Huge ECNL News coming 7/1/2024

[Anonymous]

This discussion assumes that the school cutoffs are the same everywhere in the country and that the ECNL cutoff will perfectly align with those dates. I was a youth player in the 1990s when they first made the switch away from calendar year. But my school district cutoff was the calendar year. I was in HS at the time, so it was fine -- we combined a couple of teams and played up a year, but it actually created problems where I lived instead of solving them.

I have a Q1 (early January) child, so I am not threatened by a possible change and I am not even necessarily against a change. But there is literally no cutoff that ECNL can come up with that will solve these problems for every player across the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

There are zero mental gymnastics required for birth year…the school year stuff never made sense because from a U(age) perspective with cutoffs in August - that’s the cutoff that requires mental gymnastics, regardless, the gymnastics aren’t hard - any parent that can’t do the mental gymnastics requires for sport registration probably isn’t employable.

At young ages I rarely had schoolmates on my teams. Only until middle school and HS when the pyramids consolidated did I play with any schoolmates, but not many. But HS soccer was also the recruitment pathway back then. NPL, Classic and ODP were also the competitive places to get looks. The world is different.

The idea that ECNL teams are made up of school mates is sort of ludicrous on its face. HOWEVER - there are some HS coaches in states like Cali, PA, NJ, MA that have regulations for club soccer to incentivize HS soccer where the coaches recruit to the HS to keep the club teams together as much as possible. Those are typically not ECNL or GA players though.

Because our society is so bad at math we have to go to straight calendar year give me a break. Cut all that nonsense out. THE ONLY REASON TO GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS IS TO FIX THE TRAPPED PLAYER ISSUE. That is where classmates come in you are in the same grade as them not that they are in your specific class in your specific school. Moving the age created that issue without solving the other. There are zero other arguments that make any sense.

Seems the adults are more mentally trapped as an issue versus a real issue for the kids

You train with your club 3 maybe 4.5hrs a week and play a game on the weekend.
Some of the players don't even talk much to each other, especially since there isn't a lot of time to socialize.
They go to different schools.

Trapped and non trapped players have their school friends and neighborhood friends, in addition to club friends.

Seems a whole lot of silly hoopla

[Anonymous]

In a perfect world, we would have kids getting time with a couple of different age groups. The entire being tied to a particular age group thing is ridiculous. European clubs often group two or three years together. And bio-banding is an excellent initiative when it is implemented and not used for competitive advantages so that insane adults can try to win trophies. The last two years of ECNL are lumped together anyway to allow for that collective recruiting process. Stop relying so much on clubs for kids' soccer development. They don't give a crap about your kid. Make it about a third of their youth soccer experience in addition to pickups with similarly skilled or more skilled players and private trainings with a coach who is going to instill discipline, work ethic, and game knowledge.

[Anonymous]

No more than a small number of players on any ECNL team play for the same HS team. The players are coming from well beyond the local HS or even closest school system. Then throw in a large number of private school students from all over the DMV. Seems like we’re trying to solve a fairly non-existent problem with ECNL grade year grouping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This discussion assumes that the school cutoffs are the same everywhere in the country and that the ECNL cutoff will perfectly align with those dates. I was a youth player in the 1990s when they first made the switch away from calendar year. But my school district cutoff was the calendar year. I was in HS at the time, so it was fine -- we combined a couple of teams and played up a year, but it actually created problems where I lived instead of solving them.

I have a Q1 (early January) child, so I am not threatened by a possible change and I am not even necessarily against a change. But there is literally no cutoff that ECNL can come up with that will solve these problems for every player across the country.

How is ecnl solving a problem by going against what the US Youth federation and MLS is doing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In a perfect world, we would have kids getting time with a couple of different age groups. The entire being tied to a particular age group thing is ridiculous. European clubs often group two or three years together. And bio-banding is an excellent initiative when it is implemented and not used for competitive advantages so that insane adults can try to win trophies. The last two years of ECNL are lumped together anyway to allow for that collective recruiting process. Stop relying so much on clubs for kids' soccer development. They don't give a crap about your kid. Make it about a third of their youth soccer experience in addition to pickups with similarly skilled or more skilled players and private trainings with a coach who is going to instill discipline, work ethic, and game knowledge.

