- Dec 29, 2010
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Yes, that's exactly what the goal was... to keep the teams age-appropriate and level the playing field... no more little ones on big teams.
I don't know that you can make that a hard and fast rule, though. In soccer, we do let kids "play up" rarely, but I think the difference is that when you play up, it's usually up one age group - so maybe the great 8-year-old soccer player doesn't play U9, but maybe U10 or U11.
I think the better approach would be more age groups, not less. And that maybe there needs to be a floor on the level an athlete can compete at - I think gymnastics has that already. Maybe you have to be 7 to compete on a level 3, 9 to compete on a level 4, 11 to compete on a level 5 team, etc. Not sure how it would work, but hopefully you get the basic idea.