BOTC - US Lacrosse Community Forum Forums MID-ATLANTIC LACROSSE MARYLAND FORUM Holdbacks

Hmmm…Cole Herbert from CHC…never saw a non-athletic coward when he is on the field for CHC or UNC. That’s just one example out of a couple hundred of how ludicrous your statement is.

In tournaments, it's not even (always) holdbacks. One team from VA, Norfolk Collegiate (aka "757 select") enters into tournaments with wishy washy age/grade language on purpose. In fact the language for the upcoming Madlax tournament, "If your roster is a mix of more than 1 graduating year, register your team for the graduating year where *the majority of players are* "

In the case of 757 Select, that meant that last summer at a tourney, according to their parents on the sidelines, the 2027 team was primarily 2027s with some 2026s and 2025s mixed in (to make it worse, they played in a combined 2027-2028 bracket against 2028-29 teams). And if you think it's legit to have 14 year olds playing against 10 year olds, OK then. Those 14 year olds' parents were super proud of their championship lol. Way to beat the 5th graders!

Their 2026 team was primarily 2026s with some 2025s and 2024s!

Their 2028 team was primarily 2028s but almost half 2027s.

When I saw this fall's Madlax tourney liability waiver language, "Graduation age of the majority of your team" I screenshot it and sent it to some other dads for the LOLz and said, "Hey it's for those 757 guys!" Somebody texted back.........."Sure is......they registered for this tournament!" So in their case, they're out there LOOKING for opportunities to dodge graduation year requirements with their squads.

If you asked their coaches, I'm sure they would say, "we don't have holdbacks in southern VA, this is how we equalize the playing field against all the MD teams with holdbacks."

This is where the holdback situation is going if it's not addressed. CA and TX clubs, as they become a "market force" for the tournament economy, are not going to sit by and take it, flying up to MD and NJ to play kids consistently 1-2 years older than theirs.

Absolutely! It is time for US Lacrosse to step up!! Address the “holdback” situation and change the youth lacrosse rules to age based! It is getting totally out of control now. Everyone running with their own rules out there and you get 13 yr olds playing 10 yr. Olds! It’s totally Ridiculous!!! And, only getting worse!

Sure. Every kid that holds back is the next Cole Herbert. Just like every kid that swings a decent golf club at age 4 is the next Tiger Woods.

Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation and causation are often confused because the human mind likes to find patterns even when they DO NOT exist.

I've seen it in the league for the past decade+. There are way more holdback struggles and washouts than Cole Herberts.

It's a major reality check when these holdbacks go from competing against mostly younger kids in Middle School to mostly older kids in High School. They more often than not struggle and it happens in high school.

Great argument if you are talking about when there was only 1 or 2 holdbacks in MS going into HS playing against older kids. Reality is, soon it will be the majority of kids wanting to play at a higher level will be holdbacks. More HS kids will be holdbacks as well!! It’s getting out of control.

Developing years should be aged based and the cream will rise to the top in HS. Just make it a fair playing field in the developing youth years. Give the kids a chance to develop at the same ages. Plenty sports are age based at the youth level. It’s the right way to do it!

Cole Herbert would be fine playing up. But obviously, not every kid is Cole Herbert. Last year there were 41 freshmen lacrosse players at Calvert Hall and just 13 seniors. So what, approx 70% of the lacrosse players there wash out? And a lot of them are holdbacks.

Holding your kid back is fool's gold. It's a recipe for dominating in middle school and struggling in high school, when the built-in advantage is gone.

My oldest is still young (not a hold back), but weren't kids able to commit to colleges in 8th grade not too long ago? With that now pushed back to 11th grade, I would think that this should slowly reduce holdbacks, but maybe I am wrong.

CH has a huge varsity roster. Bigger than most colleges at 53 kids. Teams usually only play about 20-24 kids in competitive games. So most of those kids don't get much playing time.

At some point the kids who are just bigger or more coordinated in MS earlier wash out. Most of them hit their peak much earlier.

Aside from the holdback BS that US Lax really needs to fix....CHC kids should consider looking at other schools so they can actually get on the field and play so they can get better. There is lots of talent on the depth chart from 20-30 that could play/start elsewhere in MIAA. This has been going on for way too many years. Parents wake up!!!

