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pretty sure hawks only had four, one of the bethesda area teams had 7 and madlax had 6, so it's not strictly a crabs thing, i have had two sons play in the npyll who were not heldback, most people in this area have moved on and don't whine about it everyday

Convenient, if it was true, but it is not even close to reality. Would make Crabs seem almost normal. Make stuff up much? Crabs are the heart of the reclass issue, and it's not normal.

Crabs and Hawks over ruled other members and voted to take NPYLL grade based. They did it to protect themselves, and maintain recruiting edge.

That's a fact!

How is it an Edge when everyone has the same rules?

Most teams have hold backs for either intentional sports reasons or unintentional education/developmental reasons.

The single grade method is far better than the two year age cutoff combined method, so there is progress.

pretty sure hawks only had four, one of the bethesda area teams had 7 and madlax had 6, so it's not strictly a crabs thing, i have had two sons play in the npyll who were not heldback, most people in this area have moved on and don't whine about it everyday

Convenient, if it was true, but it is not even close to reality. Would make Crabs seem almost normal. Make stuff up much? Crabs are the heart of the reclass issue, and it's not normal.

it's absolutely true, there were two programs with more holdbacks than Crabs last season for 2018's


Crabs and Hawks over ruled other members and voted to take NPYLL grade based. They did it to protect themselves, and maintain recruiting edge.

That's a fact!

What the [lacrosse] is wrong with our society? Didn't you all grow up playing sports in a two year age system? There was 9-10, 11-12, 13-15. And we used f'ing bachrach raisin helmets and styrofoam arm pads. And gloves that were foam that we had to cut the palms out of. Against defenders wielding 6 ft long solid wood poles. When exactly did it become impossible for a 11 yr old to play against a 12 yr old that happened to be in their grade? (For whatever reason)

I just don't get the issue with the grade based system. Is the difference between a kid born in the summer and therefore is 12 playing against 11 yr olds better or worse than a 11 yr old born in September playing against a 10 year old that was born two years later in August?

As usual in our society, the answer seems to be lets coddle our children and make sure they only play against kids that were born in the same 12 month period. While we're at it, lets have separate divisions for kids based on height and weight. Jesus. This is club lacrosse. The real problem is that rec has been watered down so badly that parents are signing their kids up for club that have no business doing so. There are so many crappy club teams out there that cant compete and take anyone that will pay them their $1500 dollars. Yes, those kids are at risk when playing against Crabs, Breakers, FCA... Is it because they are younger or because they have no business being on the field with them?

What the [lacrosse] is wrong with our society? Didn't you all grow up playing sports in a two year age system? There was 9-10, 11-12, 13-15. And we used f'ing bachrach raisin helmets and styrofoam arm pads. And gloves that were foam that we had to cut the palms out of. Against defenders wielding 6 ft long solid wood poles. When exactly did it become impossible for a 11 yr old to play against a 12 yr old that happened to be in their grade? (For whatever reason)

I just don't get the issue with the grade based system. Is the difference between a kid born in the summer and therefore is 12 playing against 11 yr olds better or worse than a 11 yr old born in September playing against a 10 year old that was born two years later in August?

As usual in our society, the answer seems to be lets coddle our children and make sure they only play against kids that were born in the same 12 month period. While we're at it, lets have separate divisions for kids based on height and weight. Jesus. This is club lacrosse. The real problem is that rec has been watered down so badly that parents are signing their kids up for club that have no business doing so. There are so many crappy club teams out there that cant compete and take anyone that will pay them their $1500 dollars. Yes, those kids are at risk when playing against Crabs, Breakers, FCA... Is it because they are younger or because they have no business being on the field with them?

You do realize that many sports are setup this way now correct? Girls club lacrosse has been for years. AAU basketball has been for years. I am going out on a limb here and saying that most kids that are older in AAU are not MIAA holdbacks. Are they a special select group also?

This is from AAU's website

The AAU is a grade based organization.  Each grade division consists of a 24 month age window which determines an
athletes’ participation in that division.  If an athletes’ age is outside the 24 month window for their grade, the athlete
must play up to the grade division that is normal and customary for their age.  If an athlete is in any grade above what is
normal and customary for their age, an athlete may play down provided they meet the established criteria listed in the
chart below.

And what makes that a cogent argument against age based teams? Basketball is not a sport where kids are playing in helmets and other protective gear. Girls lacrosse is 90%+ school based, girls clubs only started in last 1-3 years. Many sports? You named two and one isn't even a club sport. Clown.

