Every tournament should be age based. Any arguement against that is illogical .
Cutoff is sept. 1... stack kids born in sept. There always a way to "work" the system. Hold backs are a joke and are looked upon that way from the parents coaches etc.
When a boy stands out -- bigger faster stronger -- 99% of the time it's because he's a holdback. Sad because it's just assumed .
Its unclear what you point is ... but as for the argument that age based is flawed because teams can stack themselves with Sept born kids if Sept-Aug is used, or January kids if calendar year is used ... we are not trying to achieve perfection. Ideally, we would have a division for kids born Aug 1, 2005, a division for kids born Aug 2, 2005, and so on. But there clearly are not enough kids for that. There are also most likely not enough kids to have a 2005 major divisions (Jan-June) and a 2005 minor division (July-Dec). But a 12 month window is easily achieved, and most importantly it provides for fairer and safer competition for all kids. It is a significant improvement over a grade based system where a kid can bizarrely play the same division two years in a row just because he decides to repeat a grade.
In hockey no one, and I mean no one, ever complains about the birth year system. Occasionally, you will hear someone say "Oh, my Johnny has a bad hockey birthday", but it is never in the form of a complaint - more like an "Oh well". None of these parents advocate for a different system. I have also never heard a parent say "oh look, that team probably has a lot of january or february kids". No one says this, because its stupid. If all kids are born within the same 12 month window, its as fair as it can ever be, and everyone accepts that.
In hockey, if I put a AAA 03 kid into a AAA 05 game, he would smoke those kids. Yet in lacrosse, this same thing happens all the time.
