Once the kids are in high school, I age that the grade level works fine. You have kids fighting for jv and varsity spots in high school and the only time something is a little off is a kid there past his true senior year. However, for kids truely 8th grade or younger, the parents need to focus on creating a fair competitive environment by playing based on age. If a kid wants to play up - fine, let him challenge himself, but playing down though any loopholes or hold backs or other method is wrong and against the spirit of fair play. If your kid wants to dominate his age group, tell him to practice and hit the wall, don't have him play down.
So if my son was born on August 15, 2002 and is in 6th grade this year (2020), and one of his friends was born on August 8th of the same year but his parents started him late in school such that he plays with the 2021, do you see a problem with this scenario?
I was a Dec birthdate I was always the youngest to do everything, at times they tried to prevent me from "playing up" which was playing with my grade because of my birth month/age. Fortunately my folks were smart enough to say "those are the boys in his grade... Look at his skills look at his size... play my son with is friends in his grade... it is not fair to the boys a year younger..." I look at my folks; they had integrity.
I was fortunate to attend some competitive sports camps and in a particular camp competed against guys from Maslin Ohio. As a soph in HS, I was competing against boys the same age as Sr's in my school. It didn't bother me because i wanted to play Varisty. What I didn't realize till much later was it happened everywhere, they held back kids in 5/6 grade just to play Football. I thought it was something that just happened at that particular school or in that area. I thought it was funny.
I also played college sports, that is where I thought the age difference was amazing. I was at a distinct disadvantage. Playing football with boys from Texas and Penn puts you at a distinct disadvantage. They were always a year older than most and close to 2 years older from me. Playing with boys from NYC was also scary (They were legitimate Left backs). I was a 17year freshman competing against 19/20 year old freshman (fall not spring sport there was no turning or just turned you are what you are). A very scary scene. Going in I knew if I wanted to play Id have to beat out 20 year olds I just thought they'd be upper classmen, I didn't think I'd be competing against these older Texas boys every year the rest of my college career. (yes Soph and Jr year most freshman were older than me)
In that same time period, this was not happening in Lacrosse. The older boys in lacrosse were those that went to "Prep school" for a year. They went there to get college ready. I see the current climate of lacrosse changed to what I witnessed in the 80's of Football and the bigger money sports. If the colleges didn't do anything (between then and now) to change the rules I don't think it will stop instead I think it will just gain traction in lacrosse.
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