Jesuit CA Suspicious Ages

Oh no someone is 4 months older than me! It's not fair!!!

Wut? I'm simply stating the facts. Each grade has a certain age bracket. The kids who take advantage of that and go beyond that bracket are the ones that don't make it fair.

Maybe it happens in sports like basketball or football, but that it happens in distance running is improbable. How would parents even know their kid have potential for the sport or even care enough to hold him back. Even if a kid is a year older, the chances of receiving a scholarship are less than 1% and not much better than a “normal” aged kid. A lot of the best runners have a breakout season by their junior year, so the extra year isn’t necessary most cases.

That someone would hold their son back to have a better chance of making the varsity as a freshman, is absurd.

The kids don't have anything to do with it. Their parents did it. What do the kids do about it? Should they quit because you don't like their birthday?

Athletic.net had Cade Flatt's age as 20 in high school. Oh...wait a minute.

Yep

Okay, same difference. Never said anything about how they should "quit," so stop putting words in my mouth. The parents are obviously the issue.

That doesn't change the fact that is is unfair. Can you get that in your head?

Do you get it in your head that you aren't changing anything? Being grumpy and bitter about it and anonymously whining all the time on every thread does nothing to change it.

Yes some athletes will be faster than you. Jesuit's "suspicious ages" aren't even Seniors. If they did have boys that were "too old" for High School it wouldn't be right now and they are still one of the best teams in the country and all of High School age.

Talking about it and not tolerating it is the first step to a potential change. It's good to know that there are at least some people who can see and talk about the unfairness behind it - it's better than just not doing anything at all. I don't understand why you have an issue with that.

And again, I don't know why you're accusing me of being jealous or suspicious. It's literally just how it works.

I would have agreed with this based on my childhood. But as a parent, at least in this area, it is way more common than you would think. People do this for sports reasons, but they also just do it so their kid will be the biggest, oldest, most physically mature kid in their class from a social and academic perspective.

Looking at sports specifically, it's very common in football around here. For the kids headed to the NFL it won't matter. But for the other top kids who need a little boost to get into the starting lineup, it's a gamechanger. I have a buddy who was a D1 quarterback and his son has been working with a QB coach since 4th grade. These kids all know who is going to what high school and where they fall on the depth chart from a young age. People will move to different locations (schools) in order to make a team.

I doubt that it happens that much for cross country specifically. But private school families spend a lot of resources to give their kids an edge and many of they may have been held back in kindergarten for an academic edge or maybe their parents thought they were going to be football players. So it could be baked in even though it wasn't specifically for cross country.

I don't know these kids or this school so I'm not saying any of this applies to them. But I will say that this is way more common that you might think.

Wrong. And they go by age at the end of the year in most cases instwad of actual age suring the achool year. They are a lazy disgrace.
If you want to look at age cheating, simply look at any African junior team in any sport. The cheating was so bad that in soccer an MRI (wrist) test came into use. Track needs to so the same thing. Look it up, the examples of juniors on African and Arab teams that turned out to be ages 25 - 35 are hilarious, never mind the juniors who were actually 20 - 25.

OK you're big on this thread and calling them out, then specifically which of these would you consider an age cheat from Jesuit?

Alberts October 2008 = 16 year old Sophomore
Abbott October 2007 = 17 year old Junior
Jakary November 2007 = 17 year old Junior
Ogilvie August 2008 = 16 year old Sophomore

I remember Izaiah Steury (2022 hs grad) was 20 during his senior HS track season and he was ineligible to compete that season.

You’re right. Lota of amusing articles re African age cheats - even CNN ran one, bet they wouldn’t today:

cnn.com

Cameroon ejected 32 players for failing age tests for a soccer tournament. How Samuel Eto’o is dealing with ‘age cheating’ | CNN

Alasdair Howorth

It’s been a problem for the ages but Cameroonian soccer great Samuel Eto’o appears determined to stamp it out.

Open link

I'm not calling them an age cheat. But if you're getting technical I think some of these kids were held back a year. The birthday cutoff in CA was Dec 2 up until 2010. 2012 it changed to Nov 1. 2013 Oct 1 and 2014 Sept 1. The August 08 birthday is held back a year even by today's Sept 1 date. I think I'm doing the math properly but someone could double check.

Commenting on age on this particular thread IS calling them an age cheat since this whole thread is about that. But OK let's take Ogilvie, he's less than a month too old by your calculations. Is this something that should be a big deal? Don't we have bigger problems then calling out a sophomore who isn't even competing due to injury I believe an "age cheat"?

Wow…Been a while since I heard the game freeze tag

This is absurd. Being a year or two older in high school is patently unfair. This is why the theme isn’t going away. Any sane person agrees

99% of the world agrees with you. And the other 1% is delusional