US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Greater Howard Club Lacrosse Conference (HoCo)

Who said anything about a 15 year old 7th grader?

I must agree

There have been attempts to change the rules (in fact the Hoco rules say kids had to follow a normal progression in school but they ignored it) to be fair and sportsmanlike but people who have held their kids back and whose kids are given an unfair advantage lobby against good character and what is right. Having people involved with running a league who personally support holding back is also a problem as is the influence of the club directors who pad their rosters with these man children. If everyone did what was right for kids -and you all know what that is despite arguing with it- then there would not be an issue.

[quote=Anonymous]so, a 15 year old, who is in 7th grade, playing against other 15 year olds who are in their age appropriate grade is now considered playing up?

whatever parent thinks this is a moron!

I think this proves a point (maybe more than one). A 7th grade team with 15 year olds on it, let alone a 7th grade team that is made up entirely of 15 year olds is not age appropriate. Try 12 to 13 years old.

Many of the teams that won one of the major leagues last year repeated this year in the combined Hoco.

2020 - Champs - Looneys - (Last year Looneys Hoco & Crabs NPYLL)
2021 - Champs - Crabs - (Last year Greene Turtle Hoco & Crabs NPYLL)
2022 - Champs - Hawks - (Last year Diamondbacks Hoco & Cannons NPYLL)
2023 - Champs - Bethesda - (Last year Looneys Hoco & Bethesda NPYLL)
2024 - Champs - Madlax - (Last year Diamondbacks Hoco & Madlax NPYLL)

They have been around for a long time- it's hard to compare teams and their commits unless the clubs have been around for the same time. Most teams can't compete with LI Express numbers, as they have been around the longest, but in recent years, they are certainly rivaled by the other big clubs. I just don't see these big old time clubs remaining the power houses they once were- too much competition and greener grass on other fields, especially if your son is being told he is losing his spot to a kid a yr or two older and can stay a Crab if they too play on a younger team. Too many people value their kid as a whole person, and not just as a lacrosse player. Plenty of clubs are getting kids recruited today, and while they won't have the big numbers from years past, the recruits will come from many clubs.

Historically that's because they were bigger, faster, stronger and better - god given natural advantages! Now a blatant twisting of the morals of youth sports to the benefit of a few! Simply older! Should not be boasting about being better than everyone since it is not an equal playing field. Which is ridiculous at the youth level! Yes - it is within the rules, but everyone of sound mind knows it is not right except for the selfish few.

Crabs have put out a bunch of DI in past when it was age base U13AA and U15AA and HS teams..and will probably continue now with grade base. It is a shame that they are the biggest proponents of grade base now. But it isnt surprising as one of RM's big thing was telling kids to stay back a grade before HS in past.

seriously who said anything about a 15 yr old 7th grader.No private school here either! Point was kid was playing up in rec 2 years older than his age because of his skill. now is playing grade based of his club. READING BETWEEN THE LINES to try to make your point again shows that calling all families out is just sad. good luck in High School and flying over your kid the rest of his life. Exact parent my kid will never be around.

You must have missed the point. The father said his child was playing up, which he wasnt. His child was playing in his age appropriate league. His child was born in summer according to the father. So his son would have been on the younger side when MYLA had its U11,U13,U15 . But his father failed to mention that every other year his child was 13-14 months older than all the other players in that league. I guess that slipped his mind.

Now his father wants his son to have an advantage other children born in same month dont have. Just because his father decided his child to do prefirst ( which is his right) , somehow that translates into getting an advantage other children dont get in youth lacrosse???

I am not sure where the 15 in 7th came in either??? I think that if you are held back two times you will be 15 in 7th. Most kids start off 12 and turn 13 during 7th.

Crabs has a few players on their 2020 team who turned 16 during the spring and are in the 8th grade. Can you imagine, a 16 year old 8th grader. Most 8th graders are older 13/younger 14 years old.
When it comes to Crabs, nothing they say can be believed, simply because almost all of it are lies.

How do you know if the Crabs organization is a good fit for your child? Here is a list of things you should consider. Your child belongs on the Crabs if:

1) Your son has his driver's license in the 8th grade
2) You enjoy seeing your should be 10th grader play against 8th graders
3) You like seeing your son being ridiculed and humiliated by a fat red man that never played the game
4) Your child likes repeating grades
5) You live vicariously through your child and post pictures of him running over on age kids
6) You enjoy paying multiple years of private school tuition
7) You have a nickname for your child
8) You secretly wish you could have a Rabil cut but can't because you are bald
9) You live way beyond your means and think by playing for Crabs your stature in society will somehow improve
10) You find the end of the school year to be a total rush because it means your son can reclassify again

** crickets **

We are all just wishing the moron above would include the user name "mental [lacrosse]" so we would know to skip his post so that we wouldn't have wasted 30 seconds of our lives.

