's a terrific link. Thanks for posting

This thread will be about who is a A program and who is a B program before the next page. The morons cant help themselves.

I think if a team can keep the final score within 4 goals of another team they are in the same caliber of the team they are playing. To much weight is put on a team going undefeated to an A (or AA) team.

As to who (player) is actually an A B or developing is a hard question to answer. As for as the player, IMHO the outlined specs for an A and B player miss the aspect of speed.

Additionally "Excellent" and "good" are relative terms. What is excellent to you may be good to me or vis versa.

Haha, so true.

lol, Amen.

Are you trying to prepare yourself for if/when your son's Viper team jumps from B brackets to A brackets?

why don't you ask your son the same ? see what he thinks. see if he cares, and get back to us.

Who is this post aimed at?

Well said!

A and B squads are also a key element in any sport if you have enough players to divide into 2 squads all players benefit

and to me that is where sports fall apart. It is not enough to have the quantity of kids for an A and a B team. but you need to have the quality of A kids to make an A team.

In a sports like lacrosse you need at least 12 "A" players to make a legit A team. If you only have 6 A players that doesn't help anyone. in age groups of 4th grade and under you are foolish and misguided to break out A and B. As regular town PAl like teams. Travel you pay for your child to play. and you want them in the highest level they can play.

In travel Your child gets selected to a particular team (politics aside) If you don't believe the level your child gets selected for... you change the level by changing the team/organization and get to the level you believe your child belongs. If he doesn't play or is over their head you will know.
Breaking up the kids for the sake of having A and B teams misses the point. and if you don't get that you never will.

The difficult part of A vs B is the low A, high B players. They end up being almost interchangeable on the field. Many B players then stop playing (or their parents stop signing them up).

If your daughter is on her 3rd or 4th team and still in the "C" level it's time to accept the facts folks.

In the girls game there are 11 field players and a goalie. You need 5-6 subs, at most. If travel teams would carry rosters of 18, then you would see true A and B teams. With rosters of 24, there is too much room to carry non-impact players (sometimes the so-called "friends and family") who don't belong on an A team. Big rosters are more about profit than development.