Calendar year is used in hockey mostly because the Canadians use it, and USA Hockey more or less emulated them. Soccer recently moved from Aug-July (I think - am not sure) to calendar year simply to be in line with what is done internationally.
In Hockey the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow is the NHL draft and that is age based for when kids are eligible so age based makes sense. in lacrosse the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow is the college commitment and that will always grade based for obvious reason so travel lacrosse should (IMHO) always be grade based so a college coach can go to a game and know all the kids playing are graduating in the same year
With the new NCAA rules can you imagine an age based tournament? college coach would go to a November recruiting event and try to figure out what 17 year old (is on an age based team) he can talk to because some might be Juniors and some might be sophomores.
Before any of you call me a jack off or a cheater, my son is "on age" and he turned 18 in the spring of his Senior year .I just liked him playing against his own grade in travel lacrosse and never really cared about age.
A college coach is more than capable of watching an age-based game and understand that players will be entering college in different years. That is what college hockey coaches do. The pot o' gold for many hockey players, if you ask the parents, is the D1 scholarship, which is, as you know, grade based. Not necessarily the NHL draft. If college hockey coaches can do it, why can't college lacrosse coaches? They can go to a 2002 game and identify two great players that they are interested in. Then they can simply look at their programs and see that #23 in green is GY 2020, and #12 in white is GY 2021. They will then recruit accordingly. Why would this be hard? College soccer coaches do it also. If there are rules prohibiting contact for GY 2021, but not GY 2020, than they contact the 2020 kid, but wait on the 2021 kid. Moreover, why not tweak the new recruiting limitations to be based on age, not GY. No contact until a kid turns 16, for instance. Or no contact until January 1 in the year the kid will turn 16, or something similar.
Also, a BIG fact that you are missing, which disproves your point, is that the age year used for the NHL draft is different than that which is used in youth play. Hockey uses a calendar year, but the NHL deems you draft eligible using a Sept 15 cut off date. So NHL scouts are watching calendar year games knowing that kids born Jan 1 - Sept 15 will be draft eligible one year before kids born Sept 16-Dec 31. Yet somehow the world doesn't come to an end. This would be the EXACT same thing as a college coach watching a 2002 game knowing that some of the kids will be entering college a year ahead of other kids in the same game. Also, much of what they are scouting is junior hockey, which largely eliminates age differences once a kid turns 16. I, for one, would be fine with a travel lacrosse system that says once you are 16 (either calendar year, or sept/aug) its all "varsity division" or "senior division".
Again, college hockey and soccer coaches recruit just fine out of age based systems, which means they do just fine watching games where the players GYs will vary. I can't imagine why college lacrosse coaches couldn't do the same.
All very good points but at the end of the day if my kid is going to Jake Reed, Maverik or a big time recruiting tournament I want him to play against kids in the same recruiting year
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