No MD teams to be found? Really Ray Charles. Maybe you should go back and look at the standings. Just because a team plays with on age 7 the grade kids and doesn't make it to the championship game doesn't validate Long Island's (wink wink) following the letter of the law. Multiple Maryland teams played with on age rosters that have had the same players since the start of spring. It's called Integrity something many Long Island parents/coaches lost over the weekend.
Was it really worth some mystical 7th....uhh...8th grade championship to lose your integrity? What about the on age actual players on the winning team. Did they enjoy their time from the sidelines watching 8th graders "school" a 7th grade team. Great memories right?
L.I. 8th graders did follow the written rule, just like Crabs holdbacks follow the written rules. Both are grossly inappropriate. But it's now ok because Long Island did it instead of MD. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
This is a completely illogical argument. The only reason MD teams went to the tournament with "on age" 7th graders is because all (or nearly all) of their 8th graders are too old. Their "on age" 7th graders are the same age as the younger half of 8th graders in NY. DOBs for all players are on the website for all to see. I selected one MD team at random and noted that more than 2/3rds of their roster would be 8th graders in NY. They are almost certainly all 7th graders in MD. This is why the "8th graders beating up on 7th graders" argument is lame and false. Due to differences in school cut off dates, and the prevalence in MD for holdbacks, MD kids are older than suburban NY kids grade v. grade.
What Leg did was take younger 8th graders, mixed with 7th graders, and won an age-based tournament. So what? This mix of kids is the exact same age, on average, as a MD 7th grade team.
Age is a fixed variable that can not be changed. And it has a very high correlation to quality of player (the older a kid gets, the better he plays). Grade, on the other hand, is an artificial, man-made variable that can be changed on a whim. Most importantly, it has ABSOLUTELY NO correlation to a kid's performance on the lacrosse field. I can take my rising 6th grader and enroll him in 7th grade next year. This will not make him any better at lacrosse.
Thus, when Crabs or other non-NY teams take older kids and put an artificial "7th grade" label on them, and then compete against younger NY kids who have the same artificial "7th grade" label, the former has an unfair systemic advantage over the later. But when NY "8th graders" play against non-NY "7th graders" WHO ARE THE SAME AGE, than no such advantage exists. In short, crying about 8th graders playing against 7th graders is only worthwhile if the 8th graders are actually older. But if they are the same age, than it does not matter what grade they are in.
