"Trying to keep the civility in this commentary, there is an overwhelming majority of Maryland prep school kids who have repeated a middle school year."
overwhelming majority? Let's not get carried away. So much of this is driven by perception and not reality. For instance a Canadian club plays their teams down a year because they perceive that that's what all US teams do. What is true that if you have a summer birthday (Sept 1 is cutoff in MD) and go to a MD private grade school that they'll almost always make the kid do a pre 1st. So maybe a third of the private school grammar kids are held back. But what's the percentage of families that are willing and able to foot $20-30K for grade school even amongst the lax community? For the rest of us public school families (the overwhelming majority) you start your kid in kindergarten if he/she is 5 before 9/1 unless you can show the school system a reason. Yes there are some misguided folks who have their kid repeat a grade in middle school for sports- usually 8th grade. But that's just a handful of kids each year and some private allow that and others don't. My point is not to defend reclassing but lend perspective to the reality. I know this by being involved rec lacrosse in Baltimore for many years. My estimate is that on average you will have around 3-4 kids on a grade based MD team that wouldn't qualify for the equivalent age-based with 9/1 cutoff. And most of those hold back kids are in within 3 months of what the us lax age cutoff would be. So personally I think the single year grade works just as well as 2 year age that had been the norm for so many years. Though I would be in full support of single year age. Not sure that will happen.
| 
