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.
Grade base is a joke in Youth in AAU BB, The better Youth teams dont follow grades. ...Most teams are age based in AAU BB YOUTH..HS varies depending on area. Youth Club Lacrosse in Maryland is cancer that is spreading out across the country. Holdbacks in Youth lacrosse is wrong. Common sense tells you that
And middle school is where the difference is magnified 100X. The difference between a 12 year old pre-pubescent and a 15 year post-pubescent is the difference between “babies” and “men”. The 12 year old “babies” are 4’10” 99 lbs vs 6’ 1”+ 165 lbs+ 15 year old “men”. So these kids that should be playing high school varsity on a very high level, are competing against small 99 lb boys. How does it make any sense at all to put the two together. It’s a recipe for disaster. Somebody is going to get seriously hurt or possibly worse. And when that happens, and it will happen, the masses will say, how did any responsible adult knowingly let that happen? The proverbial LaxinItUp will hit the fan, and big time changes will happen very fast. But it’s unconscionsble that it’s going to take such a tragic event to make that happen, when anybody with a brain larger than the size of a pea, knows what is going on here is wrong!
Provide an alternative with dates of eligibility.
COMMON SENSE : Most Schools use Sept 1 ...USE THAT for Youth Lacrosse ( up to 8th grade) .. Somehow for 50 years YOUTH lacrosse survived based on Age until about 5 years ago when the Private school holdback/prefirst influence reared its ugly head.
Frankly the match that stated it was the ignorant people from HOCO ( who have children in Private schools) who started a GRADE base league instead of AGE based like ALL other leagues are in Howard County recreation Department.
HS is where you can get an your advantage. Common Sense.. HS is about grade and Youth is about AGE..Spin Away Prefirst/holdback apologists. More parents are reclassing/prefirst/holdback than ever before, Holdbacks are becoming an epidemic due to advantage in youth sports. Pretty Sad