And what makes that a cogent argument against age based teams? Basketball is not a sport where kids are playing in helmets and other protective gear. Girls lacrosse is 90%+ school based, girls clubs only started in last 1-3 years. Many sports? You named two and one isn't even a club sport. Clown.

And what makes that a cogent argument against age based teams? Basketball is not a sport where kids are playing in helmets and other protective gear. Girls lacrosse is 90%+ school based, girls clubs only started in last 1-3 years. Many sports? You named two and one isn't even a club sport. Clown.

My understanding of LI going grade base teams is due to Dec 1 school start date and USL Aug 31 age start date. Md school start date is the same as USL Aug 31. I may be wrong but it seems like LI going grade base gives them a DISADVANTAGE as the oldest child is DEC 1 birthday while Maryland oldest age base would be Sept 1. MD kids could be 3 months older ,,is this right?? With a few holdbacks on a MD grade base team vs grade base LI team this would even be more advantage for MD, 6 months plus older kids. Please chime in if I have this wrong.

Seriously? AAU basketball is the absolute equivalent to club lacrosse. The kids play together for years as they move up through school. They go play in tournaments all summer in front of college coaches. Kids switch schools and reclass all the time to be in a better recruiting situation. Many AAU teams are run by people just looking to make money and take advantage of the culture. You're right though. I'm the clown. That doesn't sounds anything like the club lacrosse culture. But I guess since they aren't MIAA rich kids that are pushing your son off a team it isn't something you notice/care about.

And what rock do you live under that girls club lacrosse just started 1-3 years ago? Girls lacrosse is more like 10% school based. Ever heard of M&D, Skywalkers, Yellow Jackets?? Been around longer than most boys clubs and have been grade based most of that time. And read some of the Yellow Jacket/LI Top Guns threads. The girls game is 100x more cut throat then the boys.

Point is, that this is the way the game works these days. No matter how stupid it is, and no matter how unlikely it is that little Johnny is going to get a lax scholarship, the parents(Not Ryan) are going to work for every angle they can to put their kids in best situation. I have 3 kids that are on age for their grade and have never seen a game between top clubs where kids were in danger because there was someone 5 months older. The dangers I have seen are when less skilled players are standing over a ball and get train wrecked. This is on the club owners and the parents of the kids that shouldn't be out there.

Are there any studies that show an increase in injuries in the last few years and if so is this at all related to the 5 or 6 holdbacks on the team involved?

So are the Crabs doing any indoor leagues? (Please stop whining about ages or move it to a different forum)

Everybody will stop whinning when the Crabs stop telling us how good they are with a team that is loaded with holdbacks. It is an issue that the Crabs favor and the majority of lacrosse parents think is unfair at the youth level.

AAU basketball is not grade based until high school, football goes by weight class and according to USLacrosse there were fewer than 5,000 girls youth club players registered with USL five years ago. Five years ago the number of school girl participants was over 100,000, so the 90% guess was low.

Yeah, Crabs are doing a 2020 down to 2022 box league. Your kid will need to bring two forms of ID including a valid driver's license to play.

Homey does play that.

Every club has the same rules. please whine on the Age verification forum.

The problem with this debate and the arguments over aged based versus school year based teams with the safety or competitive factors all taken into account is still just that, an argument. US Lacrosse is in no position to tell prep schools what to do, and no body should make rules for prep schools if they want to keep it that same that kids who repeated grades can play school sports in their grade. There isn't anything wrong with that because there are examples of youths held back for health or academic reasons, and I am a parent of a kid in that category. It is unfair to prejudice those kids, so you can't prejudice anyone including kids who do it for sports reasons.

For now the club owners run things and want grade based club teams. I am on the side of US Lacrosse best practices that club lacrosse should be age based to promote safety and equity for the participants, but that is just my argument. There are reasons why ice hockey and soccer are age based for sanctioned non-school competitions, and the winning argument wasn't fairness to make that happen it was safety. The three leading concussion incident rate sports ten years ago were football, soccer and ice hockey. Now it is football, lacrosse and soccer. Soccer has high concussion rates because of head ball collisions and goalies hitting heads on goal posts. Many goalies have started wearing head gear and the sport does debate field player head gear. But the rule to go to age based was safety, get the older versus younger kids issue off the board and do single year age based teams by rule. Ice hockey did this same thing long before soccer for the same reasons, and concussion rates in sanctioned leagues events went down substantially following that.

