Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
As for participation regarding BY vs SY, didn't AYSO just make the switch so seems like there will be some recent empirical evidence one way or the other there as well.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Come on dude. I can guarantee you can buy club gear for 99.9% of ECNL teams.
But who would buy gear for the worst ECNL clubs when you can just get generic gear.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Anonymous wrote:What I think should happen is leagues like GA, ECNL, whatever should be BY.
But events like showcases which shouldn't count against or for a teams record should be SY.
If you do this everyone is happy.
If kids play along a couple different cutoffs within their club, here's my suggestion...
ECNL, GA, and maybe even MLSNext play league, tournaments, and showcases according to SY. They form secondary "international" teams on two year boundaries for the year. So, e.g., maybe this next year there is a "2008/2009 International Team" inside the top clubs. That team plays any international friendlies/tournaments the club wants, and participates in a once-a-year "International Showcase." The top, top kids get international experience and exposure, national team scouts go to this showcase, and the whole rest of the system doesn't get dragged into the mess of being misaligned with domestic school cutoffs.
I suggest GA, ECNL, etc keep everything BY.
But, US Soccer creates a new league called NWSL Next grouped exactly like MLS Next also grouped by BY.
Any league that targets college recruiting should do SY.
Any local league that targets young players should do SY.
MLS can do BY if it competes against the Academy team.
College teams need players as much as youth players need college teams to play on.
BY doesn't matter. Colleges that need players will sort through what's available to find the best options.
Think about it. College coaches can find foreign players from different countries. But they can't identify a trapped player from an American youth club?
Switching to SY won't change anything. You're just altered the players that won the birthday lottery. Instead of trying to change the rules to give your Aug to Dec birthday kid a potential advantage. Just spend more time training in the park or investing in strength training.
Let’s say no one played college, no recruiting. It still makes more sense to let kids be grouped with their same grade? It makes sense to get rid of anytime in the system where kids teams get split up for one group to play high school and one group to figure something out.
Even if it’s slightly more convenient SY makes sense to everyone but parents with kids Jan to July. Which is fine. I get it.
If this is what you want tell ECNL to allow 4-5 trapped players to play down. It solves your issue allowing all the players in the same grade to play on the same team.
However I know the secret about why you don't want above. If implemented it would make it difficult for ECNL teams to participate in BY tournaments. Their teams would get destroyed by BY teams because they wouldn't be able to play all the trapped players down.
And MLS Next can't play the biobanders, whatever.
The holy grail is increasing youth soccer participation. Going to school year addresses this.
How does staying at calendar year help soccer participation in any way in the long run?
Look how quickly you glossed over the solution ECNL can take to address the issue that you feel is such a problem. (Trapped Players)
Again, ECNL can allow 4-5 trapped players to play down and everything works.
Why are you ignoring this?
USSF has 3 pages on their fees in their policies doc. To keep the cash flowing up from parents, they need kids to play. So how does maintaining calendar year help increase youth soccer participation in the long run?
ECNL and MLS Next have been add teams and lower ages to keep the dollars rolling in but this has its limits of course.
I wish there was an ignore button for your posts.
You just want something to occur a certain way and belligerently keep posting the same things.
I've shown you how ECNL leadership can get what they want while staying withing the BY structure. Take the hint.
This isn't just about ECNL. Switching back to school year would be a hail Mary to try to save youth soccer. How does birth year help youth soccer?
Save youth soccer from what?
From NCAA barely maintaining control of their system and college changing to more of a professional model that pays the players?
So how does staying at calendar year help youth soccer participation? If it doesn't, it isn't sacred.
Neither BY or SY will equate to more players when there's less kids available to play because of a declining birthrate.
I realize that you're trying to somehow link BY with less players and SY with potentially more. Reality is neither do anything.
On the end of the ECNL podcast from 2 weeks, it was talked about how switching to academic year from calendar year is the most important thing needed to help youth soccer participation. So how does staying with calendar year help youth soccer participation?
Not arguing for BY as an aid to soccer participation.
BUT, besides “it sounds good” how do they know SY is “the most important thing needed”?
I'm not interested in triggering this debate for the 10th time in this thread, but the short answer is that there are some datasets showing drops in participation rates coincidental with the change to BY, and not having fully rebounded. There are also datasets showing missing Q4 kids particularly from different levels of club soccer since the change to BY. Coaches and parents have supported this theory with reported anecdotes of kids quitting for this reason, particularly at younger ages.
This has led to a widely held belief that BY is worse for youth soccer participation overall. But others claim that these drops are all attributable to other factors and shouldn't be deemed to have been caused by switching to BY.
Again, there's no point in rehashing that debate here, as it's been beaten like a dead horse. But suffice to say that some people disagree with the conclusion that BY is causing lower participation rates.
No there are not. Peak participation was 2010, the 24 years since the 1999 World Cup have been relatively flat, so that “peak” is very relative. Change to BY was in 2016.
Please provide a link to the secret data source that supports your premise that shows a coinciding drop that began in 2016 or later.
Yes, that is in line with what I just posted. The PP I was responding to (not sure if it’s you?) said that there is data that suggests it coincided with the 2016 BY change, that is the data I’d like to see if it exists.
They was a decline before and after, you would need a good econometric model to ferret out causation and correlation (and COVID effects) but I just did a Google search and couldn't find anyone saying the change to CY didn't hurt youth soccer participation (whereas a handful said it did). Can you find anyone making such statements that going to CY helped youth soccer participation?
