Reclassification - was designed for the underdeveloped child that barely missed the cut off date - so her or she does NOT have sit out for safety concerns...
Simple- that's it!!
Reclassification was NEVER intended to provide a venue for a midyear birthday player to leverage an extra year of maturity to dominate younger, smaller boys kids in competitive events for D1 aspirations.
From a Coach's prospective - I will discount a Reclassified player's performance when evaluating and projecting talent levels... Does that make sense??
Great post! This is exactly where my son falls. He is a 2017 and he is still 14 years old until the end of this month. All of you folks can bury your head in the sand all you want but there are 17 year old 2017's running around out there right now. My son was recruited by a highly regarded prep school this past summer. It wasnt even a question whether or not he was going to repeat the grade, it was understood. His club coach (who was a D1 college coach) recommended it and in no uncertain terms told me that D1 coaches "love" reclassified kids and encourage reclassifying whenever possible. So my son will be attending this prep school next fall and repeating the grade and becoming a 2018. I dont consider this cheating in any shape or form. IMO I am just correcting a mistake I made by sending him to kindergarten instead of holding him back like most parents do. My son is a very good 2017, but because of his size and physical maturity, he is definitely behind the 8 ball when it comes to recruiting. He is playing with a 2018 club team and he is still one of the younger kids on the team, most of them are already 15. So to all of you throwing the "cheating" word around, every case is different. More importantly, do a little research and look at D1 rosters and look at the birthdays and look at the schools they come from. An extremely large majority of D1 kids are reclassified and come from Prep schools. Its just reality and its here to stay. In my sons case I believe its going to help him get into a much better college than he would have been able to get into and thats the goal here isnt it?
