US Soccer 10- year goal for youth participation

[Unregistered]

Recently released, to increase youth playing ranks by 60% to 12 million.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021/...lans-goals-agm

No details of how they plan to do this or how they came to that number, and any time I ever hear anyone from there talk about increasing participation, it all comes down to, more free soccer—like in Europe!

Does US Soccer make a difference? Do they know what they’re doing in youth soccer? The whole age / birthday change thing didn’t exactly go smoothly. The Aspen Institute study on youth sports attributed a big DECLINE in youth soccer participation to the policy. They have the money, courtesy of their national team matches and tournaments. Can they make a difference?

[Unregistered]

Oh lets see, is the plan to launch leagues and then disband them, showing that you really never gave a sh-t about the kids at all in the first place? Or maybe take no responsibility in the youth experience at all, allowing expenses to balloon and create a system where players are driving 3+ hours for one game against teams no better than the ones 10 miles away? US Soccer has done nothing to help the sport. In fact, I would say our current crop of male players has grown in spite of everything that US Soccer has done, not because of it. On the female side, we started with a huge advantage but ultimately we will lose that race, too.

[Unregistered]

Recently released, to increase youth playing ranks by 60% to 12 million.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021/...lans-goals-agm

No details of how they plan to do this or how they came to that number, and any time I ever hear anyone from there talk about increasing participation, it all comes down to, more free soccer—like in Europe!

Does US Soccer make a difference? Do they know what they’re doing in youth soccer? The whole age / birthday change thing didn’t exactly go smoothly. The Aspen Institute study on youth sports attributed a big DECLINE in youth soccer participation to the policy. They have the money, courtesy of their national team matches and tournaments. Can they make a difference?

US Youth Soccer and the now disbanded USSDA did everything opposite of what makes sense. Encouraged and supported pay to play leagues, high cost, high travel, limiting low income kids from participating. Letting these money hungry dishonest academies screw thousands of kids and families with false promises and dreams. Pretty pathetic. GA has picked up right where USSDA dropped off. Nothing is changing just more of the same BS.

[Unregistered]

I really miss DA though. It was great.

US Youth Soccer and the now disbanded USSDA did everything opposite of what makes sense. Encouraged and supported pay to play leagues, high cost, high travel, limiting low income kids from participating. Letting these money hungry dishonest academies screw thousands of kids and families with false promises and dreams. Pretty pathetic. GA has picked up right where USSDA dropped off. Nothing is changing just more of the same BS.

[Unregistered]

How about they look into what REALLY goes on instead of turning a blind eye? If you can not afford thousands of dollars a year your child is not playing at a big club. If you don't play at a big club you are looked down on. If you have the money to pay for a big club it is ALL POLITICS! Anyone who says different is lying. Your kid will play if your mom is friends with the coach or your daddy makes big donations. Its all a scam and its really a shame. PAY TO PLAY! end of discussion...

[Unregistered]

How about they look into what REALLY goes on instead of turning a blind eye? If you can not afford thousands of dollars a year your child is not playing at a big club. If you don't play at a big club you are looked down on. If you have the money to pay for a big club it is ALL POLITICS! Anyone who says different is lying. Your kid will play if your mom is friends with the coach or your daddy makes big donations. Its all a scam and its really a shame. PAY TO PLAY! end of discussion...

Very little trust and honesty in these places. My daughter was told all along that “big name Power 5 schools” were interested and then when the moment of truth came it was crickets. All of the sudden no interest just random one off D3. When we asked which schools were interested we were always given generalities, like quite a few from the ACC, Big Ten etc but never any actual details, contacts etc. Just be wary of what goes on. Thankfully we’re done with this process as kid is in college now. Picked the best fit on academics and academic merit money awarded.

[Unregistered]

Recently released, to increase youth playing ranks by 60% to 12 million.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021/...lans-goals-agm

No details of how they plan to do this or how they came to that number, and any time I ever hear anyone from there talk about increasing participation, it all comes down to, more free soccer—like in Europe!

Does US Soccer make a difference? Do they know what they’re doing in youth soccer? The whole age / birthday change thing didn’t exactly go smoothly. The Aspen Institute study on youth sports attributed a big DECLINE in youth soccer participation to the policy. They have the money, courtesy of their national team matches and tournaments. Can they make a difference?

You’re a charlatan and a fraud. Please go pretend to be an expert somewhere else.

[Unregistered]

Recently released, to increase youth playing ranks by 60% to 12 million.

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021/...lans-goals-agm

No details of how they plan to do this or how they came to that number, and any time I ever hear anyone from there talk about increasing participation, it all comes down to, more free soccer—like in Europe!

