BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Greater Howard Club Lacrosse Conference (HoCo)

Two thirds of the team is not holdbacks so stop spreading rumors. They have 1 kid who repeat for bad grades and 2 or 3 summer birthdays..... The kids that play down from 2019 are age appropriate so keep trying to find excuses

So 1/3 of the team is holdbacks ... assuming a typical club team of about 20 kids, you're looking at SEVEN kids. SEVEN.

11 kids take the field. And you're talking about excuses?!? Well done.

You all take 8th grade lacrosse way to serious taking shots at people's character just to make yourself feel better

Oh, ok, if you say so then it must be true. No one is looking for excuses, just the truth and not you or anyone from FCA will stand up and tell it. It is more than 3 or 4 and you know it. Remember religion is the backbone of your organization so set the example and give the correct information. No one on here is spreading rumors.

What club does your son play for?

It is the truth and if I had the list of birthdays I would be sure to post them and show you it's only a few. Every top team in Maryland has a few older kids expect for crabs

Ever been to a CYO basketball game? Or anything involving Mater Dei? LOL.

how are on FCA then? by position!

And the questionable practice of some of FCA's 2020 AA's playing on the A team when the mood strikes them? Also figments of people's imagination?

It was Fourth of July weekend and we didn't have enough players to field a team so chill

You're talking about the Crabs tournament when they were asked to fill a slot over 4th of July weekend and many of their kids couldn't play? Let's guess. Your kid was on Breakers now on T91. Your team picked up players for that weekend as well. One would assume the team signed up for young guns to play tough competition.Your son lost a game 6 months ago time to get over it. I'm sure he did. Team 91, Breakers (aloha) are corporations. BTW - my kids don't play for FCA. They have their fair share of chippy parents, summer holdbacks etc - just like 91, Breakers, Looneys, Crabs, Hawks , Roughriders, Green Turtle....

And that makes it okay??? That must have been another time because we were not local that weekend.

The Howard County employees that started HOCO must have some interest in Private schools as why would this Howard County Lax league be grade base when every other Howard County Recreation League is age base. Howard County has no morals when it comes to youth sports. This is disgusting hidden behavior of government employees. Where is all the fairness and equality among the kids. This is another reason Lacrosse is becoming a joke among many due to adult behavior of gaming the system....

I saw it happen during spring league play too.

So that makes it ok to cheat?

The proper thing to do is forfeit. Next time your club should ensure enough kids are available for the tournament before paying for it. Sounds like bad management and coaching on FCA "A".

So why don't they do something about it? The HOCO league is not a rec league administered by the county but the county does control the fields. They don't have to rent to any league or private club. They could say rent only to age based teams and point to safety and insurance reasons for it. There isn't anything particularly special about a lacrosse league. Soccer would absorb those fields no problem. Other sports would as well. The club guys wil never listen. But the HOCO administration -- they work for you. They are elected or appointed employees of the county or state. I'm not sure it would make a difference because the club owners would just flip over to private school field rentals and charge more.

It is all connected. The history, clubs that played in the league the initial year, connections of management to private schools, club relationships/friendships, who has a hold back etc. - there is no independence and what is best for the kids in the lacrosse world even for a County sponsored league and too many people trust these organizations to do what is right for the kids. They are afraid to stand up and refuse to be a participant in the nonsense or too connected to even recognize it as nonsense. This is their opportunity yet unless someone brings it up to the highest level of the County it will remain unchecked.

HOCO is not a rec league. It is a club league. And last I checked, all clubs have teams by graduation year. So you want them to have a league based on age when all the clubs are structured by graduation?

Makes sense

Who cares if they move kids down to "A" bracket? You should be glad your son is getting tested against better talent. Maybe one day he will be able top move out of the "A" bracket. Winning tournaments don't matter at that age. Also, kids were moved because of a shortage of players

Who cares? A teams who show up to tournaments expecting balanced competition only to find that their opponents have brought in a bunch of ringers. Nobody gets better in a 17-3 game.

No, it doesn't make any sense. You write as if the founding fathers of the country wrote to the British to declare freedom to do grade based teams. The grade based teams garbage can started less than 2 years ago. The two earlist movers were NPYLL/McClernan and HOCO. They both rushed to adopt grade based teams reasoning 'this way we can field more teams than the old U-9, U-11, U-13 and U-15. I'm still missing the part where doing more teams could not have meant a U-9, U-10, U-11, etc. system exactly like every other youth sport in our Maryland county.

But you are right about one thing; to the extent that club lacrosse is stubborn to remain the lower prep school division equivalent sport. That's fine. Families and kids can pick a lot of sports and more will just not choose lacrosse if it is just a protected sanctuary for private school kids. Lacrosse can then be what it really wants to be which is an insignificant off-the-run preppie sport like crew.

Actually, you do get better. By playing sub par talent, you stay sub par. If those boys didn't come play for FCA it would have been a forfeit...would you rather a win by forfeit than test your skills and come out stronger in the end? Oh, wait...you probably voted for Obama

Says the cheater

"AA" players shouldn't be moving down to "A". FCA shouldn't sure they have enough kids to play in tournaments. If they don't have enough players, the team should forfeit.

