In Race for Deals, Boys Repeat a Grade
More redo eighth grade in bid to juice their college sports earning potential
BY HARRIET RYAN
Michael Cancelleri, an entrepreneur in San Clemente, Calif., has poured tens of thousands of dollars into his son’s baseball career—club team fees, tournament travel and top-of-the-line equipment.
As high school approached, Cancelleri decided that wasn’t enough. He paid about $20,000 for his son, a straight-A student, to repeat a grade at a private middle school sports academy.
“The draw to it [was] just giving him a little bit of extra time to develop and mature,” said Cancelleri, whose 15year-old son, Carter, has grown about 3 inches since August and hopes to be a strong competitor next year as a high school freshman.
Sixty other boys are repeating a grade at the same academy, The Togethership, where coursework includes throwing mechanics, game film review and nutrition
along with traditional subjects such as Algebra and English.
Holding kids back in school for an athletic edge has existed for decades on the elite fringe of prep sports. In recent years, it has exploded in popularity for middle school boys.
Fueled by the lure of Name, Image and Likeness money in college, families are delaying high school so their sons can get bigger, stronger and more recruitable. The practice, known as “reclassifying,” “reclassing,” “bridge year” or “gap year,” is spreading fast in football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse and other sports where height and strength are key.
The demand has spawned a multimillion-dollar industry. For-profit sports academies, some focusing on a single sport, are popping up, while private schools, home-school programs and even a public school district are adding—and aggressively marketing—holdback years.
“The interest in doing it for athletic reasons has gone vertical over the last decade,” said Christopher Adams, an administrator at the Cardigan Mountain School, an $80,000-a-year New Hampshire junior boarding school where boys repeating eighth grade make up the largest cohort of new students.
The surge in academic holdbacks shows how collegiate compensation is remaking youth sports in its quasi-professional image. With millions now flowing through endorsement deals and revenue-sharing with colleges, more families see high school as a highstakes proving ground. The priority is getting on scouts’ radar as quickly as possible, and a season or two on junior varsity is unacceptable.
“I want to start in ninth grade on varsity,” Trey Brown told his parents when he was a seventh-grade football player. He asked to repeat a grade.
His mother, Adaina Brown, a public school assistant superintendent in the Los Angeles area, said she called it a “gamble,” but it was one that paid off. Her son grew 8 inches during that extra year and caught the attention of the University of Kansas, where he now has a full scholarship and NIL deal.
Boys who are held back, the thinking goes, will hit a growth spurt their second time through eighth grade and enter high school bigger, stronger, faster and more coordinated. Girls, who generally mature earlier than boys, have less incentive to do holdback years, experts said.
That only about 2% of high school athletes go on to play at a Division 1 college hasn’t dissuaded many families. The upsides of holding back are reinforced by social media and athletes themselves.
“Once I got an extra year of work, it was like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready. I can go hoop with anybody,’” BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa, a top NBA draft prospect, said in a 2024 podcast interview.
When a co-host tried to commiserate about being “held back” in eighth grade for academic reasons, Dybantsa cut him off: “I did not get ‘held back.’ I reclassed.”
Families are turning to consultants like Shanay Howard, a Virginia private school counselor with a sideline as a “reclass specialist.”
“Every parent believes their kid is elite and they should give them the best chance forward,” said Howard, who advises clients across the country on athletic strategies. Howard, whose fees range from $6,000 to $13,000 annually, said she turned away families with unrealistic expectations for holdback years.
“The dad is 5-5. The mom is 5-6. And they’re like, ‘I need him to be 6-3,’” Howard said.
‘Reclassing’
Most public districts don’t allow students to repeat grades just to gain an athletic edge, and some states have taken further steps to rein in the practice. In Pennsylvania, the Interscholastic Athletic Association, for example, can strip a year of high school eligibility if a student repeats eighth grade for nonacademic reasons. But others see a losing enforcement battle. Louisiana eliminated its holdback rule in 2023 along with penalties for schools and coaches that encouraged the practice.
For many athletes, eighth grade is the last chance to repeat a year and still compete for a full high school career. Interscholastic rules generally limit high-school students to four years of athletic eligibility and cap participation at age 19.
In the prep sports mecca of Southern California, at least 15 schools and academies now advertise reclassification for eighth-graders. Orange County’s largest public school district, Capistrano Unified, is rolling out its own taxpayer-funded athletic holdback year this fall.
One morning last month, a half dozen prospective families toured The Togethership, the San Clemente sports academy Cancelleri’s son attends. It has an enrollment of 175 middleschoolers, with about a third repeating eighth grade. In the cafeteria, an administrator noted that the meal plan delivered growing athletes 2,800 “protein dominant calories” daily.
