Originally Posted by Anonymous
The whole "holdbacks cheating" argument is ridiculous. First of all, whether you have the $$ to burn or not, you'd have to be an absolute idiot to drop an additional $25-$50K for an extra year of school so your son can get bigger/stronger/faster and play against younger kids to look better and hopefully get a D1 offer and a $5K a year scholarship if he's lucky.

However, with that said, no one is "cheating", like it or not. It's simple - if the league/club is GRADE-BASED (grad year 2020, 2019, etc.), and the players on that team are ACTUALLY GRADUATING IN THAT GRAD YEAR, it is what it is - whether they are 14 or 24. Does it suck? Absolutely! Is it fair? No, not really, but neither are a lot of other things in life, unfortunately. When my son, who's already big for his age, steps on the field and there is a 6'3" 13 year old out there with a beard, I just tell him "play your hardest - it will make you better against kids your own age". Fact is, though, even though it's ridiculous to hold kids back, they're not cheating if they are using kids of that grad year, no matter how old they are.


Perhaps, but when the tournament rules say "placement on a grade-based team is dictated by the highest grade of any player on that team" and the team enters eighth-grade kids in the seventh grade age group, that is cheating.