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

Man I bet you you wetting you pants over there writing this.

Crabs 11-1 among the four teams playing at NLF after one day of ball. Great job players, coaches, and parents! (And siblings)!

Not true. Crabs 2024 is 0-3 at NLF.

No matter what the Crabs do in any game or tournament, the Crabs will always be tainted by the fact they have older players.

This isnt the Crabs of 5 years ago with its talented on age U13 and U15 team along with Top HS teams.

This is the modern Crabs with players usually older and bigger than any team they play. Just how youth sports was supposed to be played. LOL

HS teams, sorry. Youth was at another location, wasn't following. 23's won it, and the other teams except for the one you mentioned all went at least to the semi's. Great event, lots of talented teams.

2023 Crabs at NLF had a cake walk of a schedule against only B teams. Cruised to the finals. Expected them to beat LI Express which has zero holdbacks. The real surprise of the playoffs was Express downing Bandits!

Wrong again. 22's didn't make the playoffs

Not sure who wrote the comment about 2023 Crabs schedule, but you obviously didn't see the Laxachussetts game. Neither Bandits nor LIE was beating that team. Get over yourself... 2023 Crabs was the the best team there.

express beat laxachusettes at last tournament and only lost to them in OT. (but didn't read the comment you were referencing)

Crabs and Laxa were evenly matched teams made up of some on age kids and a few 7th and 8th graders. Of course Bandits and LIE couldn't keep up with players 2 years older. And you can't deny the Crabs v Laxa game was the only challenge Crabs faced all weekend.

Express 2023 most certainly has holdbacks. Lefty attack played 2022 for years. Was held back after 6th grade.

Lefty attack is definateley not a holdback...Now you are reaching for straws!!!LOL

Remember how f'd up the tourneys used to be with U13, U11, A,B,C, always whining about teams playing down a bracket, it was always a mess. Grade based is clean, and the top teams at the top tournaments don't argue about this holdback nonsense. Unless you want to create a private school league, this is the best it is going to get. They aren't going to go age, as the clubs are not going to want to build teams all through MS, then have to re-build the teams in HS. You need grade based in HS, because coaches don't want to watch mixed up teams during the recruiting years.

At least they can drive themselves now

This gibberish makes no sense. Nobody disputes the need for grade based in HS. The reasonable expectation is that all kids in the same grade are roughly the same age. The other reasonable expectation is that people do not INTENTIONALLY GAME THE SYSTEM TO GAIN AN ADVANTAGE. All why telling everyone else to "play up, it will make you better"

Youth Teams were always age based and HS teams were always grade based until the ER Hysteria. The Colleges had no problem recruiting then?? Starting a few years ago we had to have grade base due to ER in 9th grade. Well that is gone.

Recruiting contact can only start in 11th grade now . This eliminates the whole grade based argument for youth.

Now your excuse is we need to form grade base teams in 4th grade and let them play all the way to 11th to give clubs a good chance of building teams! Hilarious. That is a lame argument.

High School teams and youth teams at clubs have always been a separate thing. Even now look. HS teams have big turnover from the 8th grade teams. No where near as many HS teams as there is youth teams. Your argument falls flat.

NCAA took care of their stupidity by getting rid of recruiting 9th graders. Will lacrosse get rid of their stupidity of letting select held back children play down due to a youth grade base system.

The sport doubled youth participation last year. Seems the market agrees with the system, no?

Yes ,the sport doubled in size because of holdbacks...idiot.

It doubled, yes. Within prominently grade based system, yes. But that is stupid, because doesn't fit your narrative, so let's change it.

Please explain the correlation between grade based teams and significant growth of the sport

The sport hasn't grown because of prefirst or holdbacks. Its grown because football and baseball numbers are down and soccer lets just say sucks. And its a fun game that kids like to play. The u15 u 13 model etc isn't needed because numbers are up. The cleanest way to play is BIRTHDAYS...simple.

you are sadly mistaken if you think the whole recruiting thing is changing.
Yes they can not communicate with the student until 11 grade.
But they can follow the student from whenever they want. If you don't think the coaches will be at 7&8 grade games your delusional. Coaches will be on the sideline making notes about the kids they want and talking to club coaches.
(they do it in AAU basketball all the time) Then they watch how the kid develops and matures both physically and athletically and the kids either move up or down on the coaches recruiting chart....and oh by the way the also see how the kids parents act as well..lots of kids have missed opportunities because of their parents. I project the sidelines will continue to be lined with coaches...that's why teams like FCA, Crabs etc who have relationships with the college coaches will prosper.

Thank you logical person.

OP - "I like holdbacks, sport is growing, ergo holdbacks are driving the growth of the sport." Talk about a strange narrative...

