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ECNL moving to school year not calendar
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Anonymous
Isn't this the one that everyone cites? It was pretty easy to find with Google. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/StateofPlay2018_v4WEB_2-FINAL.pdf
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Anonymous
Thats not data showing a decline coinciding with the BY change - its just a snapshot of the BY change year, the actual data showed the deline well before (starting at 2010, like I said). ery familiar with both the Aspen State of Play and the SFIA's Topline. That paragraph doesn't use Aspen's own research, which shows a decline of 9% in 2016 vs 15% in 2012 (again, Aspen shows the peak participation was in 2010). The SFIA is a noisy topline report because they have two classes, core and casual (for sports specifically its something like core = 13 times per year and casual = <13 times). Casual is really non-soccer players, more like recess / pickup / neighborhood. Whereas Core will definitely include non-soccer players because its "count" oriented, but it will include ALL soccer players. The paragraph in the Aspen report you referenced was referring to Core + Casual. The SFIA Core decline from 16 to 17 was almost exactly the same as Aspen's. So in effect the paragraph is saying US soccer changing to BY affected how often soccer players AND non-soccer players played soccer. The same SFIA report shows a 10% increase in Core between the 4 year average of (2018-2022) and 2023, and an 18% increase in casual, making a 15% increase for the total soccer participation! One could argue that BY has saved US Soccer's (and all youth sports') long-term decline in participation! (I'm not making that claim, I don't think the data shows that either). Opinion paragraphs are great! But I'd still like that dataset that shows the decline coinciding with the BY change. |
Anonymous
Got it, you disagree with their analysis. They do clearly claim though that their data shows a decline coincident with the change. |
Anonymous
One can claim anything is the cause of something, it doesn’t make it true. And their own data illustrate that the claim is not supported by their data nor SFIA’s. It’s not an analysis, it’s an opinion with misused data. They took one year of data from long term study, showing a long term decline and attempted to explain causation for that single year. In this case, it’s causation without correlation. Not to mention it’s a ludicrous claim. You can’t point to US Soccer making an age-cutoff change as the cause for an individual who played soccer a couple times at recess last year, to play no times this year. I can’t read minds, but there is probably a good reason why the author cherry-picked the SFIA top line for 2016 vs their own data from Aspen (or even just using the Core data from SFIA). Regardless, and analysis or opinion is not a dataset. And the dataset it references doesn’t show what the PP said there are multiple datasets for which. So I’d really like to see these datasets. |
Anonymous
In their core participation numbers, I believe the reasoning is that if the participation numbers from 2012-2017 were 9.2%, 9.1%, 8.9%, then 8.5% and 7.7% after the change, there is an excess decline in the two years after the change relative to the 5 year average trend. So while there is a prior negative trend, an excess amount of negative movement could indicate something changed to cause it. Certainly it doesn't prove beyond any doubt that the change caused the excess decline, but it's a reasonable interpretation if nothing else significant happened in that same window. |
Anonymous
When fighting antidotal evidence of not being able to play with friends/classmates, perception, and descriptive stats of switching to calendar year being a factor in the decline of youth soccer participation, questioning is fine of course but it is by no means an argument to the corollary. Good luck on doing your own work on this. Also, unless you can point to someone "real" actual questioning whether going to calendar year wasn't bad for youth soccer participation, you can just seem belligerent for the sake of being belligerent. |
Anonymous
You're using logic to try and explain something to someone that will either never understand or is willfully ignoring to try and deceive others. Because soccer has such a low barrier to entry it seems to attract the super stupid and highly intelligent who manipulate the stupids. When I read SY proponents "evidence" I try to determine if the person posting truly believes what they write or if they don't really care because they'll throw anything just to see if it will stick. It seems like there's a healthy mix of both. But it also seems like there's a few very vocal, very stupid people that are getting manipulated. Tryng to correlate declining participation with BY is such a ridiculous stretch. My favorite argument is using RAE to argue that SY is somehow better than BY. The RAE effect is the same no matter what cutoff date is