You have to make an impression as a freshman, or it's tough to climb out of the hole.
I know of at least one kid who went to CH and got buried on the depth chart early due to the opinions of a F/Soph or JV coach.
His sophomore year he didnt make JV. He had to play F/S again. He transferred to a "bottom half" team his JR year and ended up being 2nd team All Metro in the Baltimore Sun.
Forget these places with a million kids. I'm sending my kids to where they have a better chance of playing.

Where are Calvert Hall's dorms? Several kids from CO and others from Michigan, TX, SC, VA, southern MD, Pittsburgh.

You will see that a many of the holdbacks from 2022 posing at 2023s at Duke and UNC and other top programs will be bench riders most of the time they are there. It helps to have dads in the game, but it wont get you playing time.

If they had a 2027 team with 14 year olds as you say playing 2028/29 teams - who was the 2028 team playing?

These are rather hefty accusations on this team that I’ve never heard of but I’m trying to follow.

The 757 2028 team was a mix of 2027s and 2028s......and they struggled with 2028 competition. The parents seemed pretty at home with the fact that they "always travel together" and it's "always been a multiple year team." The 2028 team (2028s and 2027s) had to play their 2027 (2027+2026+2025) team due to the joined 2027-2028 brackets and the 2028 parents seemed pretty sour over it .

The 2027 parents (this is July 2021) talked about some of their kids being 13 and 14 and "the end of middle school" etc.

It's really not a "club team" per se but a way to get the school's teams together to travel and get exposure, acc to a 2027 parent I talked to. And again, I get the fact that they BELIEVE at the A/B level, they are competing with massive numbers of MD holdbacks at the middle school level, which I don't think is the case (I don't think Zingos kids planning to play at Centennial are reclassing lol). So that's their justification.........find tournaments with weak language about grad year breakouts. It's the next logical step.

I would say somewhere between 40-60% of the best players in the MIAA the last decade were holdbacks. Almost all the stars in the 2020 class were.

Well that means 40-60% of the best players are on age then right?

Outstanding reply!

If you are holding back just to play lacrosse, you are a fool. Academics is another story. If going from a public school to a private school, you will need the extra year to catch up unless you are a very high achiever in the classroom. Look at all the rockstars from the class of 2018 and 2019, most of them are no longer. The holdback arbitrage is complete. Stopped growing, stopped caring, girlfriends, realizing that there is very little lacrosse life after college, etc. I say play up, if you can compete you will probably play in college. I know about the getting hurt issue, size matters, and if you are within the middle of the bell curve, I would let my son play. He also played football and which is more dangerous playing up in lacrosse or on grade in football?

Outstanding Reply?? Years ago the best players ,,,MIAA had less holdbacks ( 40-60%) , now there are more over (75%) ??

Now, the MIAA best players are either holdbacks or born in the Sept-Dec on age Range...after that is a wasteland unless you are a holdback.

Duke had birthdays on their roster a few years ago...One kid was on age for his college class born after Jan...ONE ..

Agree with those frustrated with the amount of “older” kids playing “down” at these younger ages/grades… but I guess that’s the new normal. Regarding college rosters, a lot of PGs in that group, repeating senior year at a prep school is a lot different than repeating 8th grade, IMO.

And a word of caution for all those thinking the birth year model is the way to go.
Last I checked a kid born in January is a year older than a kid born in December of the same year. And I sure as heck don’t want to see college lax turn into what college hockey looks like (youth hockey is birth year)!

Pretty dense post here. No one cares about January vs. December or an 11 month difference in general. The issue is with the 18-24 month difference that we now see at the youth level.

You don’t fool us, holdback parent/apologist.

Birth year is 10x better than grade. Grade can be whatever you want. Birth year is one year different. Max.

My kids both attend MIAA schools and........you can blame it on covid if you want but..........the kids coming in from (AACO and BCoPS) public school this year are a disaster, behavior wise and academically. 2019 did not seem as bad and Fall 2020 was impossible to track. They will get better as they understand what the expectations are (at least the expectations for the non-standouts, let's be realistic that there are 2+ sets of rules). We have seen one girl and one boy already leave school, both going back to public school. Both were athletes with "expectations."

I don't want to go on record defending holdbacks, but the average lax kid cannot seamlessly bounce from Annapolis MS to St. Mary's, from MoCo PS to Georgetown Prep, or from Balt City / County schools to Gilman, LB etc. Those kids need (and deserve) a fair amount of support to make the transition. That could mean picking a school with a lot of academic support for athletes (BL, McD), providing your kid a ton of extra resources in 9th grade, or............sigh............holding them back.