This is another failure of US lacrosse. They have no backbone to enforce age restrictions nor do they enforce talent level restrictions.

At the end of the day, FCA are just as much of an abortion as crabs

Says the loser who is unhappy with his life.

Talent level restrictions????? Time for your son to find another sport...I feel badly for your son in the real world.."Daddy, it's not fair, he makes more than me! Can you complain to my boss".

You support cheating, I get it! You sucked athletically as a kid, so you want your kid to be the best on field weather being older or playing down a level. Other sports have talent level restrictions, Lax should as well.

Trust me, my boys will have no issue achieving success. They will do it on their own both on the field and in the classroom. I'm sure you had your kid stay back a year because they couldn't make the grade in the classroom or the field.

So if HoCo is all grad year and most boys with summer birthdays started K late, how are some tournaments, like Lax Splash, still U11, U13, etc? Or have most tournaments attended by clubs just gone to graduation years or added additional graduation year categories like the Beach or Hogan's?

The HOCO league was set up originally as a "pre-season" league because everyone knows the summer tournaments are the main season for club lacrosse. The league was set up to give teams a few good competitive games, which is why they spend so much care setting up the brackets for teams, in the spring and judge where their team is before tournaments start. That is why the league goes by grade divisions and NCAA rules. If the local tournament directors got together and said that they wanted to do age brackets and NFHS rules, I am sure HOCO would listen

Somebody has to take the first step to correcting the mess that lacrosse has become and HoCo with their claim to put youth first is currently in the best position to do it since they have a monopoly on all the clubs in Maryland right now. If HoCo put a June 1st date in like some tournaments have, that would be showing support for the tournaments that have taken that first step. There is no valid reason HoCo should not do this unless they have a vested interest in keeping certain Club owners (RM - Crabs tourneys. Hawks - Hogan Tourneys Breakers - Aloha tourneys) happy. In the end there is no room for vested interests in a COUNTY GOVERNMENT sponsored league. Do the right thing and put the age restriction by grade like other tournaments have done and begin to correct what HoCo helped break. Why does HoCo feel the need to wait for others to tell them to do what is right? They will still be preparing legitimate grade based teams (with a sprinkling of summer birthdays for the summer for kids who were not held back) but instead are buckling under the pressure of their own vested interests and that of other clubs who promote these holdbacks. Howard County as an entity has no allegiance to the private schools so why are they bending to them? They should have no motive to make a profit so why not turn away those that manipulate the system? Their own school district (which they share elected officials with) say that students can not hold back for non academic reasons and need special permission to enter kindergarten late yet Hoco is agreeing to allow these kids in their program. This is the organization that requires those of us who play football to prove age and get id cards and used to force their travel teams to get id cards - what gives?

are you serious?!? Most legitimate firms would not hire your son as his character would already be in question if they knew he made a habit of playing with less talented kids in order to let his team win. If you really believe what you say, you should have forfeited the game, asked the other coach permission to play the kids for the fun of it and not impact the results of the tournament that those kids did not belong in. Stop trying to tell yourself you did the other team a favor by making them play tougher competition. You wanted one thing - to win at any cost. If you are so proud of it, put it on the kids resume in big bold letters that he cheats and see who is calling their daddy. You must be proud. As a side note, your team does this regularly depending on who is playing what weekend.

Who cares? A teams who show up to tournaments expecting balanced competition only to find that their opponents have brought in a bunch of ringers. Nobody gets better in a 17-3 game.
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Actually, you do get better. By playing sub par talent, you stay sub par. If those boys didn't come play for FCA it would have been a forfeit...would you rather a win by forfeit than test your skills and come out stronger in the end? Oh, wait...you probably voted for Obama [/quote]

Rationalizing your wrong actions as a club/team does not make them right. If the kids wanted to play tougher competition, they would have registered AA. You should not take it upon yourself to give them what they did not ask for simply because you could not field a team- arrogance at it's best.

maybe one day FCA parents will realize they are just as arrogant as Crabs.

If your sons team cant field a team for a tournament the parents knew about months in advance then that speaks volumes for the commitment the parent and kids of FCA White have. Maybe they aren't happy with the club or the coaches, don't know, but if you cant field a team in the proper division pull out from the tournament, or forfeit the games.

They have 3 players who play on both 2019 and 2020 are non hold back, age appropriate 8th graders who have played up from the beginning. all 3 are pretty good players who show well on both 2019 and 2020 teams.

How many are pre-first? The goalie and who else?

By age appropriate 8th graders; they were born after what month in 2001

January

Don't you guys have better things to do than worry about what month constitutes an age cutoff (when we're talking about grade based teams)?

Use the Maryland school date of August 31st or the more generous World Series of Lacrosse June 1st date but do something instead of making excuses.

January 2001 birthday in about 35-40 states would be a 9th grader, Maryland is one of them.

Has anyone seen the roster rules for Hoco yet? Are they silent on age restrictions by grade? How about that kids have to play on the team they are rostered on and not be switching between teams and/or have any guest players?