Dear Summer Ponies,

While my older teams still have about a month left of tournaments and practices, I am working on fall and I was able to open the Ponies registration today (and I see that 5 of you have already registered!).  As always, my spots are limited in the Ponies program so while, I have a deadline to register as August 15th, it is usually full by that date.  

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AND SEE MORE INFORMATION

Please note that all of the dates I have on the welcome page of the registration are still for last year.  I don't have all of the new tournament dates yet for fall/summer.  I can tell you that the practice schedule has remained fairly similar in the fall for the Ponies.  The only differences are a few unknown Jesuit dates like Homecoming that rotate.  I will not have final dates from Jesuit/Tournaments until the end of July.  

Just like last season, our youngest Ponies which will be brand new, the 2035 group will only sign up by semester and the other groups, the 2034 and 2033 will sign up for the year.  

Age Based Play?

We wanted to address the age based play model that USL announced on May 24th for 2029's and down.  Obviously this announcement caused reactions across the country from lacrosse families both positive and negative.  As for Iron Horse, we have all played other teams where the kids are bigger and some teams are mostly hold backs.  We think we have far less holdbacks than other organizations so seemingly we would benefit as a whole with this adaptation.  

We felt like the decision for IH Dallas moving forward lie with what our local tournament operators were going to do with their brackets.  Were they going to go age based immediately, or were they going to stick with grad year?  

Our youth teams which are the teams that would be affected by changing how we form teams mainly do the local events so it seemed like a prudent decision to begin our research with the local tournament operators.  The day after the announcement was made, we began calling, emailing and texting all of the local tournament operators to see how they were going to form their divisions for the upcoming year.  After checking in with the local tournament operators, we then began contacting other tournament operators that we usually consider for our travel events.  

Findings?  We have not come across an event yet that we normally attend at the youth level that are switching to age based bracketing for this upcoming year in these age groups 2029 and down which was the proposal made by USL and the NLF.  All tournament operators we spoke to said they would re-evaluate after this upcoming year.  It’s not because they don’t think it’s a good idea or necessary, it’s just the haste in which the turnaround was to occur (essentially 3 months).  

Here are some of the findings of our research and all of these tournaments are remaining grad year based:

Victory Events:  Texas Draw and Cowboy Cup locally; also we have traveled to Liberty Rising (MD) and Summer Slam (PA)

NXT:  Wildcard locally and we have traveled to NXT Cup (PA)

Aloha:  Texas 2 Step locally and have traveled to Beach Lax Festival (MD)

3D/Denver Shootout:  Remaining grad year based for 2024.  2028 and Mongoose just attended.

Adrenaline:  All events are remaining grad year based.  Texas Thrive is in fall in Round Rock locally.  Since they are mainly a west coast tournament operator, we do a lot of their travel events.  Park City that the 29’s just attended, the company just bought Vail in which the 2028 and Mongoose attended.  

Legends:  All events are remaining grad year based.  Last year our youth teams attended the Legends Eastern Invitational in Richmond/Williamsburg

Summit Lacrosse:  All events remaining grad year based.  We have done their Lake Tahoe event a few times.  They also operate Lake Placid and several east coast events.  

Lonestar Shootout:  A local event that is locally operated has sent out an email announcement that they will remain grad year based.  

How will Iron Horse Dallas form their teams for this upcoming year?  We are going to stick with grad year based teams for this upcoming year and make sure we pick our travel event for 2031-2029 with an event/organizer that is also sticking with grad year based play.  

New Fields Update

The new complex is coming along nicely.  While it was not originally scheduled to be open until January 2024, it was ahead of schedule for a while to be complete by September and has now been pushed back to a completion date of end of October due to some city of Dallas permitting delays with the turf fields.  The parking lot has been closed a lot lately for painting so if you are still coming up to Jesuit they are trying to always have the side entrance near the left field baseball outfield under the visitor side stadium bleachers entrance open.  

Excited to have 2 new turf fields to play with in the schedule moving forward.  

Regards,

Tiffany Surran