Typical Crab response. They hate it when they are exposed and really, the truth hurts, except for Crabs, they don't understand the truth, not in their vocabulary.

Seems like a pretty accurate list to me

That mental [lacrosse] hit th nail on the head. LoL

Wow, it takes a Crab fan 30 seconds to read that list when mostly all people can read it in 15 seconds. No wonder Crabs keeps releasing their players, reading remediation.

Not a crab parent its just that everyone except the 3 dopes who defended the list are so tired of the lack of original content. Nobody gives a rats arse about hold backs, 16 yr olds playing 13 yr olds etc. We all just watched an incredible championship lacrosse game between two teams that are as guilty as anyone in the early recruiting game!
I'm sure all those kids competing today and their parents feel like they cheated the system right about now. Complete and utter nonsense.. Move on losers

Sorry bud, you are obviously the loser here. #1 loser. Where do you get off telling anyone what to post and not to post. Mind your own business and to do so, as you say move on.

Nobody who reclassifies their kids for lacrosse cares about holdbacks. Everyone else who plays by the rules does. Let me guess - your kid is a holdback?

How long till the fat crab tries to weave into his webs that x kid played for Crabs? I give it less than a day.

My kid is on age for an elite club and at an MIAA school and I could care less about holdbacks. Using words like "Everyone" is a little presumptive. Speak for your own situation.

I'm not a Crab parent (not that you will believe me), but I find this entire "reclass" thing very amusing. My son didn't reclass (he's in college now), but I get why it upsets people. I will say that once your sons are in HS, this thing will not seem as life and death as it does now.

The Crabs have always fielded excellent teams, and I understand they have a lot of kids who've reclassed. I get that they get the brunt of the abuse because they are very successful. My question is: what is the threshold in terms of reclassed kids? I ask because we know a lot of our friends with 8th graders, and all of those top teams have reclassed kids. Some more than others, of course.

My point is if it's unacceptable to allow the Crabs to field teams with reclassed kids, what about FCA, Looney's and others who also have reclassed kids? Is it ok if they only have 1-2 reclassed kids, but not ok if a team has more than 2? What exactly is the number that escapes scrutiny?

I am not a big fan of the Crabs owner, but if all the youth teams have reclassed kids, how does one decide to single one out more than another?

Again, I don't have a problem if people dislike the holdback phenomenon (it wasn't a big deal when my kids was a youth player). My first suggestion is to only enter tournaments that do not allow holdbacks.

But unless a team has zero holdbacks, I find it hard to understand why some teams are singled out for holdbacks and others aren't.

How about this - the majority (not presumptuous) of parents think it is ridiculous that 8th grade teams have 16 year olds on them? Does that suit you? What percentage of all the 8th graders in the entire Maryland public school system are 16 years old? Care to guess?

Look, I agree with you. I think it's ridiculous. But I just don't care about it like others do. It would benefit my son to have the kids playing up where they belong in terms of staying on his team, but does it benefit him in terms getting better as a lacrosse player? I don't think so. He is able to compete with and in many cases surpass the holdback kids. So why would I prefer he play against lesser kids? Lacrosse has had a 2 year spread for as long as I can remember in terms of U-9, U-11, U-13, U-15. What's the difference?

How about this - how many 8th graders do you know for a fact are 16? Not I heard or that kid looks big - I mean know for a fact. I'm not saying it hasn't happened. Just that people are making it sound like it's rampant and it's not. People also make it sound like reclassing and early recruiting is specific to lacrosse. Guess what - lacrosse is late to that game. If you don't like the league change or petition the league.

First lets remember that these are children playing lacrosse that are between 8 and 15. You may not care, which is fine. But many do. Many, of course not all, feel that having select kids playing down is wrong at Youth Level. If you are going to let these select kids (mostly private school prefirst) play down, then change the date and let anyone play down from an earlier birthdate. Make it April? or whatever, but let anyone playdown that wants to.

