Should youth soccer adopt lacrosse's 15-month approach to registration?

[Anonymous]

For months on the DCUM soccer forum there's been a grand debate about large portions -- if not all -- of youth soccer switching from Birth Year (BY) to School Year (SY) registration.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1207623.page (original post)

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/8655/1207623.page (latest page)

Some of the latest conversations raise lacrosse's 15-month approach where summertime birthdays in the same grade get to play on those younger teams to eliminate the "trapped" player problem, because different states have different school start dates. Others say this approach leads to too many older players playing and that there's an age verification issue. What do you here think? What's good/bad? Did you wish you had a different system OR does the current one work?

[Anonymous]

Is the 15 month tournament rule even used? We have a lot of april and may red shirts on our grade level team and no one has ever checked. This is 2032.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the 15 month tournament rule even used? We have a lot of april and may red shirts on our grade level team and no one has ever checked. This is 2032.

So, how does it work? Are you all by grad year/grade (GY)? Or I see sometimes references to a 2-year window?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the 15 month tournament rule even used? We have a lot of april and may red shirts on our grade level team and no one has ever checked. This is 2032.

So, how does it work? Are you all by grad year/grade (GY)? Or I see sometimes references to a 2-year window?

Yes, it’s by grad year!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the 15 month tournament rule even used? We have a lot of april and may red shirts on our grade level team and no one has ever checked. This is 2032.

So, how does it work? Are you all by grad year/grade (GY)? Or I see sometimes references to a 2-year window?

Yes, it’s by grad year!

People good with that? In soccer-land, there's a concern that without strict dates, cheating could become a problem, especially on a regional/national level.

[Anonymous]

Grad year is terrible. All sports should be birth year. Grad year encourages hold backs.

[Anonymous]

Most of the A team are hold backs, most of the B team are school year. This is 2034-2032. Birthdays are listed in the rosters for everyone to see so in general you can figure out where your child has a shot at making. I think as they get older it shifts. The A team has one or two younger kids on it, but also there are many who don’t fall in the National restrictions and have holdback school year birthdays but no one checks at this age so it’s not an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grad year is terrible. All sports should be birth year. Grad year encourages hold backs.

Agreed. You can manipulate grad year, not birth year. And the parents in the DMV are master manipulators.