chosen. (Assuming you even believe RAE is real) If you want to understand why ECNL leadership wants to switch to SY just follow the money. By switching to SY it will end cross league play. Assuming other leagues stay BY. It will also kill participation in local club tournaments. Again Assuming other leagues stay BY. Both outcomes mean more $$$ for ECNL and reliance on ECNL for competition. If ECNL gets other leagues to all switch to SY they get the satisfaction of being able to bully all of youth soccer into what they believe is the right way to move forward. My arguement is that everything works with BY. There are a small number of "issues' with the most prevalent being "trapped" players. (Which my kid is one but starts on their team) But the issue is more of an excuse (I don't belive in RAE). Sure kids born closer to a specific cutoff date will have an advantage. But this will happen no matter what date the cutoff is and the same types of people will complain for the same types of reasons with SY. |
Anonymous
Wrong dataset. You’re using the Aspen study, not the SFIA. Aspen doesn’t use the same core / casual method - the paragraph PP sited uses the SFIA data. The biggest drop off was the 2011 in Aspen’s so you could exclude it and claim excess, but thats also cherry picking your observation window. There could also be an argument that the summer Olympics in 2016 had a result that caused some to leave the sport. There are anecdotal reports that World Cup and Olympics cause an increase leading up and just after the even in soccer participation, then a decrease afterward. While the US Soccer dataset doesn’t support that, nor does the self-reported surveys like Aspen’s or SFIA, clubs and coaches may have smaller local data that does that gets lost in the overall ebb and flow (mostly flow over the past 24 years) of participation. That said, the SFIA does show a flow back to soccer recently. All youth sports are seeing participation increases. To what do we ascribe that? The BY change in 2016? World Cup? Olympics? Demographic pools? Or just normal cycles of change? It’s hard to tell with soccer because of the very long term increase in participation over the 20th century to the extremely flat participation in the 21st. |
Anonymous
Yup, the trapped player solution and lower youth soccer participation with birth year vs school year as being key issues against the accepted gain of international alignment and people don't like change position. Unless you can point to a credible source saying/showing the switch to birth year didn't negatively impact participation or a switch back to school year would negatively impact participation, you are dealing with a dead cat argument. I think I would rather be in the "your hat is stupid" debate than trying to illustrate the obvious as I think that debate is more open minded. |
Anonymous
Nope sorry you have to prove changing to BY changed anything. It didn't. Keep moving the goalposts around. |
Anonymous
With perception against you as seen the the linked articles, it would be your move or perception stays. |
Anonymous
What would you say if you went to an American Pro Football game let's just say Steelers and there was a guy wearing a hat and gear that said NFL all over it? Not the Steelers logo or whichever teams logo they were wearing. You can do this with any sport NHL, EPL, NBA, etc. It's weird unless you work for the league and that's what you're expected to wear. Now, next time you go to an ECNL event look around and you'll see that there's a lot of people wearing ECNL hats. I doubt they all work for the league. Why would a parent wear an ECNL hat and not the hat representing the club their kid plays for? Do you see how weird ECNL hats are? Wear the hat of the club you're kid plays on with pride. Don't get upset when everyone points and laughs because it's the club that never wins. You're in ECNL and recruiters love picking up players fron teams that lose all the time. |
Anonymous
No not buying. What you are joining is ECNL. Not the club. You may change clubs a number of times. The constant, once you get there and can stay there, is the ECNL. On the girl's side it is the key. And your American football point falls flat. Players do in fact frequently wear both NFL gear and the NFL players union gear instead of their team logo. |
Anonymous
This “debate” here is pointless. That poster thinks they are on to something with the Aspen/SFIA data that no one else outside this thread argues for a reason. I’m sure this debate will be had by the actual decision-makers before any change happens, as it’s a big talking point. So if the opinion that BY lowered participation can be credibly challenged, it will be done. |
Anonymous
Oh my god you actually admitted to it and provided a rationalization behind your thought process. Wow, just wow... Next time I'm at an ECNL showcase I'm going to take pictures of a winning teams sidelines and a losing teams sidelines. I guarantee the winning teams supporters will be wearing club gear I also guarantee the losing teams patents will be wearing ECNL hats. |