Originally Posted by Anonymous
Seriously
The Next Level Fall HS league has always been grade based
The Youth teams are scheduled by age/ability

If your team is getting plowed over, its because the team isn't very good - not because of the new structure



This is the first fall season Next Level has done the league for HS or youth. You are spot on that it "has always been grade based"...but that is a bit shy of sensible to write since the first games were played a week ago.

The youth teams are scheduled by age/ability. No, they are not. There are "AA" versus "A" divisions, but it is by grades not by age for all youth teams.

I don't think the poster was making note of his kid or team "getting plowed over" but was noting that there are some pretty wide age spreads on the field which create some safety concerns that a kid would be plowed by another 50-70 pounds larger. That didn't seem like an unfair point to me given we are all seeing this repeat a grade stuff go viral in DMV.

I have two youth players in middle school and in elementary. I would put them as average sized for their age and was astonished to see the relative sizes of kids bigger than them in the same grade bracket. Some kids are big for their age, and some kids are small for their age. I think the point about some bigger kids being 50-70 pounds heavier than the smaller kids in each grade is a decent guess.

The Crabs way seems to be calling everyone not keeping up with them a sissy. Fine. To many of the other 99% of the families with kids in this sport the point is that a youth game should not prejudice a kid who is smaller from being able to play. Youth football deals with this by having weight classes. I don't suggest the same for lacrosse, but we can all see that this grade based system that has just been implemented is a disaster waiting to happen. Bad things happen in a contact sport when you have big 12 year olds out there with smaller 10 year old 5th graders or so on in the other grades. When bad things happen in this league, what are the owners of the league planning to say? What you wrote? (If your [kid /] team is getting plowed over, its because the team isn't very good - not because of the new structure." Really? Well, give that a shot. Some plaintiff's attorney will love that statement in litigation over some kid or kids suffering head trauma.

Besides being very misleading, your post is just embarrassing to read to other parents all of whom won't broker their kid's safety to be a tough guy twice reclassified IAC or MIAA lacrosse bro someday.