To prove their actual age. You don’t want 17 year olds playing against 13 year olds.
I think the argument was that if we can trust a guy who's to hold The Button to tell the truth about his birth, we should be able to trust Little-League players. If we wouldn't trust the latter, we shouldn't trust the former.
I can understand about Little League and such, but I don't know many 13 year olds in high school, and that is what the article was about.
Besides, you have to provide a BC to enroll your child in school to start with. I can't remember if you have to submit one (that they keep), or just show one.
1) For school, why can't they just look up the one they have instead of you having to provide, in essence, another one? What did the school do with the first one? How many Certified copies of BCs do people have floating around?
2) For extra-curricular events, what do these people do with the BC (if they keep them)?
These are questions I would need answered before I would get them one.