And does your child’s JV team travel or just the V team?

Where is your kid's IAC lacrosse team spending spring break?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Does that mean NO age restrictions? Am thinking about youth lax - not HS where freshman play against older kids on varsity

The issue with most of the people screaming holdback is they conflate the eligibility rules of USL with class based tournaments, leagues and teams. USL has a 9/1 cutoff for age based teams and class based teams do not. If a kid wants to be eligible for senior year sports in high school, they need to be no older than 19 on the first day of school.

You don't say what age your kid is. As an example and for 4th grade teams, The USL start date for participation is a birthday of 9/1/2008. Anything before that and the kid needs to play in the older age division. BUT for class based and to keep their senior year sports eligibility, the kid can be born from 9/1/2007 and up.

For class based teams in the DC area, the rosters have more than a few kids playing born before 9/1/2008 and there will be kids born in 2007. These teams play in tougher leagues and tournaments. The USL age based teams play to much lesser competition.

And to the NYers dismay, their own high school federations have the same eligibility rules and they don't want to believe it but earlier born kids are on their rosters too.

Very informative - thanks for clarifying this. Sounds like travel teams are conveniently using US Education grade level model to allow the 19 yo player to play an extra year in high school - I would be okay w/ allowing just 19 yo player to play (or maybe that's the disincentive to graduate late) without skewing play for the younger kids. Only 6% of kids are delayed entrants to kindergarten and only 4% of all students repeat a grade between 1st and 3rd so unless travel lacrosse is a huge magnet for arrested development, there's shouldn't be this many holdbacks - maybe 1 per team?

If you don't want kids to skew older you can play on USL rules teams and in leagues and there are plenty but the competition is not as good and the rules are different. The problem there is those teams usually have a 2 year gap in teams meaning u13, u11, u9 so the younger kids are playing against kids almost 2 years older anyway, just like the travel club teams. If you are lucky enough to find a club with enough numbers to go u13, u12, u11; then other clubs will complain when they play against yours saying your kids are too old or you will complain when your u12's are playing against a u13 team.

The real solution is to go to a birth date change of team but no one wants to go through the hassle and there is no incentive to change. This would entail a kid's playing status changing on their actual birthday. If a kid is 10 and turns 11, they move up to the next age group. In this manner, all kids will be the youngest and progress to the oldest in their group. I've heard a lot of parents complain this will break up team unity and their scheduling. To me, that's nonsense when talking about youth sports and how much schedules are juggled anyway.

According to a study done in 2010, it's a little higher at 9% and areas of higher wealth it's even higher due to a number of factors.
Yes, if a kid is allowed to play in high school then it follows they can play recreationally/club. It's not the clubs leading but following the lead set by US Education. And your stats on 1 per team might be closer in high participation sports like the big 3 and soccer but lacrosse participation rates are much lower and there are far fewer clubs in this sport comparatively. Add in the physicality factor of the sport and you have many factors leading to higher presence of older kids on select team rosters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Does that mean NO age restrictions? Am thinking about youth lax - not HS where freshman play against older kids on varsity

The issue with most of the people screaming holdback is they conflate the eligibility rules of USL with class based tournaments, leagues and teams. USL has a 9/1 cutoff for age based teams and class based teams do not. If a kid wants to be eligible for senior year sports in high school, they need to be no older than 19 on the first day of school.

You don't say what age your kid is. As an example and for 4th grade teams, The USL start date for participation is a birthday of 9/1/2008. Anything before that and the kid needs to play in the older age division. BUT for class based and to keep their senior year sports eligibility, the kid can be born from 9/1/2007 and up.

For class based teams in the DC area, the rosters have more than a few kids playing born before 9/1/2008 and there will be kids born in 2007. These teams play in tougher leagues and tournaments. The USL age based teams play to much lesser competition.

And to the NYers dismay, their own high school federations have the same eligibility rules and they don't want to believe it but earlier born kids are on their rosters too.

Very informative - thanks for clarifying this. Sounds like travel teams are conveniently using US Education grade level model to allow the 19 yo player to play an extra year in high school - I would be okay w/ allowing just 19 yo player to play (or maybe that's the disincentive to graduate late) without skewing play for the younger kids. Only 6% of kids are delayed entrants to kindergarten and only 4% of all students repeat a grade between 1st and 3rd so unless travel lacrosse is a huge magnet for arrested development, there's shouldn't be this many holdbacks - maybe 1 per team?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Does that mean NO age restrictions? Am thinking about youth lax - not HS where freshman play against older kids on varsity

The issue with most of the people screaming holdback is they conflate the eligibility rules of USL with class based tournaments, leagues and teams. USL has a 9/1 cutoff for age based teams and class based teams do not. If a kid wants to be eligible for senior year sports in high school, they need to be no older than 19 on the first day of school.