As far as MYLA and their two year U11, U13,U15, .Yes that was two years, but every other year you were older than some players. As it is now, with single year and grade. Select kids will always be older and the kids that didnt holdback, will always be younger. That is not the way Youth sports should be run.

You might be ok as your son is a superstar and competes with the holdbacks . By your reasoning than play him your son up a year and you can play against nothing but older players. He will get really better than. But for the majority of kids that arent superstars, why are they at a disadvantage while other palyers born in same month as them get to play down???. Why cant they have that advantage???

False statement. Most YOUTh sports are age based. Soccer which is larger than lacrosse had a terrible problem years ago with the same thing going on with lacrosse now. They cleaned it up and you are now issued a card with birthday on it, All competitive teams have them. I very very rarely ever hear about problems with age in soccer at competetive level. Most teams are similar height with a few exceptions until around U14. After that some teams are huge and some are small. But no one complains except to say that kid is big for his age. In HOCO league, its I wonder how old he really is???

My son is not a superstar, but he's good enough to play with kids a year or two older than he is. HOCO provided up to 4 levels of play for teams. The Elite divisions were just that. For the Elite teams(elite level players). All the clubs know the deal with holdbacks, and I would guess that every club in the Elite division has at least one over age kid. Is the problem that people's egos will take a hit if their kid's team play in the AA or A division? Like I said, I don't have a problem with it because my son has always played and always will play against boys in a range of ages. It is what it is.

I agree and my son is in the same boat. But after this summer when you start to see the sidelines filled with college scouts it will be hard not to say to your self man if all those kids out there where 15 not 16 and a half he would be doing that much better. I think that is where the anger comes from. Most people like there kids to play up and become better players but when you are paying the extra 200 to 300 dollars per tournament because they are showcase style the reclassing kids get under your skin just that little bit more.

The only way to fix this problem is to go age based. No other youth sport has this structure. It is damaging the game over the long term. The fact that college scouts are looking at kids in the 8th and 9th grade is just sad...

Crabs 2020 elite has multiple 16 year olds and multiple kids who will turn 16 by the end of the year. There is no rumor - its a fact.

Well I new this would come back up and I could not wait to put these stats up for all to see and talk about.
Early commits from the two teams that just played for the title are.
class of 2019 Maryland 14 verbals
UNC 8 verbals
Class of 2018 Maryland 11 verbals
UNC 11 verbals
So this is what the best two teams in lacrosse this last year have done in early recruiting. We have to wait to see what happens with this group in 4 years. But how can you say no when a team in the National championship is asking for your verbal commitment.

Need some help - Here's what I don't get - If the kid is 16 in the spring of 8th grade that means they will be 17 as a Freshman, 18 as a soph, and 19 as a Jr and ineligible to participate as a senior b/c age rules. Why would anyone want to do that? I believe the MIAA/WCAC/IAC and public school rules state “A student who has attained his/her 19th birthday before August 31 of a given academic year is not eligible to participate.” How do they get around this?

Can some of you guys chime in here? So what is the threshhold? 2 or fewer holdbacks is fine and exempt from criticism? 4? 1?

My stance is if the Crabs are fair game to get killed, any team should get the same level of vitriol if they have one holdback. Or at least clubs with comparable numbers of holdbacks like Madlax and FCA.

In terms of early recruiting - if Notre Dame, Duke, etc. and any of the Ivys said they wanted my kid to commit early - I would do it. In the end - I want my kid to walk away with a degree from a strong academic institution. Brown proved that you don't need o play the early commit game to be successful.

and something Johnny holdback will never hear after his resume was taken from the middle of the stack of over 200 because he played lacrosse at a top school ..Mr Hedge fund manager who played attack at Hopkins in the 90's..." Hey one last question Johnny before we have you start your job on the trading desk on Monday making $125k, were you 22 or 23 yrs old when you graduated UNC because if you were 15 in 8th grade HR is going to have a problem with it."

You didnt answer anything about what I wrote. I can sum up what you said easily. ""My son's plays up and is very good ( not a superstar) so everyone else should be ok with grade based teams having children playing down. Oh and by the way it must be peoples ego why they dont like to play aginst older children."""

You are a apologist for a youth sports gone amuck. Years ago if you played your child down it would have been looked down on unless for a good reason..Now with the Balt private school influence of prefirst kids in youth lacrosse it is GREAT!

How they get around this is they go to a prep school witch has 5 years not 4 like a high school. Just google prep schools and you will see there are at least 3 or 4 large ones per state.