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ECNL moving to school year not calendar
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Anonymous
Grade year + age cap. This really wouldn't be hard. |
Anonymous
Yet it happens WAY too much, especially the redshirting, for other sports. Current switch to SY at least is sticking to a 12-month window. All those pushing for more leeway are playing with fire. When Jenna Knapp of Des Moines, Iowa, recently accompanied her 12-year-old son to an interstate Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball tournament in Indianapolis, she was taken aback to see that many of the athletes were larger than her son. And not just by a little bit. "There was a huge difference," recalls Knapp. Curious as to why, Knapp started chatting up some of the other parents. "That's when it was brought to my attention that it's pretty common now to reclass your child," she says. Reclassing or reclassifying is the process of opting to hold a child back a year in high school or middle school, so they'll have an edge athletically by being taller, larger, or more skilled than their peer group. This choice is also often called holding your child back in school, which may be done as early as preschool or kindergarten. It's also done for non-athletic reasons, such as if a child doesn't seem emotionally ready for school. https://www.parents.com/kids/education/parents-are-holding-their-kids-back-in-school-to-make-them-more-competitive-athletes/ |
Anonymous
Playing with fire? Hardly. This isn’t as big a problem (or even a problem at all) as people try to make it. The 16/17 year olds playing 13/14 year olds won’t happen. Even high schools have guardrails to school year eligibility. It’s not the Wild West that people make it out to be. |
Anonymous
| I Initially had a SY over BY preference. But the one thing I have learned from these 900 pages is that if I really have a preference that hopes to benefit my kid, it just means my kid is not elite. So I am trying to convince myself I don't have a preference. |
Anonymous
💯 Grade year with reasonable age caps. |
Anonymous
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AAU is like playing the lottery. Parents will do anything to get the NBA money. HGH, reclassify, game fixing…. It’s the worst youth sports league anywhere.
Street agents, runners for college coach, it’s truly the Wild West. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
It isn't a big problem now, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be later. There is literally a perfect example in AAU Bball that illustrates this! It is so odd to me to see people acknowledge large loopholes and in the same breath say, 'don't worry it won't be a problem!' You know which country you're in right? |
Anonymous
I am in the BY crowd. Makes more sense. I just want my Jan kid to play with kids a grade under them. Not because I think that gives them an advantage but because the recent studies show that Jan-May kids just work harder. |
Anonymous
It's the valiant work like this that we need to get to 1000 |
Anonymous
| I was with this thread religiously from 200-600 but have taken the last 300 pages off. I know this type of request is lazy and generally shunned on other threads, but I was hoping someone could summarize what I missed, perhaps in the spirit of supporting the march to 1000? Sounds like someone has announced SY starting 26-27. Which leagues? 9/1 or 8/1? And what is this nonsense in recent pages about grade year, I thought that was done and dusted? I have an early Q4 girl who currently starts pre-ECNL and will be on next year’s ECNL team. Thanks! |
Anonymous
Anything to keep the thread going. Here’s what we know… Everything will be 9/1 with the exception of GA and MLSnext who haven’t announced a decision. That’s about the only fact from the last 300 pages. |
Anonymous
You're complaining about a problem that doesn't exist in youth soccer, and one that hasn't even been suggested. No one wants soccer to go straight grad year, and there are many other sports that put up guardrails to age cutoffs. |
Anonymous
Yeah, seems best to have both SY and BY for various top leagues. Probably not sustainable though. |
Anonymous
Here's my rant, enjoy ... A lot more people need to accept that their kid is not elite. "Elite" kids could possibly be pros, and often have to settle for college. Bottom half of D1, all of D2, and all of D3 just aren't that elite and should not have to sacrifice so much to play at that level. Reaching your full potential, if it's playing at those levels or below, should be achievable on teams with friends with almost no national travel. I would not call my kid elite, but loves the sport, practices extra outside the team, and is good enough to play on varsity HS. She has no aspirations to play in college - school is #1. Maybe she could play at some mediocre D2/D3 school, but then just go to a better school and play club (if they have it) or coed leagues for fun. She should not need to travel by plane to a tournament, unless it's a fun trip with her best friends. She doesn't need to travel more than two hours to find a team at her competitive level for league play. She shouldn't be on a team without a single friend from her grade at school. Soccer tournaments shouldn't require missing any school. Yet in a system with kids separated by BY and 7+ club v club tiers, she has to do all this just to play club at the same level as HS varsity. Friends of the same ability level, same school, and same class are spread across different club teams. It's dumb. BY was part of a systemic problem where kids are treated like aspiring national team players way too far below the pro-pathway. Happy to see it end. Now start consolidating ECNL-RL, GA-R, USYS NL, DPL, and NAL. If more kids under SY join club soccer, and can play with their classmates, there is going to be more interest in actually being on the same team with those friends. To do that, we're going to have to do something about the leagues next. It would be easier to argue for ECNL-NL and GA to stay BY if they were more elite. But even those levels dip too far down into the talent pool to justify it. If the number of national teams were more in line with just MLSN academy teams, maybe. My guess is most BY proponents fall into this profile: their kid is most likely headed to play lower level college soccer or top out at high school soccer; but to achieve their max potential they need the age advantage under BY; so they make some dubious claims about how BY is helping a tiny group of players much better than their own kid and how important that is. Meanwhile, that tiny group is too busy kicking butt to actually even care about BY vs SY. Some sit just outside that tiny group with a delusional belief that maintaining BY gives their kid a chance to break into that group. The typical SY proponent has accepted that their kid isn't elite to the extent that the whole system should be set up like a national team when that causes so many other problems. They are either advantaged by SY or don't fear any disadvantage. |