Originally Posted by Anonymous
This is an important issue - would it be possible to get the coach to share a little more detail of his findings? I recently had a D1 coach tell me he had about a 50% "success rate" with players that were holdbacks and committed early. There is sparse data looking at the performance of holdbacks over the longer term when the physical advantage of age has played out in high school. Does anyone else know of research on this topic?

Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
The issue is strictly a youth game one. And more specific a youth club lacrosse issue. This has nothing to do with high school play or anything to do with a freshman being a JV or a varsity player. Grade based teams in youth lacrosse exist for one reason only. It allows parents discretion to manipulate the age group their son plays in to the downside. Better players in sports have always played up if they were strong and good enough. Lacrosse is the only sport I can think of that celebrates signing up a 15 year old with 13 year olds to hold an advantage. What is next, fake a learning disability to take untimed tests at school? My kid would likely do better on the SAT if he could spend 10 hours going over everything many times over. Would that be ok if he gets a 99 percentile and gets into Harvard instead of a 80 percentile? The difference can be that small for an academic admissions application. Happens all the time.


Recently sat with a top 20 D1 coach who has done some significant research on IL top rated kids starting from 2011 forward. He took a look at the top 50 kids, checked to see if they were even still on the team they were recruited to after two years, and then checked to see how many of these phenoms became All-Americans. The results are staggering, and not in a favorable way. Clearly, many of these kids were holdbacks, re-class kids and almost all were early commits. It seems the vast majority lose their edge rather quickly on the field and many don't pan out at the school either.
It will take some time to completely run it's course, but the early evidence shows these kids who've played down against weaker competition in their HS years, can't seem to hack it when the tables are turned.
Again, not my words, those of a coach you'd want your son to play for.


If it is 50%, that is far, far higher than the overall success rate