"Yes, every girl on every M&D team is 12-24 months older than than the oldest girl on every team that they play. That is why M&D is so successful. They are the only program in the country that only has older girls on their teams."

Lighten up Frances, this was sarcasm. M&D is the dominant team from Maryland at almost every age. They draw from southern Pennsylvania to the north, Frederick, MD to the west, the DC suburbs to the south and the Eastern Shore to the east. Girls travel an hour and longer to be on their teams. That is a huge geographic area. Compare that to LI where there are more teams drawing from smaller geographies. The M&D program has a proven track record with regard to developing players and in many cases, is the Golden Ticket to get into McDonough.

If they appear bigger, faster and stronger, that is because they are. When you have hundreds of girls trying out from a massive geographic area, it is not hard to put together a team of Amazons. It is likely that the average M&D (and most Maryland girl's teams) are older than the average team from NY. This is not due to some conspiracy. There is a 9/1 school cutoff in Maryland and yes, some girls do a prefirst year. My daughter did a prefirst year with a Sept birthday b/c we wanted her to be old for her grade, not young. Most prefirst children here have late spring, summer and early fall birthdays. I would wager that on average, a MD club team is 6 months older than an average NY team. Yes, that gives the MD teams an advantage until things even out in High School.