You don't say what age your kid is. As an example and for 4th grade teams, The USL start date for participation is a birthday of 9/1/2008. Anything before that and the kid needs to play in the older age division. BUT for class based and to keep their senior year sports eligibility, the kid can be born from 9/1/2007 and up.

For class based teams in the DC area, the rosters have more than a few kids playing born before 9/1/2008 and there will be kids born in 2007. These teams play in tougher leagues and tournaments. The USL age based teams play to much lesser competition.

And to the NYers dismay, their own high school federations have the same eligibility rules and they don't want to believe it but earlier born kids are on their rosters too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Does that mean NO age restrictions? Am thinking about youth lax - not HS where freshman play against older kids on varsity

The top youth lacrosse tournaments in the hotbed areas are grade based, even for kids in the 2nd and 3rd grades. Generally speaking, there are no age restrictions - the kids play on teams based upon their grade in school. There are tournaments in non-hotbed areas and tournaments run by U.S. Lacrosse that have age restrictions, but around here those would not be considered "top" tournaments with the best club teams.

Anonymous wrote:All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Does that mean NO age restrictions? Am thinking about youth lax - not HS where freshman play against older kids on varsity

All top lacrosse tournaments are now grade base not age base.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know DCE 2021s should have at least a few players getting serious playing time on varsity rosters this year.

What about BW, VLC, Crabs, Madlax and NL - any sense yet on whether any 2021s will be getting significant playing time on varsity teams this year?

If it's true that DCE 2021 is largely holdbacks - that would make them the same age at HS juniors and it would follow that they would have a lot of playing time - though you would figure it would be more than a few unless every varsity team is stacked w/ senior talent - or junior and senior level holdbacks which might explain why only a few 2021 travel kids get playing time.

Crabs 2021 (and Baltimore in general) have large numbers of holdbacks...The DCE 2021 team is on age as these players have been to a number of age based tourneys (not grade based) where a number of other clubs did not attend due to their holdbacks (Crabs, Annapolis Hawks, Legacy Long Island to name a few).

There appear to be conflicting reports about holdbacks on DCE 2021. Holdbacks playing in age based tourneys isn't unheard of - it's up to the tourny org to enforce age reqs, they will look the other way, etc.. How many holdbacks does DCE 2021 have - none or less than the Crabs and Hawks?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know DCE 2021s should have at least a few players getting serious playing time on varsity rosters this year.

What about BW, VLC, Crabs, Madlax and NL - any sense yet on whether any 2021s will be getting significant playing time on varsity teams this year?

If it's true that DCE 2021 is largely holdbacks - that would make them the same age at HS juniors and it would follow that they would have a lot of playing time - though you would figure it would be more than a few unless every varsity team is stacked w/ senior talent - or junior and senior level holdbacks which might explain why only a few 2021 travel kids get playing time.

Crabs 2021 (and Baltimore in general) have large numbers of holdbacks...The DCE 2021 team is on age as these players have been to a number of age based tourneys (not grade based) where a number of other clubs did not attend due to their holdbacks (Crabs, Annapolis Hawks, Legacy Long Island to name a few).

Bullis has the strongest 2019 in the area by a wide margin.

I wouldn’t call any of their 2019 committed players “weak”

The combination of the graduated stud-filled 2018 class, along with a relatively weak 2019 class, should result in a season in which 2020 (juniors) and 2021 (sophs) players grab the limelight.

Given the departure of the truly stellar 2018 class, expect to see more than a sprinkling of sophomores getting significant playing time across the board not just at EHS and St Albans but also for Landon, SSA and Prep.

Anonymous wrote:I know DCE 2021s should have at least a few players getting serious playing time on varsity rosters this year.

What about BW, VLC, Crabs, Madlax and NL - any sense yet on whether any 2021s will be getting significant playing time on varsity teams this year?

If it's true that DCE 2021 is largely holdbacks - that would make them the same age at HS juniors and it would follow that they would have a lot of playing time - though you would figure it would be more than a few unless every varsity team is stacked w/ senior talent - or junior and senior level holdbacks which might explain why only a few 2021 travel kids get playing time.