ECNL moving to school year not calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School year is the way to go. Let kids compete with who they will graduate with. I have February and December born kids playing ECNL and see it from both sides. As much as my older child has benefited from being older I have seen how difficult just making an ECNL team is for my younger December born player. Doing everything they can just to keep up with the Jones’s.

This change would work out well for your family, but not one with an August birthday. Then the August kid would have to do everything they can just to keep up with the Jones's. The trapped player argument has some merit, your "keep up with the Jonse's" does not.

At the end of the day parents will always advocate for what’s best for their kid. Which is understandable. I would just say if the kids are eventually going to get grouped back together for U18/U19 why not just start the process early so kids can start figuring out their place in the pecking order based on who they will graduate with.

[Anonymous]

As an anonymous person I can say. I’ve heard they (ECNL) can not make a full switch to school year without US soccer. They are however looking into allowing trapped players to play with their graduating class regardless of birth month or year for U16-U19. U13-U15 would be later born players which no direct info was told to me what that means. But some kids will have the “option” to play with their school aged group. Doesn’t sound like it be a free for all but ECNL would only allow each team to use a certain amount of players.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an anonymous person I can say. I’ve heard they (ECNL) can not make a full switch to school year without US soccer. They are however looking into allowing trapped players to play with their graduating class regardless of birth month or year for U16-U19. U13-U15 would be later born players which no direct info was told to me what that means. But some kids will have the “option” to play with their school aged group. Doesn’t sound like it be a free for all but ECNL would only allow each team to use a certain amount of players.

Other than semantics, allowing a handful of 4th quarter birthday kids to play down a year is essentially the same thing as going to calendar year and just a different flavor of MLS Next's 3 bioband kids per team.

An argument could be that limiting the number of trapped kids playing down could address the relative age issue for a select group of 4th quarter kids but maintain the relative age advantage for 1st quarter kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an anonymous person I can say. I’ve heard they (ECNL) can not make a full switch to school year without US soccer. They are however looking into allowing trapped players to play with their graduating class regardless of birth month or year for U16-U19. U13-U15 would be later born players which no direct info was told to me what that means. But some kids will have the “option” to play with their school aged group. Doesn’t sound like it be a free for all but ECNL would only allow each team to use a certain amount of players.

Other than semantics, allowing a handful of 4th quarter birthday kids to play down a year is essentially the same thing as going to calendar year and just a different flavor of MLS Next's 3 bioband kids per team.

An argument could be that limiting the number of trapped kids playing down could address the relative age issue for a select group of 4th quarter kids but maintain the relative age advantage for 1st quarter kids.

Meant "same thing as going to school year"

[Anonymous]

As someone who’s been a fly on the wall for conversation being had. Nothing is set in stone. But change will happen in some way for 2025/2026 for ECNL. So I’ll say this, make sure your kids are putting in the work and whatever happens your kid is ready for a possible switch up.

ECNL wants to compete with the bio banding allocation for boys mls next and also wants to be a forward thinker on the girls side that is best for kids recruited for college.

Winter is coming… or not..depends on perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who’s been a fly on the wall for conversation being had. Nothing is set in stone. But change will happen in some way for 2025/2026 for ECNL. So I’ll say this, make sure your kids are putting in the work and whatever happens your kid is ready for a possible switch up.

ECNL wants to compete with the bio banding allocation for boys mls next and also wants to be a forward thinker on the girls side that is best for kids recruited for college.

Winter is coming… or not..depends on perspective.

How does changing an arbitrary date do that? This is just more of the three card monte sh#t and does nothing to address serious problems with ECNL and developing players. There is no problem with college admissions or the age bracketing. Bio banning is for professional development not for college. 90% of ECNL players will play in college because college is just a continuation of ECNL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who’s been a fly on the wall for conversation being had. Nothing is set in stone. But change will happen in some way for 2025/2026 for ECNL. So I’ll say this, make sure your kids are putting in the work and whatever happens your kid is ready for a possible switch up.

ECNL wants to compete with the bio banding allocation for boys mls next and also wants to be a forward thinker on the girls side that is best for kids recruited for college.

