ECNL wants to switch back to school year from birth year

[Guest]

Both?

Clearly there will always be a youngest whatever months or dates are picked. The issue now is the youngest lose out on an 8th grade season and college recruiting showcases. If the date was moved to July, they may be the youngest but would still get an 8th grade season and college recruiting showcases. This moron scream of a father with a July kid that is bottom of roster.

Not that I fully agree with them, but actually June/July stand to lose the most. Follow me here because logic is involved. Currently these players are all that favored - Jan through May at our club are boosted and our admin clearly picks teams around that. Comical actually when kids bring doughnuts in to celebrate and then you see where everyone is at birthday wise. So now these middling birthdays that did make it will swing to the very back and be highly disadvantaged for the rest of their career, however, the Jan to May group already reaped the benefit of years of relative age bias so won’t lose much in the process other than adding a couple kids ahead of them who were strong enough to survive being the losers in the relative age bias game until now. These players (the trapped) are a disproportionately smaller group than the Jan to May group.

[Guest]

...however, the Jan to May group already reaped the benefit of years of relative age bias...

There is a lot of injustice in the world but 99.999% of the kids playing club soccer have tons of advantages and are not going anywhere long-term with soccer anyway. You can't have everything in life so no need to whinge about this birth month stuff.

Young players with strong skills are some of the best anyway.

[Guest]

There is a lot of injustice in the world but 99.999% of the kids playing club soccer have tons of advantages and are not going anywhere long-term with soccer anyway. You can't have everything in life so no need to whinge about this birth month stuff.

Imagine TS without whinging. Boring place.

[Guest]

There is a lot of injustice in the world but 99.999% of the kids playing club soccer have tons of advantages and are not going anywhere long-term with soccer anyway. You can't have everything in life so no need to whinge about this birth month stuff.

Young players with strong skills are some of the best anyway.

Agree but let’s face it. Those players are unicorns. The majority of fourth quarter birthday kids have help politically from parent coaches or highly successful siblings. The relative age bias is pretty powerful in the younger years. I had a buddy who played D1 football as a running back and his wife ran track in a D1 college - both P4 schools. They had big plans for their child’s athletic career as you might expect and they thought soccer was a good place to start. Only problem was he was smaller and less mature than his peers in U6 through U9. The kid looked fine U6 to U8 because he was blended into a clinic that matched groups by relative ability. Come U9 everything fell apart. His December birthday was too big of a factor to overcome. Think about it even nature and nurture couldn’t help the kid effectively compete with kids 6 to 11 months older than him (skip the response about your kid playing up because most of that is politically drive and a lot of other could play up successfully too). He failed to get a spot at the area club and played a season on the C team in his town before giving up the game. The problem in all of this isn’t whining it’s that this same kid if he could continue probably would overcome that bias a little each year but like some many others we’ll never know.

[Guest]

Age, size and puberty will always be a challenge for middle school players who are smaller due to being the youngest on the roster and genetics. Then there’s the very tall athletic girls on my daughter’s team born in. December and they are keeping up despite age. Some kids are late bloomers. Some kids have short parents. That’s life. Look at Crystal Dunn. Shortest and one of the oldest USWNT players and heading to the Olympics again.
The need to change the cutoff is not to help smaller younger kids. It’s to resolve trapped 8th graders, and 11th graders.

[Guest]

It's funny that we have 41 pages of parents going back and forth about why the system needs to be one way or the other because of their kid.

Here's the stone cold facts: The club sports machine doesn't care about your kid; they care about the business model and financial success. The business model is not "we'll teach your child to love The Beautiful Game" it's "we'll get your child into that exclusive college they wouldn't otherwise get into; maybe even for FREE!" or sometimes "we'll prepare your kid to win a spot on Varsity in your uber competitive town". The leagues have been told by the college coaches that they are tired of dealing with mixed-graduation year teams and that is what ECNL is about solving for. They don't care about "trapped" players or kids getting shuffled around in two of the most important club soccer years, they're responding to what college coaches have told them. Losing some currently RAE advantaged kids does not matter to them because there is an unlimited supply of customers and after one bumpy year it goes back to normal. Everyone with kids in club soccer back in 2017 went through this already, in the other direction, when the switch to birth year was made....

[Guest]

It's funny that we have 41 pages of parents going back and forth about why the system needs to be one way or the other because of their kid.

