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Here's What You Need to Know About the New US Lacrosse Rules

By Bryan Hopper, 10/03/16, 2:00PM EDT

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Smaller Fields and and Games for Youth, New Age Groupings

Over the last six months, US Lacrosse has published important changes to it's teaching philosophy. The changes address a few major flaws in the current system. Read on to find out what the rule changes are, and what they mean for you.


New Age Groups

Last March, US Lacrosse announced a very different way of segmenting youth lacrosse age groups. As part of their overhaul of US Lacrosse's player development program, they went back and examined the age groupings for youth lacrosse. This was done in light of the sport growing and recruiting starting younger and younger. They also wanted to make the sport safer and ensure that players were on the field with other players close to them in age.

3 Major Takeaways
 

1) Age groups are determined based on a calendar that starts on September 1st (instead of January) and ends August 31st. 

2) At the youth level, there are now age groups for every single age, e.g. 14U, 13U. Previously it was every two years: u15 u13 u11 etc. 

3) At the high school level (also known as scholastic) they are attempting to keep players from playing down after re-classing.

What it Means for You

As a parent, the new rules at the youth level are aimed at making the game safer. Instead of having your song play against a player who is potentially 2 years older than them (think an older 14 year old playing against a young 13 year old), they will be playing against a player who can at maximum be 12 months older than them. This is the aim of the new rules, but there is the exception that divisions can include two age groups e.g. 7U/8U. 

Your local town program will most likely implement these segmentations this year or next year. In larger, more established town programs, this will help managers and coaches by splitting up every grade and making teams more manageable. In developing programs where age groups are combined and kids play up, it will give these programs the framework and blueprint as they grow and add more players at every age group. Since the teams are smaller (4 v 4, 7 v 7) town programs wont need as many players per team to play.

At the club level, not much change is expected until tournament providers start delineating divisions on age instead of high school graduation years. We do not see this happening until potentially summer of 2018, nor have we heard anything from tournament providers about this. As far as college recruiting goes, this will not have much effect on things, college coaches still want to know when a player will be graduating and available for them.


New Rules for Youth - A Long Time Coming!

The most important change that was announced by US Lacrosse was a sweeping change of the rules for youth lacrosse. Finally, like other sports, lacrosse has been scaled down for younger players.

The new rules emphasize what we here at Blue Star had already incorporated into our training model - SMALLER FIELDS AND MORE TOUCHES!

The most important thing a player can do at the youth level is develop his skills and learn in a safe environment. By making fields, goals and team sizes dramatically smaller, US Lacrosse has finally scaled down lacrosse for younger players. If you examine every other sport, they are scaled at every age level. Look at how soccer has different goals sizes for every age group, basketball has lower rims for every age group, baseball has t-ball, little league etc. 

These rule changes are perhaps a slight nod to the Canadian method of developing lacrosse players by focusing on stick-work and skills in smaller fields (or boxes). It could also be that this change was a long time in the making as almost all other sports have scaled versions at the youth level.

New Rules Guidlines
Age Players Field Size Equipment Goal Size
6U 3 v 3 (no goalie) 60 yds x 35 yds Sticks only, soft ball 3ft x 3ft
8U 4 v 4 (no goalie) 60 yds x 35 yds Full equipment, soft ball 3 ft x 3ft
10U 6 v 6 (or 5 v 5 w/goalie) 60 yds x 35 yds Full equipment

6 ft x 6 ft

12U 7 v 7 or 10 v 10 60x35 or full size Full equipment 6 ft x 6ft
14U 10 v 10 Full Size Full equipment 6 ft x 6 ft

What it Means for You

From a lacrosse development standpoint, it means that your skills are going to develop at a faster rate than before. Stickwork is going to improve dramatically as players are in a smaller space and get more touches! These dramatic new rules for youth lacrosse are a major step in the right direction. 

From a club standpoint, these new rules won't change the way we train our players - in fact we have always trained our youth players in small-field setting through the skills sessions, fall clinic league and box lacrosse. As far as your local town programs go, these rules do not go into effect until next September so don't expect any changes this spring. From a club standpoint, until the rules take effect next fall, tournaments will still be played according to the old rules (10v 10 full field). Like the age segmentation the change ultimately lies with tournament providers. 


The Bottom Line

These new changes, especially the rules, are a major step in the right direction by US Lacrosse. The United States needs to be a leader in lacrosse development, and in order to do so, it needs to have the right model in place to develop young athletes. It starts with scaling down the sport and ensuring that players are grouped in the right ages.

At the club level, nothing will change until tournaments start changing their rules. Other than that we will continue to train and develop our players to the best of our ability!

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