US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Crabs Lacrosse / Baltimore Lacrosse Club

Why are the Crabs allowing the Edge organization to play in Young Gunz this year knowing that this is what they do with their teams especially 2019, 2020 and 2021? Sure way to bring the tournament down.

Not sure it is fair to isolate criticism against Crabs when pretty much all the tournament vendors like Adrenaline, NXT, and 3d are equally ambivalent. And whomever the idiot is who posted he watches 100s of games and there are few "big hits" in terms of checks, yeah, we all know that. What you also see is a lot of physical contact on GBs, face-off wing play, and picks. Picks can be vicious collisions when a shrimp sized 13 year old runs his helmet straight into the chest padding of say a 6'4 220lb 18 grader who is 16 years old. Maybe you're getting older and your attention span isn't holding up so well watching those 100s of games because I can't make it through a Saturday tournament without throwing up in my mouth over the size and age inequities on the field. If these Canadian kids are so farm tough, what are they afraid of exactly? Playing kids their same age?

The argument against age based teams keeps going backwards. To be clear, the exact words from the NPYLL board was that going to grade based teams instead of U-9, U-11, U-13 and U-15 will enable clubs to field more teams.

That is false. Before last year there were numerous clubs that went with AA teams, then A teams and may have also had B teams. The grade based system wasn't some magical exilir that makes it possible to do more teams, since more teams existed anyways. It was sold as a better system to go up by single years. I have never heard an argument for WHY single grade based teams are needed over single year age teams aside from that it makes it easier for college coaches to evaluate players which I have a hard time believing since kids have their D.O.B., school and school year listed in the club tournament programs. And any argument that teams between ages 8-13 need to be grade based for the college recruiting point is pointless and silly. Basically US Lacrosse foreshadowed policy by publishing their best practices, and within ONE WEEK the NPYLL overlords decided to go to grade based teams, and voted it in. It's a hard sell to represent that as a coincidence and something NPYLL was contemplating for some time to solve the "need for more teams" crisis which never existed.

I emailed our club owner. I emailed all of the NPYLL board members, and not one of them ever formally responded to me beyond to state for those who don't like it, maybe club lacrosse is not a good fit for those kids.

There are no valid arguments that what is common in soccer, ice hockey and other larger and more evolved sports than lacrosse do -- which is single age year team flights -- is impossible to apply to lacrosse because college coaches can't read tournament programs and will go on recruiting a kid having no bloody clue what year in school he is. That is stupid. There isn't a valid argument that the "holdbacks" who are indeed college recruits can't hang on with kids their own calendar age. If they can't they would not be recruited. There isn't a valid argument that same kids can't "play down" or reclassify for prep school play, because there isn't a rule against it in the prep leagues. There are valid safety issues with grade based teams given the prolific appetites of parents and also entire club programs (Edge is one example) to play down beginning in the youth levels where the size and maturity deltas between kids is too much to stuff everyone into, which is exactly the problem. It used to be top kids played up, and that is a discretionary choice. Now top kids play down, and that takes away discretion from parents. You can't just run to a single A or B team at these clubs like with the U-11AA, A then B world we used to get along in.

Now again: why the fight to keep club ball grade based over age based? The latter is not disputable in that it is safer, and more forthright equitable to the participants. I would have some respect for Ryan McClernan and the other NPYLL board members who mandated this process to stop hiding behind unanswered emails and other queries and make their standing statement on this issue. It is not going away.

[quote=Anonymous]The argument against age based teams keeps going backwards. To be clear, the exact words from the NPYLL board was that going to grade based teams instead of U-9, U-11, U-13 and U-15 will enable clubs to field more teams.

That is false. Before last year there were numerous clubs that went with AA teams, then A teams and may have also had B teams. The grade based system wasn't some magical exilir that makes it possible to do more teams, since more teams existed anyways. It was sold as a better system to go up by single years. I have never heard an argument for WHY single grade based teams are needed over single year age teams aside from that it makes it easier for college coaches to evaluate players which I have a hard time believing since kids have their D.O.B., school and school year listed in the club tournament programs. And any argument that teams between ages 8-13 need to be grade based for the college recruiting point is pointless and silly. Basically US Lacrosse foreshadowed policy by publishing their best practices, and within ONE WEEK the NPYLL overlords decided to go to grade based teams, and voted it in. It's a hard sell to represent that as a coincidence and something NPYLL was contemplating for some time to solve the "need for more teams" crisis which never existed.

I emailed our club owner. I emailed all of the NPYLL board members, and not one of them ever formally responded to me beyond to state for those who don't like it, maybe club lacrosse is not a good fit for those kids.

There are no valid arguments that what is common in soccer, ice hockey and other larger and more evolved sports than lacrosse do -- which is single age year team flights -- is impossible to apply to lacrosse because college coaches can't read tournament programs and will go on recruiting a kid having no bloody clue what year in school he is. That is stupid. There isn't a valid argument that the "holdbacks" who are indeed college recruits can't hang on with kids their own calendar age. If they can't they would not be recruited. There isn't a valid argument that same kids can't "play down" or reclassify for prep school play, because there isn't a rule against it in the prep leagues. There are valid safety issues with grade based teams given the prolific appetites of parents and also entire club programs (Edge is one example) to play down beginning in the youth levels where the size and maturity deltas between kids is too much to stuff everyone into, which is exactly the problem. It used to be top kids played up, and that is a discretionary choice. Now top kids play down, and that takes away discretion from parents. You can't just run to a single A or B team at these clubs like with the U-11AA, A then B world we used to get along in.

Now again: why the fight to keep club ball grade based over age based? The latter is not disputable in that it is safer, and more forthright equitable to the participants. I would have some respect for Ryan McClernan and the other NPYLL board members who mandated this process to stop hiding behind unanswered emails and other queries and make their standing statement on this issue. It is not going away.