Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lax is usually a rich private school kid sport, so yes, its normal.

Maybe a hundred years ago? My public school had teams in the 70s and 80s. There were leagues. I had family members get D1 scholarships after playing for their public high schools around 1980. A lot of football players also played Lacrosse. It was much bigger than soccer back in the old days for us.

Its not at our public school.

It’s much bigger than soccer at our public.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lax is usually a rich private school kid sport, so yes, its normal.

Maybe a hundred years ago? My public school had teams in the 70s and 80s. There were leagues. I had family members get D1 scholarships after playing for their public high schools around 1980. A lot of football players also played Lacrosse. It was much bigger than soccer back in the old days for us.

Its not at our public school.

Anonymous wrote:Lax is usually a rich private school kid sport, so yes, its normal.

Maybe a hundred years ago? My public school had teams in the 70s and 80s. There were leagues. I had family members get D1 scholarships after playing for their public high schools around 1980. A lot of football players also played Lacrosse. It was much bigger than soccer back in the old days for us.

Lax is usually a rich private school kid sport, so yes, its normal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Travel baseball is a May-April grouping. My son with an April 30 birthday is the youngest and plays on teams with kids with May birthdays from the previous year.

So if you have a late spring/summer birthday, your kid will be one of the older ones on the team.

Ours is National LL and August 31 cut off. Is your kid going to have issues when he gets to school/grade based teams in high and all his peers have been playing in an older and more competitive division?

PP said the kid is the youngest.

My kid (softball) will fall under what you are talking about. Early September birthday, youngest in her class, so by grade would be a year up compared to what she'd be by August 31 cut-off. That means would play a year down - if staying with age - compared to August and earlier birthday peers in class. Our options are assume she can keep up with the competition but don't actually try it, play her up, or (not happening) hold her back in school. LOL

The corner cases and endless discussion are what leads me to think there's always going to be winners and losers no matter what you pick. I can see why sports are starting to go with whatever's easier for the recruiting college coaches.

There really isn’t any good solution before high school. If you do it by grade, then kids that start school late have a huge advantage. Growing up in Texas this was the norm, and parents used to start kids as late as they could.

If you do it by age, there’s always a group that loses and wins.

Most sports try to get as close to grade level as possible while setting an actual cutoff date. It’s not perfect. And it’s crazy when your DC is playing a sport where they change the cutoffs nationally. You get to play either the same age again or jump up two ages if you have the wrong birthday.

By HS it all fixes itself. For recruiting the only thing that matters is grade. And even if you play on a younger or older team the differences are typically much smaller than at younger ages.

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid with an Aug 30 birthday who went to school on time. On top of that, she's a late bloomer for puberty and small for her age. It's a really tough combo for a kid who is naturally competitive.

Of course, a huge portion of the board will say that it's totally unfair that summer swim uses a June cutoff. She is totally unfairly advantaged.

Let her save her competitiveness for academics. She can compete against herself.

It is annoying. I don't know about lacrosse, but basketball is all over the map in terms of teams. It's very annoying. In AAU girls' basketball they are all basically fifth grade and under, guess that is when kids can make the school teams, and someone checks the birth certificates.

Though my daughter started playing *up* a year in AAU basketball. It was irritating for me my daughter is tall, so she was always matched up against older kids even on squads that were on average 3rd grade she was always playing a fourth or fifth grader. We eventually were bumped up an age bracket. Being the youngest on a squad that is older and more organized has advantages in terms of learning.

I think it's just really a problem when it comes to hard cuts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid with an Aug 30 birthday who went to school on time. On top of that, she's a late bloomer for puberty and small for her age. It's a really tough combo for a kid who is naturally competitive.

Of course, a huge portion of the board will say that it's totally unfair that summer swim uses a June cutoff. She is totally unfairly advantaged.

This again makes the point that there will always be disadvantaged kids under every cut-off.

USATF summer youth track doubles the fun: Dec 31 cutoffs AND dual age divisions. A 12 year old with a December birthday gets to race against eighth graders who turned 14 back in January.

I understand they combine age groups so the meets don’t last eight hours, but you’d think they could score them separately.

Summer swim is dual age divisions too. 9 year olds just understand unless they are truly amazing they will have to wait until the kid who turned 11 on June 2 ages out next year.