At what ages do European clubs band age groups together? Never heard of that before

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No more than a small number of players on any ECNL team play for the same HS team. The players are coming from well beyond the local HS or even closest school system. Then throw in a large number of private school students from all over the DMV. Seems like we’re trying to solve a fairly non-existent problem with ECNL grade year grouping.

+18,000

[Anonymous]

My trapped player had a college coach show up to the wrong age group, ie they are an 06 and coach went to 07 game. Since they are recruiting for a certain class coaches will go to the age group with the majority of age appropriate players.

[Anonymous]

Moving the date fixes trapped players. Trapped players do not exist if you move the date to August 1. No matter how you feel about it, and how important it is to you, it is a problem that can be solved.

Current system: RA and trapped players
Old/Proposed system: RA

Other posters have mentioned the different impacts of trapping players - recruiting, maturity differences, lost seasons - and its up to the governing bodies to decide if it's worth the disruption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In a perfect world, we would have kids getting time with a couple of different age groups. The entire being tied to a particular age group thing is ridiculous. European clubs often group two or three years together. And bio-banding is an excellent initiative when it is implemented and not used for competitive advantages so that insane adults can try to win trophies. The last two years of ECNL are lumped together anyway to allow for that collective recruiting process. Stop relying so much on clubs for kids' soccer development. They don't give a crap about your kid. Make it about a third of their youth soccer experience in addition to pickups with similarly skilled or more skilled players and private trainings with a coach who is going to instill discipline, work ethic, and game knowledge.

Whoa whoa whoa now! You’re on a tightrope of restarting the biobanding debate!

Eject! EJECT!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My trapped player had a college coach show up to the wrong age group, ie they are an 06 and coach went to 07 game. Since they are recruiting for a certain class coaches will go to the age group with the majority of age appropriate players.

That coach should be fired

Also, as a parent, you failed in making sure the coach knew who your kid was and where they were playing and when they were graduating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My trapped player had a college coach show up to the wrong age group, ie they are an 06 and coach went to 07 game. Since they are recruiting for a certain class coaches will go to the age group with the majority of age appropriate players.

That coach should be fired

Also, as a parent, you failed in making sure the coach knew who your kid was and where they were playing and when they were graduating.

Gotta get your data right for that 1/8 scholly to Christopher Newport

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moving the date fixes trapped players. Trapped players do not exist if you move the date to August 1. No matter how you feel about it, and how important it is to you, it is a problem that can be solved.

Current system: RA and trapped players
Old/Proposed system: RA

Other posters have mentioned the different impacts of trapping players - recruiting, maturity differences, lost seasons - and its up to the governing bodies to decide if it's worth the disruption.

Qualify and quantify the trapped player problem

There will still be a 11 month difference between the youngest and oldest if you go to August 1st, so how is the maturity issue resolved?
Coaches and Scouts recruit based on graduation year, not club team age group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In a perfect world, we would have kids getting time with a couple of different age groups. The entire being tied to a particular age group thing is ridiculous. European clubs often group two or three years together. And bio-banding is an excellent initiative when it is implemented and not used for competitive advantages so that insane adults can try to win trophies. The last two years of ECNL are lumped together anyway to allow for that collective recruiting process. Stop relying so much on clubs for kids' soccer development. They don't give a crap about your kid. Make it about a third of their youth soccer experience in addition to pickups with similarly skilled or more skilled players and private trainings with a coach who is going to instill discipline, work ethic, and game knowledge.

At what ages do European clubs band age groups together? Never heard of that before

Europe does stuff a bit differently country by country. Forget biobanding and RA and all that stuff for a second, what many European countries do really well is use the 4-corners model for tracking player development.

That rubric is 100x better at forming competitive groups than how we do it in the US with the “eye test” or the “his older brother is really good though” tests. Even in top competitive leagues in the teen years, with the IDPs etc we do poor bench-marking and development planning. And as a result we produce robots that play a version of soccer that their US trapped coach thinks soccer should be played like, often with position specific body phenotypes that make any adjustment in the face of soccer’s fluidity harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No more than a small number of players on any ECNL team play for the same HS team. The players are coming from well beyond the local HS or even closest school system. Then throw in a large number of private school students from all over the DMV. Seems like we’re trying to solve a fairly non-existent problem with ECNL grade year grouping.

It’s primarily about recruiting and secondarily about trapped 8th graders.

It has nothing to do with playing on the same HS team.