Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Why do people get so offended when people are talking about realities?
Why is the ECNL pushing this? They're doing so because this benefits THEIR platform and what they push, collegiate soccer.
What was the goal of the initial change years ago? To align with how the world works, and FIFA.
Everybody wants to give reasons to change this, but the primary reason to change it is for collegiate play, that system is changing. Roster numbers aren't going to be what they used to be, therefore the population of players getting selected to play in college goes down. This argument of trying to benefit trapped players so they can be seen for less spots is wild. If a player is good enough, they'll be seen if college is what they want to do. Making changes for an end goal that is going to be even harder to obtain than it already is and not knowing what the real future holds for collegiate soccer is wild.
Yet your rationale includes college soccer changing. Did you purposely leave out that if roster sizes reduce especially on the girls side the number of available scholarships could greatly increase! Wow think about how that marketing changes. Spend all this $$ for ECNL and the number of full scholarships available goes through the roof.
Not PP, but lets get real.
This is an ECNL thread, with a lot of parents that aren't ECNL parents in here complaining about their "trapped player" and how they want the structure to be for their kid because they believe its the birth month that is holding their kid back from being top-dog. Inherent in their argument is that their kid is not one of the best.
Those ECNL parents that ARE in here and have Q3/4 kids that are ballers, the top-half of their team at least, the 12th-grade trap doesn't apply to them - their kids will have a spot on a college roster if that is one of the things they're playing for - and most likely they'll know this by the beginning of 11th grade.
So that means the ECNL parents who have kids that are bottom half AND Q3/4 are trying to advocate for this change because of a few reasons (any combination of which); 1) their kids are bottom bubble kids (bottom 1/4 to bottom 1/3) and are not getting looks or playing time, 2) they want to create an advantage for their own child based on a factor largely out of control (birth month) - the corollary to this is that they want to DISADVANTAGE children that they currently feel have an unfair (albeit out of everyone's control) advantage of RAE (or "accumulated advantage") based on a birth year cutoff opposed to school year cut-off. and 3) excuse-making for why their child is not as good as other children - this is again based on accumulated advantage - but note that it's a retrospective issue because it blames the present for the missed opportunities of the past, meaning that they could have started earlier, trained more, etc. to counterbalance the accumulated advantage of age and size. What gets lost in all of this is that there are plenty of "late bloomers" in Q1/2 that are not subject to the "BY/SY" "trapped" argument - and this is what makes argument #3 particularly pernicious. While looking at the entire youth soccer landscape, a bubble Q3/4 kid on an ECNL team would be considered elite, in their relative pool, they are not - so in the relative pool, this too is an inherent argument that their child is not good enough - and the only and fairest solution is to change the structure of the age matrix for ECNL.
The alignment advocating SY in order to better align with the graduation year argument for the school year has not been an issue. It sounds like it's "helpful" as an argument, but there are no issues with colleges finding players. This argument is solely based on people who believe they are not getting found, as opposed to being rejected. Its a solution without a problem.
The relative age argument has been discussed ad nauseum - it just moves the window - and as far as an argument "change who gets hurt by RAE so my kid has the same teammates in 12th grade" is pretty awful. Especially considering it's based on a counterfactual of "my kid would be the top half of their team as opposed to the bottom half if only the age cut-off were different" AND "my kid would be the top of the team if the team was made up of different players."
The "play with friends" argument, while sounds nice, doesn't really apply to ECNL or top competitive programs like MLSN and GA.
And lastly, the "only 10% of the kids go to YNT ID sessions, and only 1% every play on a YNT so we don't need to align better for international play" argument is also a bit of a logical mystery. It sort of defeats the whole "elite" aspect of play, and lays bare the rationale for the decision. It suggests "My kid is good enough to get a scholarship only if this change in age cutoff is made, but of course, my child is not good enough to play on the national teams, so we don't really need to worry about aligning better with FIFA, just NCAA." This is where pretty much any parent or player should see clearly the trapped parent argument is not for the betterment of anyone except themselves and their goals. While of course not all kids will be on the YNT, (US or elsewhere) the fact that trapped parents glibly reject that argument informs everyone about their motivations, helping their own little Chad or Karen. It's not about enjoying soccer more. It's not about including more kids and reducing the 12-14y/o dropout zone (Which applies to all youth sports and is not a US phenomenon, but global, and related to age alone, not cut-offs). Its not about RAE. Its not about playing HS and ECNL. It's not about having the same teammates for 6 years. It's not even about ALL trapped kids - August through December - it's about trying to find a way to make their kid who ISNT shining, shine.
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