Originally Posted by Anonymous
to answer the question: i don't think parents desire to keep a good group of kids together is the the root of all evil. my experience is that it becomes really difficult over time to keep the same kids together. some kids get better, others plateau. Some parents care more about winning than others. Some coaches will seek out the best players and bounce a kid that's been on the team. Others have more loyalty and the parents the care deeply about winning then encourage the kid to go elsewhere. end of the day hopefully the kids are having fun and growing as athletes

I agree the desire to keep a team together is 99% of the time coming from a good place. I just wanted to highlight the issues that come from this for all the different parents. I think us parents like most people do a bad job of putting yourself in others shoes. I try to be happy for other kids success and I try to push other parents to do whats best for their son even if its going to hurt my son or his team. Ok let me go back and check my grammar and spelling so I do not offend anyone with my lack of education. [/quote]

Don't let the grammar police get under your skin. First, it's an online forum. Second, by my read, four out of five of your grammar critics used the wrong grammar or punctuation.

To your question, I'm a travel coach of a team with AA, A and B players. As long as the kids are having fun, improving during practice, being challenged in games and becoming close friends - which they are - I think the virtues of keeping the team together outweigh the benefits of jumping to a AA team. [I would ask the grammar police to please note that I intentionally did not use the serial comma and prefer spaces before and after my dashes when used for a parenthetical phrase (despite the fact the rule is no spaces) and that "an" would be incorrect before "AA". Please also note how I flaunt American convention on putting the period within the quotation marks when I am referring to a specific word in this manner.]

My son is a AA player. It would be fun for him to play in an offense of a AA team, but we are not going to stress about making that happen. If your son's goal is to get a DI scholarship, I would think moving to a AA team would make sense, as would being held back a year.

I assume any early-maturing 6'2" stud with 4.5 speed is going to be fine either way.

It's sad that so many top programs fill their recruiting classes before the players have even played their sophomore season of lacrosse. Most don't even include juniors in their prospect days. If you are really good player but a late maturer and don't play the reclass, recruiting club and showcase game, you are on the outside looking in.