Does US Soccer make a difference? Do they know what they’re doing in youth soccer? The whole age / birthday change thing didn’t exactly go smoothly. The Aspen Institute study on youth sports attributed a big DECLINE in youth soccer participation to the policy. They have the money, courtesy of their national team matches and tournaments. Can they make a difference?

The school vs borth year change is used pretty often but I have never seen any real proof it decreased participation. Didnt every other sport saw similar or worse decline over the same 10 year period and none had that issue, which is proof that its just a societal shift more than anything?

[Unregistered]

I really miss DA though. It was great.

Great if you like playing in a youth soccer country club where you only can compete against other well off kids and a lot of the potential players are excluded due to time and money. It sure was great if you like that. If you liked that , try ECNL - it is the same deal.

[Unregistered]

How about they look into what REALLY goes on instead of turning a blind eye? If you can not afford thousands of dollars a year your child is not playing at a big club. If you don't play at a big club you are looked down on. If you have the money to pay for a big club it is ALL POLITICS! Anyone who says different is lying. Your kid will play if your mom is friends with the coach or your daddy makes big donations. Its all a scam and its really a shame. PAY TO PLAY! end of discussion...

I don't agree that it's all political (through there can be some of that) but you hit on a very important point - kids are looked down upon if they're not playing in a fancy league. They quit and play another sport or do something else. There's also the attitude that by HS if you're not playing to get recruited why are you bothering? Gee I don't know, maybe for fun?

So in part there's a huge psychological shift that needs to happen with youth soccer. But unless the school age issue is fixed, costs come way down, and this nonsense multi-state travel crap ends then they're smoking crack with those forecasts. Sixty percent?! Plus the higher leagues and clubs that are making bank will fight any return to more local/state level competition like it was not that long ago. Good luck to them.

[Unregistered]

The financial incentives are for the system to stay as is and continue to cater to well off customers. If they dont change the financial incentives - nothing else will change.

[Unregistered]

Great if you like playing in a youth soccer country club where you only can compete against other well off kids and a lot of the potential players are excluded due to time and money. It sure was great if you like that. If you liked that , try ECNL - it is the same deal.

Follow the money. There is no financial incentive for running a club for talented low-income players. Talented high income players are what drives the youth soccer business.

[Unregistered]

The school vs borth year change is used pretty often but I have never seen any real proof it decreased participation. Didnt every other sport saw similar or worse decline over the same 10 year period and none had that issue, which is proof that its just a societal shift more than anything?

Not the poster and yes some sports have seen decreases, others did not. Over the last tenish years soccer has fallen from 10.4% of all kids playing some organized soccer to 7.4%. The age issue doesn't help a sport that already struggles with other issues like popularity (not much) cost and travel (both too much). Participation in any sport fell across all income groups, but lower income groups fell the hardest and now are half that of higher income families. I suspect Covid and economic uncertainty will take another blow at youth soccer

https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/you...cipation-rates

[Unregistered]

Follow the money. There is no financial incentive for running a club for talented low-income players. Talented high income players are what drives the youth soccer business.

The only incentive in the business is MLS clubs who might possibly make a few $ off a player they developed several years down the road. Those are unicorn players though. Otherwise yes, it's all profits from business operations and it's the better off families that can.

Soccer isn't immune to this issue either - many sports are getting too expensive but at least some still allow star athletes to shine in HS sports, maybe catch a college coach's eye. Soccer is all done via clubs.

[Unregistered]

The school vs borth year change is used pretty often but I have never seen any real proof it decreased participation. Didnt every other sport saw similar or worse decline over the same 10 year period and none had that issue, which is proof that its just a societal shift more than anything?

From the Aspen project play study:

https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/tom...ia-data-column



"Soccer is now paying a heavy price for underestimating kids’ desire to play with friends. In an effort to develop better prospects for its national teams, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) two years ago began mandating that affiliated organizations down to the community level stop forming teams based on birthdates that fell within the school year. Instead, teams at every age level were reorganized based on calendar year birthdates, in which kids are less likely to play with same-grade peers. That broke up teams who have been playing together for years. Only 14.8 percent of children played soccer last year, down from 17 percent in 2015.

During that period, soccer lost more child participants than any other sport – about 600,000 of them. Or enough to fill every stadium on any given match day during the 2026 World Cup the USSF will co-host with Mexico and Canada.

A downturn in a sport as large as soccer, in turn, depresses number of kids who are “active to a healthy level” through sports. That’s another key SFIA metric that we track, one that reflects the percentage of the population (in our case, 6- to 12-year-olds) who engage in high-calorie-burning activities a minimum of 151 times during the year. In 2017, that number fell for the fifth consecutive year, to 23.9 percent. In 2011, 28.7 percent were considered active to a healthy level."