Why do the people complaining about holdbacks say that 15 year olds are playing against 13 year olds? Personally I don’t think a one year difference is that big a deal but two years is a lot. Are they complaining about double holdbacks? Or are their sons playing up and then running into a two year age gap due to holdbacks in the upper division?
I can't believe this is a real question. Currently, any kid in 8th grade and born after August 31 of
2007 is eligible to play high school varsity sports. The recommended age for 8th grade and in US Lacrosse is for kids born after August 31 of 2008 - August 31, 2009. This means there are current 8th graders who have already turned 15 playing against 13 year olds in 8th grade.
The problem gets worse as there are young men born born prior to August 31 of 2007. These young men are 15 now and will be turning 16 before entering high school. They will be ineligible to play varsity sports their senior year of high school (unless they go to a MIAA school). In the rare case, they could be 3 years older than kids on the same playing field. Historically, there will be 6-10 of these young men in HoCo this spring.
If you hear of a kid transferring to a boarding school and their parents aren't military or state department, there's a good chance they are a double holdback. The travel tournaments are filled with players who are either currently in the grade higher or the parents saying their kid is reclassig in the next school year.
The WSL has a hard age limit of 9/1. The Circuit has a softer limit of 6/1 with 3 roster exceptions older than 6/1. Many legacy clubs skipped those tournaments because they couldn't even field a team and didn't want to "out" their rosters. Watching those tournaments it was obvious how pervasive the problem is by comparing the physical sizes of those teams to teams in travel tournaments.
