My son plays for an excellent grade based team; however, I 100% agree that Youth Lacrosse should be age based like soccer. WSYL got it right, albeit three years into the initiative. If you watch the games the last two years the size disparity was apparent and unfair resulting in games that really weren't enjoyable to watch and I am sure that ESPN doesn't want that either.

Little League WS of baseball which is what WSYL is obviously emulating is age based and NOT grade based can you imagine the cheating that would occur in baseball if it were grade based? What would the teams look like coming from Asia and South America? It isn't inconceivable they would hold kids back 3-4 years if it were GRADE based. Hold your kid back once, twice, three times....

You are missing the boat the objective is NOT to see who the best club team is in America and it makes no mention of it on their site, but rather who is the best U13 team and if club teams restructure their programs to reconcile to WSYL that isn't bad and they certainly aren't scumbags, that's a bit dramatic.

The only people that want grade based have an agenda that links back to their club team or because they want to stack the deck in their favor.
It is better for our sport to have it based on age and any argument to the contrary is self serving.