Sadly, it will only change when a boy gets seriously hurt by a "hold-back" "cheater" and the family sues the club.
Yeah, and since that’s never happened before, I’m fairly certain it won’t happen in the future either. One of the reasons that it is a non-issue for clubs.
It always never happens . . . until it does!
It does happen more times then we think. My kid plays on age. Like myself I would tend to think that the parents of on age kids are most likely very ethical and decent people. If my kid got hurt on the field and yes it has happened, I am not running over to the boy that hurt my kid to check his ID. That would be completely unethical, and I would never do that to a child.But his parents should be ashamed of themselves.
Lawsuits happen all of the time - unless you're living under a rock, our society is very litigious, to the point that personal responsibility is almost passe! The threshold will be when a lawsuit or series of lawsuits comes where multiple parties - think club, tournament, locale, AND USL, etc - are all party to the suit, and they find for the plaintiff with damages for a significant amount where an age difference is a significant contributing fact in the case. That will be when the insurance carriers dictate that this practice will stop - no one will be able to get reasonable coverage without mitigating the risk, which means age-based play only. And while most on BOTC advocate for that need to only be for pre-HS ages, the reality is that if age-based play comes about via the insurance side of things, they will insist upon that for all ages. Too many tournaments and/or organizations have both pre-HS and HS ages brackets and it will be simpler for one type of insurance policy for all levels of play.
How could any reasonable parent argue with that quote.