Winter is coming… or not..depends on perspective.

How does changing an arbitrary date do that? This is just more of the three card monte sh#t and does nothing to address serious problems with ECNL and developing players. There is no problem with college admissions or the age bracketing. Bio banning is for professional development not for college. 90% of ECNL players will play in college because college is just a continuation of ECNL.

Bio banding is not for professional development it’s for youth development and to help extend the olive branch for younger players to develop with kids around their same age and size.

Many ECNL team are older born players because they are playing against kids mostly around their own age. At the end of the day you should t have a problem with your kid competing with kids in their own grade as that’s who they are competing with for college scholarships unless you feel if they are no longer the oldest that they are incapable of competing with a handful of kids who are older but are still in their graduating class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who’s been a fly on the wall for conversation being had. Nothing is set in stone. But change will happen in some way for 2025/2026 for ECNL. So I’ll say this, make sure your kids are putting in the work and whatever happens your kid is ready for a possible switch up.

ECNL wants to compete with the bio banding allocation for boys mls next and also wants to be a forward thinker on the girls side that is best for kids recruited for college.

Winter is coming… or not..depends on perspective.

How does changing an arbitrary date do that? This is just more of the three card monte sh#t and does nothing to address serious problems with ECNL and developing players. There is no problem with college admissions or the age bracketing. Bio banning is for professional development not for college. 90% of ECNL players will play in college because college is just a continuation of ECNL.

To say there’s no problem with college admissions or age bracketing I think depends on where you fall because it’s very clear in the data of who’s getting offered scholarships that it heavily favors January to July born players compared to August to December.

[Anonymous]

No such thing as a perfect scenario that can be set in place for this many people. Especially with how the United States is set up scholastically compared to other countries. At the end of the day ECNL should act in the best interest of what prepares kids to compete with their fellow classmates and gets them ready for difficulties of earning a scholarship to college. At the end of the day the kids all get merged together in the last year which causes problems for everyone except the top 20% of recruits. Let your kid compete don’t be afraid of kids in their same grade taking spots unless you are just relying on being older than everyone to be your saving grace.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who’s been a fly on the wall for conversation being had. Nothing is set in stone. But change will happen in some way for 2025/2026 for ECNL. So I’ll say this, make sure your kids are putting in the work and whatever happens your kid is ready for a possible switch up.

ECNL wants to compete with the bio banding allocation for boys mls next and also wants to be a forward thinker on the girls side that is best for kids recruited for college.

Winter is coming… or not..depends on perspective.

Most reasonable people would agree that change is needed. I also think that whose concerned Q1/Q2 parents would be happy since their kids could play with a few older kids, since the center argument was about younger kids getting better by playing with older kids.

I hope they also mandate it to U9-U12 pre-ecnl age brackets because this is where it all begins.

[Anonymous]

This would be yet one more band aid that doesn’t solve the root cause of the problem they created.

We see how well it worked out for MLS Next.

Please just fix the problem vs treating the symptoms.

[Anonymous]

You all are lemmings. A quick google search on the topic and it's clear this is click bait from an X (twitter) post. If ecnl was going to do this for fall 2025, there would be an official announcement. The post was a typed up DM and not a screenshot. Use your brain and stop falling for click bait.

[Anonymous]

Way more smoke than some random click bait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all are lemmings. A quick google search on the topic and it's clear this is click bait from an X (twitter) post. If ecnl was going to do this for fall 2025, there would be an official announcement. The post was a typed up DM and not a screenshot. Use your brain and stop falling for click bait.

This! This whole thread is conjecture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all are lemmings. A quick google search on the topic and it's clear this is click bait from an X (twitter) post. If ecnl was going to do this for fall 2025, there would be an official announcement. The post was a typed up DM and not a screenshot. Use your brain and stop falling for click bait.

This! This whole thread is conjecture.

I have heard that next year the age group will change for ecnl, but i don't have any specifics. It would make sense for this to the be last year based on calendar year, since these are the last kids that went through the age group change after u9.