Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
US Lacrosse has modified their age guidelines and entered into a partnership with NXT (https://www.uslacrosse.org/blog/us-lacrosse-nxt-partnership-bigger-than-one-event). It is not fair to be critical of them, they are trying. TWO years ago they changed it up. (https://www.uslacrosse.org/blog/us-lacrosse-adopts-new-player-segmentation-policy). Don't blame them. On Long Island it's the clubs and PAL that have the power to change this. PAL, won't do it for some reason. You would think a primary tenet of PAL would be a level playing field and player safety. Does anybody know if the board even has a position on this? A former PAL board member tried to go age and was ousted. PAL is becoming more and more irrelevant anyway, as towns just are just building and shifting to club town programs. And clubs... Why disrupt the business your model, that I understand at least.


Don't blame USL?? You either are or you're not the effective governing body for the youth sport. USL has the trump card to move past this issue IF THEY WANT TO - they obviously chose not to. That equals weak/ineffectivess. Instead, they chose to slow walk it, and even then, there is no formal plan that effectively transitions from grade- to age-based for all by a specific date. You could let them slide if they were the first to go through this issue, but the fact remains that they are last in a long line of youth sports to address this and have all of thwt history to draw upon to do it expediently and right. That, in a nutshell, is why the blame lays with them. And, lastly, the business model argument rings hollow. Growing the sport - attracting more athletes, keeping more of the ones you have - leads to an associated business growth model as well. It may mean that some of the business players change with new entries to the market - loss of share and/or power - but there would be more money to be made for all IF you run your business right. Again, USL is letting the tail wag the dog - that is NOT an character indicative of an effective governing organization.


Okay agree to disagree, but respect your points. But what about moving forward? What about now? They have set very clear guidelines to follow. What is preventing clubs, towns and leagues from complying? I would love to at least hear PAL's opinion on this since there should be no conflicts and age is the right path to take.


USL has put out a very unspecific 'plan' ti implement age-based play - that encourages no one to do it. If no individual entity is going to do it on their own - whether they should or not is a separate discussion, but, to date, all if not most have not - then it is on the USL to move this forward. All of these league's require USL registration, IE, insurance, to participate. USL could make their policy(ies) via their carrier(s) only effective for age-based play and everyone would be forced to go that route. They could go off on their own and use other insurance acquired on their own, but they would be effectively jettisoning everything else related to USL as well.





agreed!! it seems so simple, Why have they not done this?