Originally Posted by Anonymous
I have played them and I do recall them being older now you mention it. They beat us pretty good. But I am a learn more from losing kind of guy. And as long as all the teams we played that day where not bigger and older I was cool with my kid getting beat around a little.


I think this is more of a safety issue than a competitive one. I have one son who was always a strong player and was played up whenever possible, so we made that decision. Our next son isn't nearly as early advanced in terms of size or his skill, and we have never pushed him to play up or has he ever been invited to play up. When his team takes the field against Edge, and this club and Canadian clubs fully advantage the system and EVERY kid on the team is older because that is their overt strategy to gain an advantage. Now, Canadian kids are generally ones who do not apply to American colleges with competitive academic credentials, and it is nothing new that sports is a passport to get a degree from an American college. I do believe that with Canadians the dream is an Amercian college degree and scholarship first, and then the prestige of an NCAA sport second, so I am less brutal on them as a herd of older kids than this lame Baltimore way of doing it only for sports. Just my opinion. Also my opinion is I am bothered one of my sons plays on a field with kids who are so much bigger and mature that is is a safety issue for my wife and I. That is the thing I do not like. Give me the discretion to put my sons out there with older kids if they can hang and are not at an unacceptable safety risk. Do not take that discretion away from me and force me to put a son out there with kids who are unacceptably bigger and more mature because there is this new discretion to "play down". I like all of the life lessons in sports, and competing hard and sometimes losing, and losing with the grace of a sportsman is very important. Frankly, playing down to me is just cowering and showing at some level a lack of competitive spirit and respect for the sportsmanship that should be a part of lacrosse, but is lost now in the club game. Another issue is a kid who plays up grows a confidence a kid who plays down can never attain. At some levels your held back kids will eventually -- and should -- feel their accomplishments are lessened because of the playing down asterisk. In sports there has always been a disgust for drug cheats. The age gaming is becoming a second loathed thing and I do not see that as unfair. If my kid asked me to reclassify I would say no. I would tell him college lacrosse like high school lacrosse is a fun thing to do and say you did, but it in reality it only adds a few more years to playing a kids' game. Most lacrosse parents crazed on this never played a sport in college, and if they did at a high Division 1 level I doubt they would be this irrational to push it.