Lacrosse has two problems. First, growth rate of head injuries and the growth rate of soft tissue injuries at a greater rate of growth than any other sport in the last decade. The first we have to blame on the way the game is played and not the equipment, the second may or may not be a casualty of sports specialization and overuse syndrome injuries. These growth rates are also highest at the youth levels with less physically mature and developed players. Second, we don't know what the growth rate from six months ago is yet because there isn't enough data to make any valid conclusions. The advocates of grade based teams are correct, you can't prove that lacrosse is less safe today because of grade based teams and moreover last year there were age based teams with two year spreads. So the argument that a holdback kid 18 months older is moot since we used to have U-11, U-13 and U-15. Thus grade based teams could not be any less safe than a year ago and according to the birth tables and rules that say you can't reclassify over and over again because players over the age of 19 are not allowed to play high school sports. Just my opinion that those are not BAD arguments, but they are also not GOOD arguments in support of grade based club or recreation lacrosse.

What isn't an opinion but is a fact is that soccer and ice hockey rules bodies realized after pouring over data that single year teams are better than two-year bracket age groups for these youth contact sports and that single year age based teams are best practices. If we can accept soccer and ice hockey as a model -- and some of us again argue against that -- then lacrosse eventually goes that way. Clearly US Lacrosse pushed it and for now the club and recreation leagues pushed back and we have grade based club and recreation lacrosse leagues. For now there isn't injury rate data in yet to denounce the grade based system, and quite possibly with the prior system of two-year spread age based teams it may very well be impossible to have any looking backwards data that says "here, lacrosse is so much more unsafe today over a few years ago"...the best hope for those who want age based is that relative to ice hockey and soccer, that lacrosse is trending higher and higher with head trauma injuries, therefore there is a relative data set to make the argument from. Again just my opinion, but I do see that happening and weakening the grade based system to a point where clubs and recreation leagues will need to go to U-8, U-9, U-10, etc. My argument is that lacrosse is not a large or mature enough sport to come to its own fair bargains, and it also has a very weak governing body in US Lacrosse, so the time it will take to sort this out with safety data versus other comparible head impact trauma risk sports like soccer and ice hockey in the years to come. I don't see this happening anytime soon because the science needs years of data with cases of head injuries to make a different conclusion.

No Ryan.. The Crabs are the MIAA holdbacks club of choice. Due to you and a few other clubs that get this advantage we have grade based teams instead of a U9,U10,U11, etc.You are the type of person that gives youth sports a reputation of being disgusting to many people not only in the lacrosse sport but many out of sports. When they look at this and see an advantage gained by a select few along with Crabs getting a large share of these holdbacks,, no wonder average joe thinks of sports in a low way. I bet you are one of those that tells non sports people that you honor the game of lacrosse..

Exactly. The Crabs are the holdbacks club of choice. Not necessarily vice versa. Should Crabs not offer these kids spots? Crabs just changed to all grade based teams this year.

Jesus. If your kid can't handle playing against someone 5 months older pull him from lax and let him be a cub scout.

Ok let me ask everyone a question? When your son was being recurited did they ask for his birthday anytime during the process? I am thinking they do. I think the college scouts are smart enough to tell if a kid is good or just older. And if they are not they will learn to be if they get burned enough. So I do not think its that big of a advantage. The safety issue I can see. But the only real way to fix that at the youth level is do weight ins like football. I have seen kids way young be way huge. I have seen kids play lacrosse because they where to big to play youth football.

We were never asked about a birth date and it was never mentioned in our recruiting experience with a 2017. Our 2017 is not a holdback. One school did suggest reclassifying and we shot that down immediately because he is a good student. That no coach asked also does not impress much on me since the recruiting process always begins with an online recruit info sheet which includes grades, scores d.o.b among other things. I don't think college coaches really care if these kids are 15 or 25 as HS freshmen.

Son is a 2018, had 4 visits, 2 more to come and has 3 offers.
NOT ONE ASKED HIS AGE!!!!!

My 2024 had 5 visits, 3 more to come and has 4 offers. Nobody asked his age, but twice we were asked if he likes Skittles more than M&Ms. UVa players took him to Dave & Busters. It was awesome!!!!!

Really I wanted to get real answers thanks for the guy who answered my question. As for the Jerk and the Skittles joke guy be happy your son made the high school team maybe he will letter?