As a HoCo parent, I would love to see HoCo clean up the league. There is a simple, easy fix that will keep club owners happy, allow kids some flexibility to play with friends from school, protect the kids from injury, and protect the league from criticism and liability. All HoCo has to do is change one sentence of their bylaws & league rules to mirror what AAU has done for years. AAU knows what it is doing and has struck the perfect grade/age balance and HoCo should learn from AAU's lead.

HoCo's "club" bylaws current read: The Conference follows a grade based system based on the player's current grade level. Players who are participating in any high-school level program such as a high school freshman, JV-B, junior varsity, or varsity team is not eligible for the 8th grade division.

The only change that needs to be made is: The Conference follows a grade based system based on the player’s current grade level, but in order to play in the 8th grade division the player must not have turned 15 before beginning the 8th grade; to play in the 7th grade division the player must not have turned 14 before beginning the 7th grade; etc. Players who are participating in any high-school level program such as a high school freshman, JV-B, junior varsity, or varsity team is not eligible for the 8th grade division.

As you can see, this tracks the AAU age restrictions found on page 5: http://image.aausports.org/handbooks/boys_basketball/2018_BoysBskHandbook_10-5-2017_V02-GT.pdf.

This simple rule change would allow kids to continue to play with their existing club team, unless they have been held-back more than once.
Hopefully we can all agree that with summer birthdays, kids doing pre-K for non-lacrosse reasons, kids repeating grades for academic or admission reasons, there should be some flexibility for kids to play with their current grade, but there really is no reason to allow double-holdbacks to play in a youth league, even if it is grade based. Let's clean up the league and make it a more level, safer playing field for all.