College coaches could care less the age of kids they are recruiting by grade, if a kid or two are slightly older for their grade the college looking at these games or any tourney is totally recruiting by the year of graduation. Every tourney should play by their graduation year period.
With such a small percentage of players being recruited, why should lacrosse cater tournaments to the liking of college coaches. Why should lacrosse be different than the other sports that group kids according to age? Some of you read like the pathetic, annoying parents that can easily give the lacrosse experience a black eye.
The initial poster has perfectly explained the stupidity of early recruiting and the even dumber assumption that they can speculate well by picking 8th graders who are either early growers or are just a year or two older than the kids they are competing with. The data gets a lot better when they are in spring of junior year or in the summer before senior year of high school. The college coaches who have bet their program on racing earlier are starting to spoil out and will continue to do worse. Look at UVA. Look at Hopkins objectively -- they made a Final Four last year but needed a late season miracle just to make the tournament. UNC hasn't done much. UPenn is the earliest Ivy and their program is terrible. If you consider these programs can pick and choose the recruits they want any time they want and then look at what they accomplished there is no debate.
