ECNL moving to school year not calendar

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04/24/2025 10:39

Subject: ECNL moving to school year not calendar

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Anonymous wrote:I heart the "SY + 60" person...and the idea. Or a "let August play with their grade year" approach, or a waiver system in place. There are a lot of reasonable places where an August birthday kid will be mis-aligned in the 9/1 system and the heartache doesn't seem worth the occasional small creep in age group.

All jokes aside, and regardless of where you land on this (has zero impact on my kid), having some sort of flexibility like that makes the most sense. But because it makes sense, I doubt it would ever happen.

Why? There was no flexibility in the old BY system and that impacted a much much larger pool of players. Why make all of these loopholes and exceptions (that certainly won't be exploited by anyone) when the impacted pool is so small? It wasn't done before. Are August bday kids somehow that fragile?

There was flexibility. Trapped players could play down. And just because something wasn’t done before doesn’t mean you can’t improve on it. But you (I hope) know that. Remember - it was the trapped player phenomenon that lead the charge to change it to school year. Are the BY kids so fragile the entire system needed to be reworked again?

People are just highlighting the problems with a strict cutoff if the goal is to align kids with their grade and to avoid the trapped player, which it is. Having the 9/1 - 8/31 range, but allowing some reasonable criteria to opt-in to your correct school year, makes the most sense to meet that goal. For example, at registration, you can request to opt-in to the correct school year granted you meet some requirements - I.e. within a certain timeframe to the current cutoff (July and August) and proof you’re in that school year. You can also limit how many kids each team can have that would be an “opt-in” so you don’t get people crying about teams filled with July/Aug holdbacks (as if two months would make a difference anyway). That is just one example of a real-world solution that would allow soccer to truly be a school year sport (within reason) that would work on a national level. If you don’t see that or understand, that’s fine too. The world needs all types of people.

Where could trapped players play down? I have ever seen a single instance of this. All of your exceptions are massive holes that cheats will exploit and are unreasonably complicated. There has been a strict cutoff for the last almost 10 years. No one called for all of these exceptions and allowances.

Massive holes!? Cheats?! Unreasonably complicated!? Save the drama and unclench your pearls.

Trapped players play down with their club’s younger team. Happens often and ECNL allows it. A lot of people called for exceptions and allowances -why do you think it’s changing back to SY?!

Where do trapped players play in actual games with the club's younger teams? Please, provide some links. I have been coaching since 2012, and I have never seen this occur.

No drama needed. That is what a strict cut off date is for. Then there is 0 drama.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ecnl.sidearmsports.com/documents/2023/9/11/ECNL_Competition_Rules_2023_2024.pdf

Rule 2.9. As far as whether or not they play an actual games, I have no idea, but that is not the point. The point is that there is a rule that allows it. And there are about 800 pages of “drama” about going to a strict school year cut off.

2.9 is basically what ECNL is proposing for the new SY age groups already (except for the U15 part). It would only impact U16 and above which is a perfectly fine compromise. Younger age groups will all be 9/1-8/31 which makes sense for this younger groups.

Why does it make sense for August kids to play with the wrong grade at younger ages? So those kids newest to the sport shouldn’t be able to play with their grade? Why would they even join a soccer team at all if they are unable to play with their classmates? School-based teams are the primary entry point into youth sports.

US Club president already said publicly they know that 9/1 does not align everyone with their grade in school. It’s to align the vast majority. Whatever research they used found more august kids are the youngest kids in their grade rather than the oldest.

It sounds like there will be infrastructure in place for leagues that are under the US umbrella to make sure any of the older Aug kids will get to play with their school grade in high school.

But you open up a can of worms when it’s not fair to your Aug kid grade who’s the oldest to be with their grade but maybe a June/July kid who started late shouldn’t be able to play with their school grade.

It’s either they draw the 1 year line somewhere or go to grad year.

The "line" should be the date chosen by the school district where the child started kindergarten. No redshirting. The whole change was in response to the problems caused by placing kids out of their school year. Grad year fixes this, but people are scared of the "16 year old freshman." OK, so remove the redshirts, solved. The occasional 15.01-15.08 year old freshman in a handful of states, when the oldest on other states' teams is 15.0 years old, isn't disrupting competition in a significant way. This one/partial month might mean more at U6-10, but kids only play intrastate at those ages anyway. That kid is in the right class according to his/her school district, so it hasn't opened the door up to older kids or people bending more rules for their advantage. It's a well-defined rule that fixes a major problem for a few at almost no cost to the many.

I don't have an August kid. I just don't see why the benefits of SY would be denied to a group who is so close to the soccer cutoff, and hasn't chosen to ignore their school cutoff, when the impact to everyone else is so tiny it's basically nonexistent. I see why changing back to 8/1 as the primary cutoff could be problematic, in that it opens the door for August *redshirts* and August kids playing down, out of their grad year.

Also, if you leave these kids out, expect them to be used as the poster child example for going full grad year (or something like SY+90 if you hate that) in showcases and maybe even league play later. That will open the door to older players in the pool. This tiny group will serve as the loose thread to unravel the SY sweater toward unrestricted GY. Giving this group exceptions could prevent redshirted kids from piggy-backing on a much more sympathetic group of August non-redshirted kids.

Assuming USYS and USCS had switched back to the old 8/1 to 7/31 cutoffs, you'd still be on here complaining that many July kids don't start "on time" and we need to make an exception for "held back" kids. You are beating this horse to death.

Most of us are checking back on this thread to hear updates as to possible transitional rules for 25/26, not to hear you make all the arguments against the new age bracket that was just decided on. It's ridiculous.

You're ridiculous. That was my first post on it today (I had commented on the August thing once before many days ago). If you read it, you'd see a key point is to NOT invite a further exception for, e.g., July kids who were "held back." But it appears you didn't read it and instead knee-jerkingly responded with some angry nonsense. I also occasionally check on this thread for updates, but found the current conversation was on this topic, so decided to comment. Sorry. I hope it doesn't lead to you kicking the dog today. If you felt it added nothing to the conversation, I'd suggest you also weigh whether your inaccurate outburst added more to the conversation.