Seriously, what is your fascination with pretending there is a birthday year team, and creating this false reality in your mind? There is not a 17 year old team, not a 18 year old team, not a 19 year old team. They have High School teams, by grade. Other than trying to disparage a very large batch of private school kids, what is your point?
How about calling people that don't take the extra year, if available, lazy impatient cheapskate mf'ers. Is there really a parent out there that thinks an extra year of education is a detriment in any way? It's available at some schools, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking it if available, because 'Merica. [/quote]

No one is complaining about your kid taking an extra year of education, or repeating 8th grade, or whatever it is you do. Have at it. Its just that when your kid plays travel lacrosse, he should be on a team populated with kids of similar age, and he should be playing games against other teams similarly rostered. That is all. Put your kid in 3rd grade when he is 14 - no one cares. But when he plays travel lax, just have him play against other 14 year olds. That is all people are asking, and many people are advocating for such a system. This forum is one place where that advocacy happens.

The fascination with birth year teams is not in pretending that they exit. Its in wishing they exist. Why is this hard to understand?

For your High School team, it doesn't matter how old the kids are, so long as they are not above whatever age your governing body dictates is too old (in many places, it is capped at 19). But realize that HS competition is almost always organized amongst schools that have similar aged kids. NY public high schools compete only against NY public high schools, and these kids are largely the same age per grade. Prep schools play against Prep schools. Ect. Sometimes, teams voluntarily play outside their category (like a Yorktown type school playing a prep school in CT or something like that), but they do such voluntarily knowing what they are getting into - and the games never really count for anything - its not a league or sectional game.

But for travel lacrosse, where kids are competing against kids from all over the country regardless of state or high school, it should be an age-based system. That is how it is in most other team sports, and it works well. It would work well in lacrosse, and in undeniably better than the system we have now. If your kid is very good, he can play up against older kids at your choosing. [/quote]

All the posters complaining about advocating for an age-based system never provide the one thing to make an actual argument: rationale for the grade-based system! Because there isn't one![/quote]

The rationale is that club was originally formed for kids that wanted to excel and definitely wanted to play Varsity in HS, then into college, so the system was set up for continuity from middle school into HS, which is obviously going to be grade-based, because HS events are showcases, not team trophy chases. Middle school was to build the teams, then HS was to showcase the players. Then, club got really popular, and everyone wanted to play, so it became really just an expensive rec league, and the younger teams were added and more average teams have emerged. Now, folks don't want it to be high level HS prep, they want it to be a universal rec league, and with the rec league mentality comes rec league rules. My question, does rec not exist anymore, for those that want to play the game as a mere youth activity? Club should be high level HS prep for anyone that wants high level HS prep. What's wrong now, the teams that treat it as high level HS prep aren't playing in events with teams that treat it like expensive rec, they play in high level HS prep-style events against each other.