Let me ask you a question. Your child is in preK or nursery and a late summer birthday, and you get posed the question. Do you want your child to be the youngest in the class or the oldest? ALL research points to be the older. For many different reasons...the last of which is freaking grade school travel lacrosse. So now you are here. What do you do? Play with kids in your grade, and are your good buddies? Or go to a brand new grade and play with kids that you dont know. Cant carpool. Etc etc etc.
This being said, my son is not a difference maker. He loves playing with his buddies. And wants to go to practice every day. And yes, he is on one of the "top 5" teams. [/quote ]There is nothing wrong with that at all. how about this .... your child is born 11/25 or 11/26 , 11/27 2005 etc. is 1 month and a couple of days older then a child born jan .1. 2006 does that 1 month make a huge difference? Does it make the 2005 kid so much better? Now a child born January 1 2006 and a child born 11/30 2006 is a 10 month difference same year Does that make a huge difference? If you complain about a hold back than they way you are looking at things is wrong. Otherwise we should make teams based on 3 month intervals. get the point. If your kid is a good Athlete he will compete just fine. and in 2 years will make absolutely no difference. So stop all the complaining. it will all work out in the end [/quote]
So, the basis of your counterargument is because it is unreasonable/unrealistic to do 3 month interval levels, then don't do anything more reasonable to improve the system. Got it![/quote] the basis of my argument is theat everyone claims holdbacks have a huge advantage . I Am simply saying that months do not make much of a difference. People claim the numbers don’t lie ; where are these numbers. Fact is all kids grow at different paces, there are plenty of kids that are younger that play above kids that are older: Bottom line , a kid that is held back a grade does not make him a great athlete or lacrosse player. Plenty of holdbacks that are not that good : plenty of younger boys that are great. Just an excuse and something to complain about. [/quote] Wrong!! In most cases it is not just a couple of months. most cases its over 1yr. and then it snowballs into double hold backs and reclassification's.... What parents are asking for is just some kind of age enforced cuttoff. I do not know one parent who has not come away from at least one most times every tournament and say wow did you see some of those boys??? They were older!!![/quote]
You think it's bad now, wait for next year and the year after for the 2024s! My 2021 son played in a tourney in DE 2 seasons ago where every starter on the opposing team was at or close to 6' tall, and with a G whose head was above the crossbar . . . for what was then a "7th Grade" Team! Besides the size, a majority of them had already reached the point where they were shaving (or not shaving, which is why we all could tell!), so it was painfully obvious that none of these boys were "on-age" 7th graders. Pretty much the same thing played out with most of the rest of my son's team's opponents for the rest of the weekend - all teams from MD and PA.
