Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Edge should just be evaluated for what they are: a team that is a year older than the divisions they are currently permitted to enter. So 2020 Edge should be welcome at any tournament.....provided they take their rightful place in the 2019 division and so on and so forth for all their teams. Given how they advertise their program on their own website I don't see how they could be surprised. Nor, as an attorney, do I think that tournamant directors would be absolved of liability if an Edge kid seriously hurt someone. Even a passing view of the Edge website site reveals their philosophy so it will be tough for any director to claim ignorance. Presumably there is some basic due diligence associated with hosting a tournament. Somebody will get hurt, a lawsuit will follow, and then maybe people who currently look the other way will start paying serious attention.



If you feel Edge should do that ok. What about the US teams ? Are they dismissed because they only have some on the teams that do it ? Let's not be hypocritical here. Every team is doing it now. Whether it's the whole team or just a few.



This post points out the irony and hypocrisy of the current holdback / age based team fiasco. As long as the big east coast clubs (and compliant parents with visions of D-1 positions for their sons) can game the rules by going to age based teams and holding kids back to get age and size advantage (the euphemism the "advantage of time" is precious); everything is just fine. Anyone who complains is a "whiner" and an over protective "helicopter parent" who just will not let the boys play. However, as soon as a team dares to be constituted entirely of holdbacks (which is the logical end result to the system gaming), then there is strident bitching and moaning that that team is "cheating". How dare a team be created with just holdbacks and players playing down. Put another way, it’s OK if we do it for some players (and get a competitive advantage over other teams), but it is not OK (in fact it's cheating or much worse) if another team does it for all players and gets a competitive advantage over us.

The problem is that using grade level as the standard for organizing teams is no standard at all, if (as is the case); parents, coaches are willing hold kids back or simply play kids down. In a grade based system how can you even challenge or enforce against players playing down? There is no proof as to what grade a kid is in (which is the point of course and what makes grade based teams so seductive until it backfires).

As arbitrary as age based teams can be around the edges, it is the only solution for youth lacrosse. A prior poster had it right: Lacrosse at this point has no integrity.