BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums NORTHEAST LACROSSE BOTC MAIN FORUM (LI, CT, WC) Age and Reclassification. The good the bad the ugly!

weird thing in HS and college ages vary 4 plus years stop crying

HS and college kids aren’t 7,8,9 10 years old. I’m the exact opposite of crying. I’m laughing at pathetic people like you, who are frightened their little kid can’t hang with other kids their own age. We are all laughing at you.

See you hold back parents are doing it all wrong. You want your kid to be the best? Play him/her up an age group! This forces your child to adapt and to stretch their ability, it also introduces your child to more sophisticated play. Those kids playing up an age are the REAL impressive players, any kid can look good playing down.

Agreed. If people lack the stones to play up. At minimum play the on age category. When you enter into that third category of playing down, people lose respect for you. You lose credibility. For example, my son had 7 goals, but he is older than everybody he plays. My son was 25 for 27 in faceoffs, but he is older than everybody else. My son the goalie mad 18 saves and had a shutout, but he is older than everybody else. Do you understand now? This is what people say about youth holdbacks and their parents.

What makes lacrosse so unique that it can't go by birth year like every other youth sport in the country? Don't say it's because of recruiting - all the other sports are played in college, too.

I think baseball is April. Whatever the date is, it allows youth kids to be within a year of each other. There is no perfect system, but within a year is as good as can be expected. By the way my son is April. He is 7 months younger and 4 months older than his teammates and his competition.

Private Schools rule the roost . All East Coast Club teams are loaded with Holdbacks from private prep schools.

Lacrosse will not change to age as long as it gives an advantage to these prep school holdbacks. Funny thing is that they all teach Character education, yet many of their children play down. Hardly good character

Crybaby... try being a man for once in your life, you little weasel.

Hilarious. Person asked a question, Got a realistic answer and what does the holdback apologist revert to, no actual rebuttal, just name calling. LOL.

We get it, your son just cant play on age, Or you like him being the best player no matter what younger age he plays against. He needs that extra boost in youth others his same age dont get. Get over yourself, accept what you do and accept that it is wrong on so many levels.

With remarks like that, Might want to look in mirror and see if you can change that man who is void of character in the lacrosse world

If your son played girls the same age, I think the competition would be better than playing him down an age against boys. Again we are talking youth. So if your afraid to have him play his age against boys, maybe before you drop him an age, have him stay the same age against girl competition.

You are correct about the prep school influence but what you are missing is that the Prep school $$$ gets and extra year of tuition out of every holdback parent. Pretty smart on the part of the school. Lacrosse does have age guidelines for US Lacrosse sanctioned events. Play on a club that supports this and you will not face holdbacks. There is a lacrosse world that is age based it is just not the same level as the NLF

Lacrosse is and historically has been a rich kids sport. Wealthy parents have also historically held their kids back. Usually not for lacrosse, but for social reasons. You’ll notice the best schools in lacrosse are those well off districts and private schools. It’s the same reason there is a lack of diversity in the game. Until it becomes a blue collar game, which it won’t due to club lacrosse which is really the biggest cancer in the game, nothing changes.

Most people outside of prep schools never heard of prefirst/holdbacks. Frankly until about 7/8 years ago it wasnt a problem or issue. All youth was by age and then you had High School teams by grade. Even the best youth teams were U13AA and U15AA. Some of those youth teams in Balt were full of future D1 players.

What set off all this playing down issue was the onset of Early Recruiting and explosion of Club teams. 8/9th graders were being looked at and recruited. The call was out...Grade was needed for recruiters !! The prep school players and their parents had no trouble jumping right in there to get an advantage...... and the rest is history. Once ER left us, unfortunately the grade based didnt,

I know full well how this went as I had a none holdback private school son competing against these players.Lucky he was athletic and grew. I saw so many players go to wayside as they werent held back. It didnt take long for anyone to learn, Hold them back, and that is why you have so many more now than years ago.

A special thanks should go to Howard County Recreation Department. They should forever be in the Hall of Shame for youth sports. They started the grade based lacrosse league in MD while all over sports in their county were age based and still are. notIntelligent MYLA supported this grade based league. What stunads. Immediately Crabs went grade based along with others who started grade based clubs. MYLA went down in numbers and real A was gone. Years later I saw one of the guys in charge of lacrosse for Howard County had a heldback son competing out on the field against my son.. Didnt take much to put two and two together.

And now, you know the rest of the story !

LOL Stay Salty My Friend

I don't know about what everybody else did but my son is 2022 and most of the kids he goes to school are a year older then him or more! Being a only child we hadn't been through the process like the other parents that had older kids but we started hearing around second grade that a lot of parents had held thei kid back to give their kid a advantage with everything!

Nothing wrong giving them an advantage academically, socially. Giving them an advantage on a lacrosse field because they are 7 and the other kids are 5 and 6, that’s pathetic. Beyond pathetic. I don’t even have a word for it.

LOL, 55 pages of boo hoo hooing. My son has been beaten mercilessly by holdbacks, beaten teams by a lot with holdbacks and played/plays with holdbacks and the one thing I walk away caring about. Is how my son played!!! You win, you lose and you learn that life is not fair in everything you do. Grow a set and face adversity. Is it fair that a company owners son who can't do basic math sits on a Board of Directors. Learn early and often how to overcome adversity and you will be much better suited then complaining about it. Or go live in The CHOP

My 3 kids play their age. The pathetic comment is towards the parents who hold their kids back in youth sports. My oldest son is really, really good on age. If I hold him back in Sept, he will completely and unfairly dominate the younger kids. That’s not boo who. That is an absolute fact. He would score 8 goals a game. If you can’t comprehend what is being said after 55 pages. There is nothing more to say. I agree with the life isn’t fair, adversity etc. I’m talking about it the other way around. If I held him back, I would be pathetic. I can’t explain it any further. I’ll try one more time in case you still can’t grasp the point. My oldest son is a top player on age. If I hold him back in sept, he will completely and unfairly dominate the younger kids. If I did this, I’d be pathetic. Please have someone comprehend this point to you if you don’t understand.

