Originally Posted by Anonymous


tournaments are following how the clubs are set-up. Maryland clubs followed how the LI clubs are set-up. If we're talking about youth teams it's about fairness and safety. The bottom line is that league and tournaments that offer grade A & B divisions give many teams as chance to find competitive brackets for their skill levels. And the age variances are a smaller window on average than with traditional 2yr age brackets. If you're going to throw out 13 yr old 8th grader playing vs 16 yr holdback I've not seen it. That's a double holdback and I believe that would extremely rare and there should some limit on ages. I have summer, spring & fall bday kids. We're public so no holdback even if we wanted to. Not trying to justify going to this system or keeping kids back for sports. But now were in it I'm not seeing where the crises is and I think most others don't either - whether their kids were held back or not. Until the outrage is more than a vocal group on internet forums than trend towards grade will continue. Personally I agree that single age brackets are the best and fairest. But I like the grade brackets over the 2 yr age brackets

And if we're talking about 9th grade up and the kids can't compete with older kids, then they are not ready to be recruited or play varsity lacrosse [/quote]

My understanding of LI going grade base teams is due to Dec 1 school start date and USL Aug 31 age start date. Md school start date is the same as USL Aug 31. I may be wrong but it seems like LI going grade base gives them a DISADVANTAGE as the oldest child is DEC 1 birthday while Maryland oldest age base would be Sept 1. MD kids could be 3 months older ,,is this right?? With a few holdbacks on a MD grade base team vs grade base LI team this would even be more advantage for MD, 6 months plus older kids. Please chime in if I have this wrong.