In ALL the HUGE number of conversations about holdbacks, I have yet to see anyone make a case for why it's a good system. The best folks can do is insult the parents and their kids who play on-age ("Hit the wall" "Get better").
No rational person who cared about the kids would design a club system with holdbacks. The ONLY reason it is done is to make it easier for college coaches to attend recruiting events.
You are forgetting the primary reason this system was created and the largest benefactor. Private schools. This does not apply only to sports. Private schools have a small pool if parents that can pay 15-45K per year for K-12. Over time that is serious money. Many of these parents are encouraged to do so at a young age. This way they get an extra year of tuition. If they hold back another year that is one more year. As the best lacrosse programs collect these students at private schools, lacrosse is impacted even more by this. It is not good for the development of the sport, it does not improve the college game or make it easier on college coaches to get older players. THE reason it grows is the extra year of tuition payments. I do not know of any public school holdbacks.
That's silly. There are plenty of public school holdbacks.
Someone has no idea what they are talking about.
This has been happening for decades in basketball, football and baseball with public and private kids. So many public school kids have gone on to do an extra year before entering college. An extra year to develop more mentally and or physically. Private school folks just mastered it by repeating early grades or starting late or calling it a Post Grad year,All options vs Red Shirting in college ,which most who do that do not have income to pay for a private school to get the extra year. Not every public school kid is poor either. Plenty of wealthy folks in public schools who do the same thing as private wealthy folks. Because these sports are the main attraction at every level of almost any college and get the most scholarships it is not magnified like the lacrosse world. Lacrosse world is known to most to be a wealthy sport with limited exposure and limited scholarships. Much easier for the wealthy to manipulate the system even though they can out right pay for the tuition of their kids. This is a system that has been going on for decades with public and private school kids and the lacrosse community seems to embrace it because the college role it plays. Fair or not there is plenty of lacrosse for all now and there surely is a place for all levels of lacrosse.