Here's the stone cold facts: The club sports machine doesn't care about your kid; they care about the business model and financial success. The business model is not "we'll teach your child to love The Beautiful Game" it's "we'll get your child into that exclusive college they wouldn't otherwise get into; maybe even for FREE!" or sometimes "we'll prepare your kid to win a spot on Varsity in your uber competitive town". The leagues have been told by the college coaches that they are tired of dealing with mixed-graduation year teams and that is what ECNL is about solving for. They don't care about "trapped" players or kids getting shuffled around in two of the most important club soccer years, they're responding to what college coaches have told them. Losing some currently RAE advantaged kids does not matter to them because there is an unlimited supply of customers and after one bumpy year it goes back to normal. Everyone with kids in club soccer back in 2017 went through this already, in the other direction, when the switch to birth year was made....

^^^ all true facts. This is also why they are planning Sept 1-Aug 30. Not July. The majority of the high schools in the US operate with Sept 1- Aug 30. They aren’t going to choose anything based on what parents are fighting about or want. They will not read the 41 pages of dribble here. They WILL be able to justify the change by saying it helps trapped 8th graders. It will be a selling point but not the reason.

[Guest]

Actually most of the high schools who have an age cutoff are 8/31 and 9/1 combined. It will likely be 8/31 if ECNL wants to choose cut off by the majority of high schools.
8/31-8/30 would be the likely best soccer age grouping in line with the majority.

[Guest]

No, it's a 12 month range on when you were born, August - July or September - August, what people have been discussing. There won't be HS freshmen aged kids playing elementary school 6th graders because parents held the kid back 3 year for a club soccer advantage. Can you imagine if that happened? What development is there for a 15 year old playing with 12 year olds?

Can we please stay grounded in reality. No school would allow a student to stay back more than one year. You predominantly see families waiting to start kindergarten not reclassing and almost no one reclasses in the same public school system it’s 98% kids attending new private high schools.

[Guest]

Can we please stay grounded in reality. No school would allow a student to stay back more than one year. You predominantly see families waiting to start kindergarten not reclassing and almost no one reclasses in the same public school system it’s 98% kids attending new private high schools.

Not OP but he was making a point with exaggeration. We all got it. Point was the shift will not be grade based, it will be a shifted range of birthdates.

[Guest]

Not OP but he was making a point with exaggeration. We all got it. Point was the shift will not be grade based, it will be a shifted range of birthdates.

Actually I have heard with a fair amount of certainty that it will be hard year. The defining issue is college coaches want to see kids in same GRADE playing each other for recruiting purposes. The switch will be to grad year. Yes kids can re-grade but that’s a small population and can’t solve every issue.

[Guest]

Actually I have heard with a fair amount of certainty that it will be hard year. The defining issue is college coaches want to see kids in same GRADE playing each other for recruiting purposes. The switch will be to grad year. Yes kids can re-grade but that’s a small population and can’t solve every issue.

Please excuse my spelling awesomeness my phone hates me! But comment still stands my understanding is the change will be to graduation year to have players in same recruiting year competing together.

[Guest]

Please excuse my spelling awesomeness my phone hates me! But comment still stands my understanding is the change will be to graduation year to have players in same recruiting year competing together.

I just don't see how this would be possible. What if a kid reclassifies, or fails a grade or gets held back? They then get to play with kids 1-2 years younger just because they now have the same "grad year"? I guess it's possible, but seems like the right way to do it. I would think it would be by birth year, but within the parameters of the school year. For example, the September 2011 - August 2012 birthday kids all play for the same team regardless of grad year. Most of those kids will graduate the same year, but some may not.

[Guest]

I just don't see how this would be possible. What if a kid reclassifies, or fails a grade or gets held back? They then get to play with kids 1-2 years younger just because they now have the same "grad year"? I guess it's possible, but seems like the right way to do it. I would think it would be by birth year, but within the parameters of the school year. For example, the September 2011 - August 2012 birthday kids all play for the same team regardless of grad year. Most of those kids will graduate the same year, but some may not.

it's not only possible it's how almost every other club sport operates. They put a guardrail in place to allow for students to be held back a year, which lets parents game the system with re-classing, but keeps things from getting too out of hand.

[Guest]

He failed to get a spot at the area club and played a season on the C team in his town before giving up the game. The problem in all of this isn't whining it's that this same kid if he could continue probably would overcome that bias a little each year but like some many others we'll never know.

So what. There are a lot of 'what ifs' around every kid on many dimensions. What if they had been playing tennis/cello/solving math equations from age 4.. We can't all have every opportunity and soci4ety is full of barriers and practical limitations.

Obviously the goal for society is to reduce the amount of artificial blocks on talent, so that we don't 'waste' talent.

But again, 99.9999% of these kids aren't going anywhere after club soccer (or the little college experience), so it doesn't matter if they play soccer or tennis or baseball or whatever. Society survives and Messi and Morgan still get discovered.

That said, there are lots of ways to improve youth soccer in the US to make it more organized. But not because of the 'travesty' of someone being the youngest on the team.