More nonsense from crabland. Let us know when you see a coach at an 8th grade game.

Recruiting timeline changes . . . I walked by two college coaches last night talking about 2021s that looked good so I agree that the kids may have prove themselves and the coaches may be thinner where they still are looking for 2019/2020 players but the recruiting is still there. Plus the rules are probably going to be loosened - how many kids can take off the fall of their junior year to make visits to multiple schools?

I don't think anyone said it is growing because of holdbacks. I think it was stated that the market seemed to be in agreement with the system based on growth. The argument on the other side is that the grade-based bracket system is a travesty, and while certainly an understandable opinion, the market does not seem to agree. Rec was always 2 year spreads, so to some degree, this system is actually more in the direction of your argument.

So if they changed it, your kid would still be on the same team, unaffected. A handful of kids from AA teams would move up, and some really good younger kids that would jump up will fill those spots. So really, you just don't like a few private school kids that you know, and you like to whine about the fact that they are a year older in your league, even though it has nothing to do with your situation. Got it.

if the coaches are not there then they are not doing their job...it would be impossible for them to evaluate, and make a determination on a single player much less multiple players from their JR year on. You have never been involved with the recruiting of players from an evaluation stand point if you think they are just going to stop showing up. Keep thinking that. Ill bet lots of coaches are at this one. if you were lucky enough to be invited you will see them there

CRABFEAST 2017

Jun 24 - 25, 2017

A handful of kids...more like 40 percent would move on. My kid would move up. And I don't whine just the facts. Its not about private school holdbacks. Every youth sport is by birthday. EVERY ONE!!!!

Lacrosse was never by birth year at rec levels, and clubs are private, so they do whatever they want. There are not enough kids in the rural areas to field teams at every birth year in rec lacrosse. So while you use exclamation for your main point, everyone with understanding of the history of the game realizes youth lacrosse has never been able to sustain an individual birth year system universally at the rec youth levels. Rec teams to this date are U9, U11, U13, etc... This is not every sport; this is a very very small sport in comparison to football, baseball, and soccer.

We are now grade based and the sport is thriving, therefore the growth is due to the grade based system - this a fallacy. I will counter your argument by pointing out that the helmets look much cooler than they did 5 years ago, therefore the sport is growing because 'the market' likes the cool helmets.

The growth is due to the reasons cited a few posts up.

Actually lax was never by 1 year birth day spreads. It was always by skill level within a two year spread. That is an indisputable fact. Changing to a 1 year system would be an unnecessary adjustment. There are tryouts, so you end up at your skill level, only now closer to one year spreads using the grad year system. What is your argument with the old rec system, that you got to be older every other year? Is that really saying much about skill if you are waiting for every other year to say you think you've gotten better? This is silly, but liberals are on a particularly whiny streak these days.

I can say that there were plenty of coaches watching 8th grade girls last weekend at the tournament in Hershey. I'd imagine it will be the same with the boys this summer.

Again, since you are such a smarty pants, nobody said growing "because" of holdbacks. You are apparently arguing against your version of the opposition, so have at it. At the end of the day, what's in place is working great and thriving, and certainly an organizational system is much more of a factor in success than a piece of equipment, but again, you are smart, so you know that..

It is pretty stupid to make a correlation for growth of sport due to grade or age. Grown for many reasons . Lacrosse is the only YOUTH sport at this time that goes by grade.

Thanks Ryan for another round of BS. Recruiting IS changing. Your Hero Ty Xanders recently tweeted at a tournament that there were " barely any coaches watching " 2020 ! 2021 is a ghost town of coaches, none there. They were concentrating on 2018 and 2019 . Without the NCAA stepping in and stopping this madness of ER in April, the sidelines of 2020 and 2021 would have been full.

The complete straw man argument that rec lacrosse was two year difference before with U11..U13..U15. That was due to trying to field teams with limited players. Now with the growth of the sport... A simple U11, U12, U13, U14 would work just right. Do you apologists even think things thru??

Even with two years , every other year you were with the older group. You never had a select group of kids get to be the oldest their entire time of playinf youth lacrosse while other kids same birthday got ZERO advantage.. Most tournament teams were second year older kids on A and first year younger kids on B. Pretty simple and easy..Only issue was cheating on age of kids. Lacrosse needs a system similiar to soccer. Cards the coaches keep certified by USL.

Yep, this. Once again the grade-based argument does not hold water.

Also, under the old system better players played up, not down.

In my long history with lacrosse, it was/is a skill game played among closely-aged peers, but always multiple grades. Some played up, some played down based on skill, speed, strength, and size, none of which are driven by exact birth year exclusively. May we reserve this fancy nancy crap for the soccer forum, please?