I posted here when US Lacrosse published their Golden Stick guidelines for youth lacrosse leagues. Among other things it endorsed single calendar year gated youth teams for club and rec. The SINGLE year teams was designed to both promote having more teams and to promote less age variance on teams (the old argument that youngest U-13s, U-11s were much less mature with two year brackets). Within 2 weeks of the US Lacrosse publishing the NPYLL league announced grade based teams for every youth age, and the following week the HoCo league announced the same. The exact wording in the NPYLL announcement was that this move was to aid recruiting and also to enable doing more teams than the old U-15, U-13, etc. system...so the great thing was supposed to be it accomodated growth in the sport so that more kids could play, fewer kids would be cut from club teams and cut out and so on. To my memory the NPYLL move right on top of the USL announcement was the watershed event, and once the HoCo league added it seemed to viral out immediately across the country. But it started here less than 18 months ago.
Lacrosse parents are the underwriters of club lacrosse. It seems to me that there is a super majority of parents who have a vote to go to age based teams, but a very stubborn and determined minority who do want this for the advantages it may afford them for recruiting purposes. I doubt lacrosse parents have the moxie to go to Crabs, Madlax, et al and demand a change or else...or else just means you can leave and go try to start a parent league somewhere else and the club guys know nobody is that passionate and has the time to administer new leagues and all this involves.
I wrote to US Lacrosse and they shared my indignation, but little else. It seems nobody really listens to or respects them so any remedy would need to come from elsewhere. The NCAA coaches don't really want any involvement in administering or even taking a position on how club lacrosse works.
Quite honestly the best hope now is the women's NCAA coaches rule proposal goes into effect stating no recruiting or contact at all until September 1st of junior year for boys and girls. That would greatly diminish if not eliminate early recruiting, and let's face it that early recruiting is the only reason for the grades gamesmanship for advantage in the middle school and early high school ages. Kids would still reclassify a lot for the simple reason to be older and more mature for their grade on the sporting fields. But the instances of looking fabulous as a 15 year old 8th grader blowing up 13 year olds would be greatly discounted for recruiting purposes. Of course the same situation happens when they are older juniors, but I would argue that a 18 year old versus a 16 year old or a 19 year old versus a 17 year old in the upperclass years while still being an advantage will be less of one. If recruiting can't start until fall of junior year, positioning for that can happen but the indignation of the permanent earlier inequities such as "that kid cheating and holding back, getting a scholarship over my kid" stuff is moot for all parties. Hopefull that rule happens and club lacrosse takes a logical step to age based teams as a response. I don't see any other way it happens. | 