People say things...that doesn't make them accurate.
I'm just asking for a link to the data that PP referenced:
"there are some datasets showing drops in participation rates coincidental with the change to BY, and not having fully rebounded. There are also datasets showing missing Q4 kids particularly from different levels of club soccer since the change to BY."
I've not seen any data that shows what PP said.
As for the onus of BY hurting or helping soccer participation - I didn't take a stand one way or the other. I just want to see the data that the PP said there are "some" "and also" (assuming more than one dataset....).
Isn't this the one that everyone cites? It was pretty easy to find with Google.
Soccer paid a heavy price for underestimating kids’ desire to play with friends. In an effort to develop better prospects for its national teams, the U.S. Soccer Federation two years ago began mandating that affiliated organizations down to the community level stop forming teams based on birthdates that fell within the school year. Instead, teams at every age level were reorganized based on calendar year birthdates, in which kids are less likely to play with same-grade peers. That broke up teams who have been playing together for years. Only 14.8 percent of children ages 6 to 12 played soccer in 2017, down from 17 percent in 2015. For children ages 6 to 17, soccer had the highest churn rate in 2017 among sports evaluated by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) — meaning 19.2 percent of youth returned to soccer or started playing, but 25.2 percent of youth who used to play soccer left the game.
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.
Got it, you disagree with their analysis. They do clearly claim though that their data shows a decline coincident with the change.
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.
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.
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.
Nope sorry you have to prove changing to BY changed anything.
It didn't.
Keep moving the goalposts around.
With perception against you as seen the the linked articles, it would be your move or perception stays.
So we can rephrase this as…”with baseless opinion against you, the fact don’t matter you have to change perception.”
It’s not a wrong position - you have to deal with emotional positions with emotional answers, facts don’t really help when the debate is based in feelings. I get what you’re saying, and kudos to you for admitting you and those that share your position on age cutoffs are being willfully ignorant. That’s good self awareness.
But! I don't think BY/SY is a popular opinion one way or the other. I think the vast majority of people don’t really care, and just go along with whatever the rules are. Those that don’t care probably tacitly fall into the “don’t change stuff if you don’t need to” class, which really makes the SY-or-die crowd a weirdo cult.
Personal attacks illustrate weakness. So anybody credible refute the Aspen report?
Personal attacks? Where?
Nobody is contesting the Aspen data. It doesnt show a BY caused drop off. The 1 paragraphs referring to soccer later in the PDF doesn’t even use Aspen’s data to form its “take.”
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
I wonder why ECNL sells hats and other merch, if parents philosophy is that wearing the hat means you have a kid in a losing team. Btw it may be that a parent or coach forgot to bring a hat in a sunny day and thankfully there’s the option to purchase one at the event. Some people are trying to change the main topic of this thread, went from SY-BY to red hat, ECNL hat.
Anonymous wrote:ECNL hat guy has a kid on bench. But she plays ECNL that’s all that matters!!!!
Come on hat guy what team your kid play for?
I love that you weirdos are resorting to name calling and bullying to promote an age cutoff change that is not in any of our hands nor our kids hands. Pretty lame. (And maybe weird GA boosterism on the downlow? If so…also lame since it’s an ECNL thread…)
No offense, I’d take ECNL hat guy any day over your weird SY armband cult.
Aww your feelings hurt?
ECNL hat guy attacked GA and kids who play GA. Don’t throw rocks and hide your hand.
Huh? Are you ok?
So you ARE a GA patent trolling and ECNL thread? Maybe you should take a break from the soccer forum?
Anonymous wrote:As for participation regarding BY vs SY, didn't AYSO just make the switch so seems like there will be some recent empirical evidence one way or the other there as well.
AYSO held out for a long time against switching to BY. They’ve been really hurt on their main markets with participation and numbers, so they decided to “try something” and are currently trying to make a pathway to compete with ECNL / GA / MLSN
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Bored so picked a region of the country where ECNL and GA seemed to have good overlap in their respective conferences. Picked Midwest and Midwest. Then picked an age group that should be right in the middle of recruiting (2009s). Then went to the youth soccer ranking app to compare.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Bored so picked a region of the country where ECNL and GA seemed to have good overlap in their respective conferences. Picked Midwest and Midwest. Then picked an age group that should be right in the middle of recruiting (2009s). Then went to the youth soccer ranking app to compare.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
Bored so picked a region of the country where ECNL and GA seemed to have good overlap in their respective conferences. Picked Midwest and Midwest. Then picked an age group that should be right in the middle of recruiting (2009s). Then went to the youth soccer ranking app to compare.
Anonymous wrote:Not choosing hat sides but I have been to multiple GA and ECNL showcases. In the merch tents they dont have individual clubs obviously they have showcase gear and generic GA/ECNL wear.
Also, of the half dozen clubs I am very familiar with, half of them do not have "gear stores".
Might explain why people wear GA/ECNL branded hats/shrits/etc
Do you support your kids team?
Do you support the league your kids team plays in?
Obviously most people would say I support my kids team and the league they play in. They would not say that I generically support a league. Do you see the difference?
In ECNL there's a small group of teams that win all the time and there's everyone else. If your kid plays on a winning team you support your team/club first and ECNL second. However if your kid is playing on a team that loses all the time parents support ECNL first and conviently skip over mentioning which team their kid plays for.
Hence the "ECNL Hat".
There's a group of people so desperate to win they glob onto the successes of others. Seriously watch the sidelines of a losing ECNL team and count the ECNL hats.
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