I'm not the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Reading these forums helps me feel better about that. I need someone to explain this issue. I live in rural Maryland and we don't have enough lax players to field U12, U13, U14 etc. Our programs used to be U13 and then U15. My donkey math tells me that a 24 month span of birth dates a lol play on the same team. Fast forward to grade based...... A holdback, on a grade based team, might allow for that same 24 month age difference on that team. I'm a country bumpkin that knows nothing about nothing but...... I fail to see the difference. Full disclosure..... my son repeated first grade. He enjoys playing with his classmates. He's not competitive in mind but he has always been talented enough to play up (sometimes 2 levels) to raise his game. We attended Nike Bluechip and had had this same discussion (albeit without the nastiness that I find on these boards) with a bunch of parents. It sure sounded like a lot of the kids repeating, were not doing it for athletic reasons.
I will explain it to you mister Einstein....
When you have a two year difference in age based leagues . Every other year your child gets to play as the oldest...Do you understand that. One year he is one on younger age players side of league...Next Year he is one of the older age players of league. Really pretty simple..All kids are treated the same with SAME Birthdays.
Now we have grade base, Little Johnny holdback prefirsts is ALWAYS not only with older side of players..He is the oldest except other holdbacks/prefirsts.. Never is he having to take a turn of being with his proper age group. He is the oldest with the younger player always.
Other players born on EXACT same birthday never get to enjoy little Johnny holdback/prefirsts specific advantage.
Hopefully that explains this to you Einstein and others who seem to like this reason for letting holdbacks/prefirsts play against younger players.
