youth soccer participation down 23.5% in key 6-12 year age group...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We lost one third of our team, and it is a top boys team at a competitive club.

Not any more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My oldest two kids played travel soccer year round. Youngest is born in December and wanted to an after school activity with his friends. He didn't want to play with kids a grade older. So he never started soccer and now plays other sports. I see several younger siblings on my kids travel teams who decided not to play and/or families decided it just wasn't worth it to do travel with younger set of kids. After this pandemic ends I think soccer will lose even more kids both in rec and travel.

A kid with a December birthday has four months of kids the same grade as him on his team, usually more due to redshirting. My kid’s age group at his club is pretty evenly divided between 2 grades

I have 2 kids with late birthdays who play. One is on a top team at the club and she's the only one in her grade on that team. My other is on the 3rd team for this particular club and the team is pretty split with half being in each grade. I think the more competitive teams have older players

But thousands if not millions more kids are playing rec where the “top” team is not an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We lost one third of our team, and it is a top boys team at a competitive club.

Not any more.

True. No doubt about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My oldest two kids played travel soccer year round. Youngest is born in December and wanted to an after school activity with his friends. He didn't want to play with kids a grade older. So he never started soccer and now plays other sports. I see several younger siblings on my kids travel teams who decided not to play and/or families decided it just wasn't worth it to do travel with younger set of kids. After this pandemic ends I think soccer will lose even more kids both in rec and travel.

A kid with a December birthday has four months of kids the same grade as him on his team, usually more due to redshirting. My kid’s age group at his club is pretty evenly divided between 2 grades

I have 2 kids with late birthdays who play. One is on a top team at the club and she's the only one in her grade on that team. My other is on the 3rd team for this particular club and the team is pretty split with half being in each grade. I think the more competitive teams have older players

But thousands if not millions more kids are playing rec where the “top” team is not an issue.

In rec kids want to play with their classmates, so it makes more sense to change cut off. It isn't such a big deal on older grades but to a preschooler kindergarten kids seem old. Or when you are in kindergarten many kids don't want to play with first graders. A lot of kids are never going to start playing soccer. The other option is to make A and B groups. So everyone born in 2015 Jan-June is 2015A and those born July-Dec are 2015B.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My oldest two kids played travel soccer year round. Youngest is born in December and wanted to an after school activity with his friends. He didn't want to play with kids a grade older. So he never started soccer and now plays other sports. I see several younger siblings on my kids travel teams who decided not to play and/or families decided it just wasn't worth it to do travel with younger set of kids. After this pandemic ends I think soccer will lose even more kids both in rec and travel.

A kid with a December birthday has four months of kids the same grade as him on his team, usually more due to redshirting. My kid’s age group at his club is pretty evenly divided between 2 grades

I have 2 kids with late birthdays who play. One is on a top team at the club and she's the only one in her grade on that team. My other is on the 3rd team for this particular club and the team is pretty split with half being in each grade. I think the more competitive teams have older players

But thousands if not millions more kids are playing rec where the “top” team is not an issue.

In rec kids want to play with their classmates, so it makes more sense to change cut off. It isn't such a big deal on older grades but to a preschooler kindergarten kids seem old. Or when you are in kindergarten many kids don't want to play with first graders. A lot of kids are never going to start playing soccer. The other option is to make A and B groups. So everyone born in 2015 Jan-June is 2015A and those born July-Dec are 2015B.

They can play with their classmates under the existing age breaks , the argument was the top teams at clubs tend to skew older. This isn’t a concern in rec because there is no top team. My kids always liked playing with older kids anyway. So weird this is such a sticking point for one or two.

I’ll add under the old age grouping, our local rec leagues had two years playing together (had u6, u8, u10 etc), so even under your preferred scheme, many kids were still playing with much older kids.

This calendar v. school year debate is a total red herring. There are much larger reasons kids are leaving soccer— predominantly fewer options to play and learn outside expensive and time intensive travel/club circuit.

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/sports/covid-youth-sports-canceled.html

Estimate from Aspen Institute is that participation in youth sports (broadly defined) is down 50%. Of course, a lot of that may not be the result of choice if you play sports that are totally shut down or for schools that are not playing.