I am struggling to understand what you mean.... You are in favor of holding your son back?

The sooner you understand life is never fair, even inside your little lax bubble, the better your kid will be. It's not just on the lacrosse field, life is not fair everywhere. But hey, that's why all kids get a trophy now, because parents can't handle adversity. Not the kids.

55 pages and years of crying....it's NEVER changing. Not ever.

If you are joking that you don’t understand I’d say that’s funny. Truth is I don’t think your joking.

It’s the parents who hold their kids back that try to avoid the adversity of competition. Playing against older kids is adversity. Having an older kid play down is the opposite of adversity. It’s weak parents raising a kid who will also be weak.

The sooner holdback parents understand that their child one day will know that they will always carry the holdback status , maybe they will see life outside the lacrosse bubble too. Yes, life isnt fair, never has been. And many people who take advantage others consider less than fair in life succeed, But respect is always earned and admired done the right way, not taking an advantage of the system .

That's cute. Now back to the real world where it is dog eat dog. Save your morals for choir practice

Love seeing all the 2021 hold back daddies scratching now that the summer recruiting season is over!! Karma, lol

Speaking of dogs, you sound like that little annoying Chiwawa. Playing your older son down, lol. The Chiwawa sounds tough against smaller dogs. When they see bigger dogs, they run and hide. Let your son run and hide from kids his own age, soon he will be an adult Chiwawa like you.

It's not the 2021's it's the 2022's that was the year when the parents read the famous doctor books that said if you keep them back they will be more mature and do better in school!

It’s Chihuahua by the way.

And the doctors were 100% right.

Ty Zanders listed his top 10 '22 on Inside Lacrosse. of the 10, 1 was born in 04, 8 in 03, and 1 in 02.. depending on your state, at least 6 are holdbacks.. in NY 2 total are on age..

https://www.insidelacrosse.com/article/recruiting-il-s-top-10-juniors-in-the-class-of-2022/56818

They should allow HS kids to reclass without penalty for the simply reason college rosters are now full of 5th year students and grad students.

If you do that then you will start seeing double holdbacks. When would it end?

It’s clear that holding back is helpful for recruiting. I have no problem with it. Why not give your child every advantage possible

Holding back in and of itself is not helpful for recruiting. The D1 coaches just want their players to be 20-23 for their four years and not 18-21. They don’t care how this is accomplished. D1 hockey coaches want the same thing. Yet youth hockey is played by birth year. A birth year system at the youth level is not inconsistent with what lacrosse D1 coaches want.

One of those supposedly guilty clubs you mentioned, my son plays for! You exaggerate the age gap. There are no 16 year olds vs 13 year olds. I’ve seen one year difference. 14 vs 13 and that’s the most. Besides when they get to high schools you cannot play past 19. Also when your correct age kid verses a kid a year older it makes your kid a better player for his future, thx to that reclass kid and to boot its on their dime not yours. So it’s known my kid is not reclassed and he does great vs the kids that got reclassified and even better bc of this vs the kids that are his age. It’s bc he’s an athlete and determined to beat that older kid to prove to them that he has it. So thx to these reclassified kids my kid got even better, again on their parents dime. So don’t wine about cheating. If your kids an athlete it won’t bother him. The people that this bothers is the ones that they want live their athletic years they didn’t have through their kids and the kid probably don’t want to be there or just there to be with friends which is fine. Or just to say their on a club team to help them towards a better school. Which is also fine. If he’s a athlete he will be fine playing an older kid and he will not care. Only bothers the parent. You’re kid will catch up and get better! Again I did not reclass my kid and don’t plan on it.

unfortunately this is a short sighted and narrow minded perspective essentially saying if your kid is good then it doesn't matter and that only parents are bothered by this. First there are plenty of players who are 2, or even 3 years difference (shocking) but yes most are 1 year difference. But in the end, does anyone really applaud the 26 year college lacrosse player; I actually pity these players that haven't gotten on with the rest of their lives. People use Stetson Bennett as a role model. Good for Stetson Bennett but football is a different animal and his outcome of winning the championship really is outlier in terms of outcome.

Second, this is not about most the parents crying for the kid (though I'm sure it is for a small minority); this conversation is what is good for the sport and the reality is continually holding back your kid for an athletic advantage is simply just not good for the overall health of the sport, This is one of the reasons why lacrosse will never extend beyond a niche sport but as lacrosse continues to go down this rabbit hole, it essentially caters to a very small minority of the US population with the remaining completely disinterested in the sport. There are equity and access issues galore with holdbacks and damages the overall health

The paradox is that to succeed at the top level (high D1) you need to be a holdback. These are the only successes we see. What we don't see is the rest of the iceberg of the holdbacks who end up at some lower level D1, D2 or D3 school and their delayed year was really all for naught (though many parents will justify how good it was for them). But my feeling is that this vicious circle needs to end. A level playing field is good for the sport from a macro-perspective and the overall health.

But if this tl;dr - real athletes play up, not down. My non-holdback son played up until 8th grade and I feel like benefitted him immensely. I could not even imagine him playing down and how much he would have dominated. Reclassing is driven by college coaches and club lacrosse who are not invested in the overall growth of the sport.

Parent who hold their kids back are the ultimate betas because they know they passed along weak genes and want to give their kids every advantage that they couldn’t pass along.

I've yet to see a college roster bio that says.. "Holdback" Just saying...

No but all the kids are talking [Censored] about them.