Mothers asked about the weightlifting program and advanced academic courses offered in the holdback year— called “grade 8.5” or “High School Prep” by the school. None questioned the premise of keeping their sons back for sports reasons.
School founder Devin Quinn said he asks the holdbacks on the first day how many want to play Division 1 in college. Every boy raises a hand, he said.
When Quinn, a former private coach for NFL quarterbacks, opened the school in 2019, he told parents that holding back was “a huge advantage.”
“Now, so many kids are holding back that if you don’t do a holdback it’s a disadvantage,” he said.
When a former USC football player launched a holdback academy in Riverside County, Calif., in 2015, few were speaking about the subject publicly, let alone proudly. Jordan Campbell was unapologetic about his business, Winner Circle Athletics. In online posts and videos, he extolled the benefits— one favorite catchphrase is “Holding back to move forward!”— and took on critics who called it cheating.
His program, which costs about $10,000, kept churning out prep standouts, and eventually Campbell had a host of competitors.
“It went from everyone hating [me] to everyone taking [my] business model,” he said.
NIL millions
A 2021 Supreme Court decision invalidated the NCAA’s prohibition against compensation of collegiate athletes. Companies and booster collectives rushed in with endorsement money, and the reports of big deals—$9.5 million for a University of Miami quarterback, $2 million for a Tennessee State basketball guard—became blinking billboards for the age of NIL.
The prospect of turning young talent into cash coincided with the end of the pandemic and remote learning. Many parents emerged dubious that school officials always knew best, and they were concerned their children were behind, regardless of their grades. That made holding back more palatable, experts said.
Among the cheapest holdback routes is home schooling. Marguerite Gaspar, a former public school teacher who helps home-schoolers comply with state educational policies, has built a clientele of holdback families in a variety of sports. They are predominantly in Florida and California, she said, and “middle class and maybe a little lower than that.”
“They may not be able to afford a private school, but they can afford this program for a year to set their child up for success in the future,” said Gaspar, whose basic package at her company, Athletes 1st, runs $650.
At the high end are schools like Praxis, a “curated private middle school for student athletes” in San Diego where 15 boys are doing a holdback year, Amanda Barnett, who cofounded the $21,500-a-year school three years ago, said the holdback program includes college visits and, in place of social studies, “an athletic personal development program” that covers NIL strategy. She said discussion in class one day centered on university rules around apparel deals.
“Most of the students are trying to position themselves to be able to make money in college,” she said.
‘Hold him back’
Mark Bowman was a Colorado middle-schooler with dreams of college football in 2022 when he crossed paths at a training camp with Lane Kiffin, then head coach at Ole Miss.
“Hold him back,” Mark’s father, Kirk Bowman, recalled Kiffin recommending.
With no holdback academies nearby, the family sent Mark to live with his grandfather in Southern California and to repeat eighth grade at Together--ship. After that he started as a freshman for Mater Dei high school in Santa Ana, Calif., one of the nation’s top football programs. As a junior last year, he reached a seven-figure NIL deal to play at USC.
Mark ended up reclassifying again, this time moving up a grade, to his original graduation year. His father said scouts and coaches felt Mark was ready to play college ball and that the decision was unrelated to the anticipated NIL windfall.
In hindsight, he said, it made sense not to risk injury playing another year in high school. “In this NIL environment, the risk of playing another year of high level varsity football doesn’t make sense,” his father explained. Mark is now a freshman at USC.
When JSerra High basketball coach Keith Wilkinson started at the San Juan Capistrano, Calif., school in 2018, three of his 30 incoming freshmen were holdbacks. This year, “it’s at least half.”
He estimated 100 middle school parents each year ask him if they should hold back their sons. He said he tells them it will increase their chances of making varsity in ninth grade but do little to change their college prospects, saying, “It helps on the front end. It does nothing on the back end.”
Wilkinson, who played professionally abroad, said being “the most awkward gangly freshman ever” gave him grit and ambition. He said he worries players today might lose out on the benefits of struggling. “It’s an I-want-some--thing- now society,” he said. “You don’t want to work through adversity.”
Not every talented athlete decides to hold back. Fourteen--year- old Rourke Julio of Murrieta, Calif., is around 6-foot-3 with an 84-mile-an-hour fastball and basketball skills he hopes will carry him to the NBA.
Club teammates in both sports opted to repeat eighth grade. After seeking advice from coaches and researching it online, his parents told him they thought it was the right move. Rourke refused.
“‘I don’t take shortcuts,’” he said he told them. His mother, Kimberly Julio, said she burst into tears: “I was like, ‘Why are you more mature than I am?’” As a freshman this year, he was the fourth-string quarterback on the freshman team, played JV basketball and started for the varsity baseball squad. He said that when other players ask if he held back, he feels pride telling them, “I’m 14. I’m in the right grade.”
