Has anyone heard anything through the YJ grapevine about whether or not the YJ's will be switching to age-based classifications next season?
No reason to. None of the tournaments directors will turn down entire clubs, so tournament formats will not change. Nothing at all will change. The only tournament that mandates the age classification is the US lax national championship. CR puts teams together for that anyway. Another cash flow oppurtunity. People are all worked up over this, but it has zero teeth and will change nothing. If US lax tries to force tournaments to adhere, they will simply drop the US sponsorship, which nearly none of them adhere to anyway.
Not so fast. US lacrosse does have a hammer if they want to use it. Insurance. Most clubs use the US lax insurance which comes with membership.
LOLOLOL US Lacrosse has been and remains gutless and weak. No way they are going against the clubs. US Lax likes the US Lax required membership that clubs enforce. They aren't walking away from that.
Clubs do and will continue to run the sport and that's part of the problem
What I'm struggling with is why would clubs in general not adopt these new age based guidelines?
Because clubs exist as a platform for girls to get recruited. They put teams together for coaches to come see. Way better to have girls all of the same grad year. I'm sure college coaches appreciate it very much. They get to see kids play with peers of the same class. The burden would then be on them to figure out if kids only look good because they are now playing age based and are advantages lossed or gained playing with peers of the recruited class. Only people who care are crybaby parents whose travel team suffers a loss to another with a hold back or an older non hold back. None of my kids are hold backs and I could care less, leave it how it is, works better for clubs, cosllege coaches etc.......
You have it exactly backwards. Every other sport the college coaches somehow can handle figuring out what grade the kid is in. It is much more helpful, especially with recruiting being so young and in the developmental years physically (12-15), for coaches to see kids play in age divisions, not grade divisions. There is plenty of research that shows that while certainly not perfect, age groupings are much better than grade groupings. And at the very least, age groupings can not be gamed like grade groupings can and are.
The only ones whining about age groupings are the little cry babies such as your self who thought they could get an advantage for their little Suzie. You have a hold back kid, liar.