There's a reason why the prep school alumni generally say that college was easier than HS........it's because HS is made as difficult as possible.

Ha! Says the parent of the kid with a January birth date, hence young for his grade but would be just perfect for a birth year based system! Yup, no one cares about 11 or 12 months except for the December birth day kids in a birth year system. Just like no one cares about holdbacks except for the over competitive mom or dad who's little johnny is getting his butt kicked and they think he would be the next Brennan O'Neill but all these darn hold backs are making him look bad. And most likely the kids you think are 18-24 months older, are probably only 12 months older. FYI, my kids are not holdbacks and are age appropriate for their grade. They play against teams with holdbacks, sometimes lose against them and will hopefully be better lacrosse players because of it. "We" have aspirations of them playing college lacrosse and may even hold them back in the future (i.e. later high school years, PG year) if it makes sense (they're actually good enough to play in college and holding them back gives them the opportunity to play at their school of choice and is financially achievable, etc.). But for now, I see them playing against holdbacks as a positive.

No one cares (as much) about the high school holdbacks. Or even ones that do it for real academic concerns. But doing it because "private school is hard" is a cop out. It's the parents that hold their kids back in middle school and earlier that are the pathetic losers.

If you want them to play college lacrosse, start saving gif the extra school year now! You will be holding them back !

USL is making waves.
Hearing the birth year push is going through for youth and MS lacrosse. They won’t touch hs events, but the safety issue is resonating with the lax community. Glad to hear.

To late. Top Clubs want the advantage MIAA holdbacks give them in this area.

Get over yourself. Find me one person who can say that BL is more challenging than a Baltimore Co public school AP curriculum. I’ll wait. Lol.

Lol exactly. The curriculum at many of these private schools are NOT more academically challenging that your standard public AP classes.

Got it, so the very highest public school curriculum is the same as the average at a private school.

Good to know.

Yeah like private school is gonna give your kid a better chance when applying for a job! The employer just knows you babied him!

j

^^^^ How to say "I already lost this argument" without saying "I already lost this argument." Who said anything - at all about "AP curriculum" least of all in the BOTC holdbacks Forum. How many County students are fully enrolled (>50% course load) in the "AP Curriculum" every semester? 5%? 7%?

Wonder why you didn't decide to go after Loyola's AP course load instead of BL's.

Hit me with those "Eastern Tech AP > Loyola AP" facts! (we all know Carver is a reservoir of disappointment, even compared to Eastern)

The point being made was that the MIAA schools have resources to support average and below average students in a way that BCPS is not going to , in school trailers with 36 kids per class and kids fighting in the hallways every day.

As the parent of a high school senior who transitioned from public middle school to private high school this is very true. First year grades reflect it too. Had a uCum GPA end of freshmen year of 3.03 and ended junior year w a uCum of 3.77. Freshman year was a huge transition and has taken 3 years to adjust the GPA as well. Lesson learned. Best decision we ever made though!

Going through this now.
Kid was an honors straight A public kid through elementary and middle school.
Now at a Private Catholic high school. He worked his tail off and still missed second honors by .01%.
Definitely the best decision he’s ever made.
Finally challenged academically and athletically.

100% accurate. The basic curriculum at most of these private schools is on par with the AP curriculum at public schools.

What about the AP curriculum at the private schools?

My son had *never* had a B. School prep just had not been an issue. Were led by public school admins to believe he was uniquely smart etc etc

Q1 MIAA freshman: 3 Bs.

Most MIAA schools with the exception of CHC follow a harder grading scale
92-100 A
85-91 B
78-84 C

AP classes in public school are the equivalent of regular classes in private schools.
The Honors and AP courses at private school are far beyond anything offered at public schools. And it's not even close.
My kid also NEVER got a B in public school. Our fridge was covered in those notIntelligent honors magnets.
Now at a local private MIAA school, he's working harder than ever and is a B student.
Colleges know this.
And I see it with our company's own recruiters. They know that private school students = deeper, critical thinkers.

^^^^^Facts^^^^^

The curriculum is more rigorous at schools that have to sell parents (and students) on why they should spend $30k a year.

College counselor workloads are different as well. Public school college counselors have hundreds of students in their caseload. Private school counselors have far less, which means more attention, deeper relationships with college admissions folks, etc.

YGWYPF.