All travel lax teams are grade based. The rule changed to implement this a few years ago.

You should seek out the US Lacrosse representative or chapter for your area. They will spell out the differences between age vs class based teams. Typically, the class based teams are better than what you would think are their comparative team in age based. This is because the class based teams will almost always have a number of kids like yours. The class based teams will have a number of kids who are older than the age cutoff used by US Lacrosse. This leads to a physical and emotional advantage on the field. Also, US Lacrosse does not sanction teams to participate in their tournaments with kids over the age limit. If one child is older than the age cutoff, the team must play in the older division. If the club only lists graduation years, than the team will most likely have more than a few kids with ages like yours and the tournaments and leagues they play in will mostly be based on graduation years.

Graduation year

My son wants to play travel but he is old for his grade. He has a learning disability and ESL so we held him back in K and he was already old. He's not huge or anything. He seems about the same size as his classmates but he enjoys the sport and wants to play more. Should he try out for his graduation year or his U- whatever year? The club has graduation years listed for the tryouts, but will he be too old if they play in a U-whatever tournament because that was the case with rec and he had to play with the other grade. And I don't want to email the club and bother them so thanks for answering if you know. This is for 2027-2028 grad years.