I get tired of all this AA, A, B, etc, stuff as well, but there is a point to it.
There are only 15-20 teams in the country that probably deserve to be called "AA" teams. All very athletic, fast, highly skilled, big, older and they can really move the ball to attack the backside. You don't have to be ashamed if your son's team is on age, not everyone's hit puberty or not everyone has the athleticism to play in college. You can have a solid "A" team of kids who are going to be strong JV or even varsity players over the next 4 years, who are learning and getting better and having fun, who are winning non-elite tournaments and who need to improve on swinging the ball around to get hockey assists or always nailing the 3rd slide. That A team is going to lose 8-2 against a AA team on a good day (and at least make the AA team break a sweat) or 15-2 on a bad day, but that's OK.
Likewise, there are tons of B teams around the country that can't compete with solid A teams on the scoreboard, but who are getting good coaching and the kids have been improving much more over the last few years than they would have had just playing rec league or will sitting on the bench of a non-hotbed varsity team.
It makes a lot of sense to understand where a team stands and for that team to go to the best tournaments to challenge themselves to get better, and not necessarily get slaughtered by higher-level teams or, in turn, slaughter lower-level teams. Maybe a mix of some "stretch" tournaments and some winnable tournaments. My kid's team had 17 competitive tournament games this Summer and 4 blowouts (in either direction, and even blowouts are good for teaching kids to be good sports, play in a different position or be able to show your kids how a higher level team moves the ball in the air, etc.)
This is a very good post. Know who your kids is, find the club/team that matches that while providing a challenge for him. All the rest is politics and marketing/hype.
