Originally Posted by Anonymous
Frankly the worst offenders are the private school players whose school all teach Character Education. LOL.


BY FAR, the worst offenders are private school players. They probably account for > 95% of holdbacks here. And they tend to be concentrated across 6-10 travel teams. But most of these travel teams are the best-known teams (Crabs, Madlax, 91MD, DC Express, FCA, Hawks). It doesn't help these programs tend to win a lot (in no small part because they attract holdbacks) and outside of their own teams they don't have great reputations. Heck, there are whole forums on here about how bad Madlax, Crabs, and FCA are.

While there is a large contingent of parents who complain about this phenomenon, the rest of us (whose kids go to public school on age and will get more academic scholarship money going to a D3 school to play lacrosse than most of those holdbacks getting athletic aid to play lacrosse at D1 schools), simply realize that our kids will get better playing against older kids. We've come to accept that this is just the way it is until there's some impetus to change.