My son was 12 when he tried out for the freshman high school team ( this was the June tryout for summer league). He was put ahead a year for academics, and he is also a summer baby resulting in him being even younger than his classmates. When he was cut the coach told him he was too small. The coach was right, at the time he still had a little boy‘s body and he shouldn’t have been on a team with mostly 14 and 15 yr olds. That year he shot up and started to fill out, but in the mean time he joined the cross country team and discovered he had a talent for that. He was of course disappointed when he didn’t make the soccer team, but I could truthfully tell him no 12 year old had made the team. Interestingly several of the top runners on the cross country team should normally have been in the grade ahead, but watching them over a couple years I concluded they would have been outstanding runners even in their normal grade. Being held back a year may have gotten them noticed earlier, but these boys had abilities that that went beyond the advantage of their age.