Agreed. The Spartans participate in tournaments that are "front loaded" in the early spring. This year my sons last Spartans tourny is JDRF and his first travel tourny is JDRF. No conflicts otherwise and I think JDRF does town on the first day and travel on the second. He is on the 8th grade team now and loved it last year. Spartan program is execllent, I do suspect that the experience does differ from grade to grade. He played a lot as did all the other boys. Coaching was excellent and the boys had fun and I think we won most of our games as well. Speaking of winning and losing whenever we do lose a game whether its LAX, basketball etc I will usually talk to him about it after in the car to see if he is upset, his response is usually "whats for lunch?" so I think that as parents we have to remember that at this age the kids are not taking losing a game as hard as we think they do.