#4BobbyOrr has the better of the arguments here. If the kid has superior skills/size & fits in best with the year-up's class, then he should be playing up (or at least have the option). Simply stating that the play-up year won't matter by the time he's a bantam is pure speculation -- maybe during that year he plays up, he plays for an awesome coach he would not have normally met. Maybe he meets his new best friends, who motivate themselves to work hard as a group and ultimately win nationals like the old LAHC group. Anything's possible.
As for the notion that we should just let the mites "have fun" while they're young, that sounds great -- problem is, SCAHA has watered down the mites games so badly, that it hardly constitutes "fun" in any real hockey or competitive sense. It's a scrimmage game, at best.
No score is kept.
Games are 17 minutes long. (One period only)
There are no standings.
There are no stats.
About half the games, seemingly at random, are played with mini-nets.
No power plays or short-handed play.
Ultimately, no playoffs or champion.
Note to SCAHA: Want to avoid the rush to play-up into squirts? Make mites more interesting for the players and parents! Most of the parents are on-board with the small area games (virtually everyone is on-board with the half-ice version), it's the other, easily fixable, stuff listed above that make us want to bail out.