I totally agree. These people should be called out. Parents should be contacting US Lacrosse to complain about this. Are we just going to wait until someone gets permanently injured?
US lacrosse is a joke! They talk about fair play, filing up kids emotional tanks, 5 positives for every 1 negative. (Yes, I’ve taken the Us lacrosse coaches training many times) Their answer is unless it’s a US lacrosse event they have no say in grade year vs birth year. Now, I’ve been involved for nearly 10 years, from town lacrosse to club and I’ve never been to a US lacrosse sponsored event. I have even reached out to US lacrosse CEO Marc Raccio to have a discussion. If other parents feel strongly about it I suggest contacting him as well; mriccio@uslacrosse.com 410 235 6882 ext 101
Possibly the easiest hook would be that for USL to insure players, teams, or event sponsors at a tourney, the teams would have to be age based. Again this is politically near impossible but would be the "simple" way to start to enforce this.
Beyond the political hurdles, USL has to consider the fact that USL memberships and insurance are a big (or the biggest) source of income for the organization and the last thing they want to do is motivate someone else to start competing with their business model.
If it were government, this would eventually be handled by decree with a 10-15 year lag time for implementation. In this case that would kill the opposition to age-based because most club owners and tourney managers plan on selling within 10 years, I am sure of that.
There is no easy hook because there are so few age based quality tournament directors because there are so few competitive age based teams and clubs. The current club system has zero incentive to go age-based. They easily find competitive insurance and it is actually cheaper because they have 1 policy to cover their clubs and don't have to pay the additional fee or demand their parents have to pay USL. Same with sponsors in that they have no excessive risk within their own policies or sponsored parties.
Are you really suggesting our government should be involved in youth sports and then "decree" a law? That's crazy to think they should waste time on such a non-issue. There is no age-based system to satisfy everyone unless the moment a kid has a birthday, he/she must move up to the next age category. You will never find a universal date of agreeement.
USL is so bloated and in-bred and doesn't want any outside involvement. They are very happy with their current model of fund raising and social justice platform.
No one suggested that the government will or should get involved -- he wrote that if this was the government they would do XYZ.
I don't have a dog in this fight because my son is an older on-age player so falls somewhere in the middle even with holdbacks, but I can't fathom how far off the rails a debate about the proper role of government would go on here when we can't even agree on whether WCS should count as a team, so let's just nip that in the bud.
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