WSYL winner is as irrelevant as the USL champion. No competitive teams follow those age restrictions.
That's the point.....They should.
Yes..but to much money to be made by clubs and bragging rights to not have these kids that have been held back in school playing against younger kids in youth lacrosse. It is soo competitive and fair watching select kids play down at 12 years old. Ask any club owner..It is the right thing to do!
I know Body By Jake said his model was the Little League World Series, but I think WSYL misses one key ingredient from that model.
Participants in the LLWS are all-star teams selected from within local "Little Leagues." So they basically play rec ball all season with their school friends and then come together after the regular season. Chances are, the teams that win those leagues make up most of the rosters of these all-star teams, with others sprinkled in. So these teams are basically local teams that play ball locally until the LLWS qualifiers... they're not travel teams. This feels pretty organic to me, and I think that's part of the appeal.
But WSYL basically encourages year-round club programs that can draw from relatively large areas. I doubt you'd need a 100-mile radius to fill a LLWS team, at least in the US, and after the Chicago scandal a couple years ago you'd probably be accused of cheating if you tried. I don't doubt that the players on club lacrosse teams become friends and all that, and I don't doubt those kids play at least partially for the joy of it. But these teams are assembled specifically for traveling to high-quality tournaments to develop and showcase their players' talents. So it just doesn't seem the same to me. Maybe the general public doesn't get the distinction, so maybe for developing an audience that's OK. But still...
At the WSYL, I saw kids playing for Mesa California that had in the fall and even later in the summer played for 3d Pacific.
The age cutoff is going against the structure of many clubs in Maryland. The obvious clubs with holdbacks , CRABS, FCA, etc will probably not compete as they cant field competitive age based teams.I assume other Top clubs from other areas with heldback kids are in same boat.
Unless something changes it looks like there will be two paths in the club world of lacrosse as time goes on.
At this point I personally dont think grade base teams with select kids playing down will go away.
There will only be one model for club - grade based. All programs that intend to be travel programs are trending towards this.
Only town/rec lacrosse leagues and tournaments, who actually do tend to use US Lacrosse rules and guidelines, will continue to go by age. But with the new player segmentation guidelines, they're even giving a little nod to grade-based.
Reply
Quote