The likelihood that parents are holding kids back and setting themselves up to pay an additional year of tuition, at $20-25,000/yr, is very remote. So please just stop with the whole debate about kids being held back on purpose. Further, it does not really matter if we play age or grade-based lacrosse. Either way USL leans, some kid will always be at a disadvantage. My son, whose birthday is in December, will always be one of the younger kids on an age-based team. In the grade-based system, he is one of the older kids. So regardless of the system, some child somewhere will always be disadvantaged. Besides, those kids who are forced to play with older, faster children will reap the rewards of having to practice with those older children.

On another note, the hold back phenomena is greatly overblown. My child's prefirst class of about 16 children only had about 5 kids who are serious athletes. Most of these 16 kids were at the mercy of the private school admission committee, and virtually all of them came from homes where the parents pushed their kids academically. The result was that most of the kids were assigned to prefirst because the parents had tested them into kindegarten early. As a result, prefirst only served to normalize these children, not give them an advantage.

As I noted, only about five of the children who entered prefirst with my child have turned into great athletes. Of those five, only 3 play lacrosse and two play up a year. This leaves just one kid and a couple of below average athletes, whom your sons are probably already ahead of on the team depth chart, for you to complain about. So in essence, on the top teams in the area you are talking abour maybe 10 kids or so. Does USL really need to make rule changes for a few kids in each age group. Besides, Little Benny should probably get used to playing behind other kids, as this is the likely result for his lacrosse future.