It is important to understand why we have grade based groups and why that is happening now as opposed to earlier in the youth game. There is nothing that clubs can do to regulate HS play and there are no HS rules against kids being older for their class. I think this debate is about the youth game. Kids between 8 and 15. Give US Lacrosse some credit. They tried. Here is a link to the Gold Stick Program on their website: http://www.uslacrosse.org/resources/programs-grants/gold-stick-program.aspx

The shortcoming of all this is US Lacrosse implemented guidelines, suggested baseline standards and then listed out some best practices / exceeding the standards. One of the best practices to exceed standards is age based youth teams with further player contact rules. To quote:

Best Practices/Exceeding the standard:
Implementation of additional rules to further emphasis and “exceed” the published rules (i.e., no body contact at all levels U15 and below, grouping players for competition by individual age/year – U15, U14, U13, U12, etc).

I believe this was first circulated by US Lacrosse in early spring of 2014. Did any of you see this link or hear the term Gold Stick Program from your clubs or club owners? Probably not. Definitely not the club my kids play for. Also in spring 2014, and close to immediately after US Lacrosse published this the club owners who control Maryland and DMV lacrosse moved quickly to establish grade based teams going on down to 3rd graders for NPYLL, HOCO and club tournament play. Does anyone believe that timing is an unrelated coincidence? Even if you do not believe that club owners are implicitly celebrating the holdback grades epidemic, all of us would have to at least admit there is a commercial reason for it. A 16 year hold entering 9th grader will have spent two more tuition paying years in the club / clinics / showcase system before "graduating" from club to HS play.

Here is my poke at this...the other posters are right. Sometimes you'll get a 98 pound 14 year old out there with a 180 pound 14 year old. Sometimes you'll find a legit new Mikey Powell who is a 98 pound 12 year old who could play up with 14 year olds. At that point it is up to parental discretion to put a kid into this contact sport or not. No system needs to be set up to make those imbalances go away. What we are talking about now is grade based youth teams are an implicit incentive for parents to go to the "Outliers" book bible. Older, more developed kids will have a sports advantage. I don't care about kids doing pre-first or whatever you call it in Baltimore, but I do share the disgust of many parents redshirting their 8th or 9th graders. The HS rules leave that be for now, but the club owners didn't need to do this to the youth game. If they want to do more teams and make more money, fine. Do U15, U14, U13, etc. just like the US Lacrosse best practices state. Why is that status quo so bad?

One more point: most larger club owners now privately insure their leagues and events. Why? One reason why is if you don't follow US Lacrosse safety guidelines, US Lacrosse won't permit those same leagues or events under their umbrella insurance policy. That plainly means we as parents are also paying higher club and events fees to cover the private insurance costs to preserve grade based youth teams.

The bottom line this is a youth sport. Get off the XBox and iPhones for exercise, socially mix with new friends, compete well, aspire to your goals (make varsity - go on to play college lacrosse) be a good sport and have fun. We can celebrate that and still see some of these kids go on to be Hopkins or UMD commits -- that happens anyways in any competitive sport and there is little to nothing you can do to make your son the new Mikey Powell. I would also wager most of your sons don't want to be the new Mikey Powell as much as their Dads. My kid was worried that I forgot the team snacks and asked several times in the car on the way to his games last weekend if I got a certain flavor of fruit roll-ups. And that was just perfect for 10 years old, thank you very much.