Lacrosse should be just like Hockey. Play with other kids born in your birth year. That way the maximum guaranteed age difference is 12 months. Or like Youth Football that has a weight limit.
Aren't we the only youth sport doing it the grade way?
In the system we have now the age range in a given game could possibly be 24 months. On my sons fifth grade team the number of months between our youngest and oldest kid is 17 months.
Why not go back to an age based system? College coaches only care about High School Juniors and Seniors. At NLF this past spring in Long Island not a single D1 coach was on the 2021 (rising sophomores) sidelines. I was there. I saw it.
We went to grade based because of early recruiting four years ago but that is no longer relevant.
Go ahead and reply with your "its good to play older kids" viewpoint but maybe your son didn't get a concussion that had to make him sit out of sports and school for a month with dizziness, fatigue and headaches. And before you trash me my son is a high level player on a HoCo AA team and not a bench sitter.
Playing older kids in non contact sports is fine. In the case of contact sports like lacrosse it is completely irresponsible in the pre High School years and is not preparing your son for anything except injury.
What is it going to take for Lacrosse parents to make a stand on this. All it would take is to change HoCo and NLF to age based and the rest of the youth landscape will follow but we are the only ones that can make this change happen.
I wish this was a forum about making our sport better and safer instead of a place where opinions are ridiculed. I guess I'm expecting too much from anonymous posters.
I'm pushing the leaders of my son's club to be proactive on this issue. I encourage you to do the same with your sons club.
