Agreed on the holdback statement. If you take away that noise, your simply have the best teams out there who are on age, which is what you want. It doesn't mean that these teams are bad, they are just on age. My son's team has played Cannon's Gold and they are a pretty good team for their age, no glaring weaknesses. I think we will see a couple of these teams in some tournaments over the next few weeks. I'm pleasantly surprised who I haven't seen on this list, which tells me that they have holdbacks, which honestly puts a more positive perspective on my son's team's performance over the last year, as its' been a tough one from a win/loss perspective but an eye-opener from the need to put more off-season fitness training into place.
The more holdbacks you have the more wins you have at 9th grade and below. Frankly even at High School club teams by grade , being a holdback is an advantage, just not as big as before puberty hit.
