I have a rising junior with a late birthday - he will turn 16 at the end of November. He would like to play in college and we are reading and trying to take all of the great advice on this site. He recently attended tryouts for a local team that has tryouts for a fall and summer team (this team does not hold separate tryouts). When we learned about it, it was billed as a 17U team but they told us that they decided to go 16U instead. It sounds like a good competitive team that will be playing in competitive tournaments next summer, but I guess the majority of the team and its competition will not be in the same school year as my son.
In your opinion, does this matter with respect to his goal of playing in college? I know he needs to start getting in touch with schools this fall and doing a number of other things to help his chances - one thing I've read is for him to let coaches know where he will be playing during summer season so they have an opportunity to see him - will they be less interested in coming to see him if it is at a 16U tournament versus 17U?
