Huge ECNL News coming 7/1/2024

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If my DC had been a trapped ECNL player I would have viewed the situation as an opportunity. Trapped players get the clear advantage of being seen and targeted a year earlier by college coaches. No different than playing up a year. It’s like jumping in front of the line.

As you can see from this thread, September parents would prefer being oldest month of the year.

If you would take your blinders off you would see that there is a recruiting piece and equal playing opportunities that is more important, it’s not about being the oldest

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

How are these kids disenfranchised?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If my DC had been a trapped ECNL player I would have viewed the situation as an opportunity. Trapped players get the clear advantage of being seen and targeted a year earlier by college coaches. No different than playing up a year. It’s like jumping in front of the line.

As you can see from this thread, September parents would prefer being oldest month of the year.

This! And they’d also claim it was better for everyone, and that they aren’t self-interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

How are these kids disenfranchised?

I don’t find ecnl and disenfranchised to be synonymous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

Please explain how moving the age range disenfranchises children born in may-july?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

The simplest system is birth year, hand down. The fact that someone would argue differently, imo, is not in good faith.

Also, the belief that recruiting processes currently don’t take the birth year and / or trapped players into consideration is also ludicrous. The idea that over 10 years of a birth year banding, that has been done before, and has been done in other sports, is just not accounted for by coaches, whose futures and finances are directly impacted by the results of the teams they can assemble is also ludicrous.

It’s just excuse making: “My son would be playing for Clemson, Stanford or UNC if it were not for his birth year…it really crushed his development.” “We spent 5 years in club soccer, but she quit at 14 because she couldn’t play on a team with her friends due to her November birth month. If she’d kept playing, I bet she’d be playing for FSU or Big Blue. Now she just plays on her club’s 4th team and her HS team.”

Nobody knows the future. It’s all counter factuals with the trapped kids. I promise nobody who has a Q4 kid get into their dream school is complaining about having a “trapped kid.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

The simplest system is birth year, hand down. The fact that someone would argue differently, imo, is not in good faith.

Also, the belief that recruiting processes currently don’t take the birth year and / or trapped players into consideration is also ludicrous. The idea that over 10 years of a birth year banding, that has been done before, and has been done in other sports, is just not accounted for by coaches, whose futures and finances are directly impacted by the results of the teams they can assemble is also ludicrous.

It’s just excuse making: “My son would be playing for Clemson, Stanford or UNC if it were not for his birth year…it really crushed his development.” “We spent 5 years in club soccer, but she quit at 14 because she couldn’t play on a team with her friends due to her November birth month. If she’d kept playing, I bet she’d be playing for FSU or Big Blue. Now she just plays on her club’s 4th team and her HS team.”

Nobody knows the future. It’s all counter factuals with the trapped kids. I promise nobody who has a Q4 kid get into their dream school is complaining about having a “trapped kid.”

None of what you wrote was in good faith Give it up

[Anonymous]

Elite: a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.

Everyone isn't elite and everyone isn't supposed to make it to the promise land

Lots of trapped kids with the right attributes, motivations, discipline and talent do just fine.

[Anonymous]

But why have them at all? Why let this problem exist when it could be solved. You are arguing, without data, that it's not a big deal. It could be just fixed and then we could argue more about biobanding and D1 recruiting Europeans instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

The simplest system is birth year, hand down. The fact that someone would argue differently, imo, is not in good faith.

Also, the belief that recruiting processes currently don’t take the birth year and / or trapped players into consideration is also ludicrous. The idea that over 10 years of a birth year banding, that has been done before, and has been done in other sports, is just not accounted for by coaches, whose futures and finances are directly impacted by the results of the teams they can assemble is also ludicrous.

It’s just excuse making: “My son would be playing for Clemson, Stanford or UNC if it were not for his birth year…it really crushed his development.” “We spent 5 years in club soccer, but she quit at 14 because she couldn’t play on a team with her friends due to her November birth month. If she’d kept playing, I bet she’d be playing for FSU or Big Blue. Now she just plays on her club’s 4th team and her HS team.”

Nobody knows the future. It’s all counter factuals with the trapped kids. I promise nobody who has a Q4 kid get into their dream school is complaining about having a “trapped kid.”

+1000 on the last sentence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But why have them at all? Why let this problem exist when it could be solved. You are arguing, without data, that it's not a big deal. It could be just fixed and then we could argue more about biobanding and D1 recruiting Europeans instead.

It's the American way. Your not allowed to fix the root cause, you must come up with ways to treat the symptoms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You will still have players whose club year is misaligned with their school year. With an 8/1 cutoff for ECNL and a 10/1 (or later) cutoff for school, you have players born 8/1-9/30, who are playing soccer with kids the grade below them. So, when scouts are scouting for their grade, the scout has to go to watch two age groups. Because different school districts/regions have different school cutoffs, there is always going to be misalignment. Why disrupt the whole system to change to a system that isn't actually better? If 8/1 was better, why did they change back to calendar year?

Because a system that disenfranchises children just for being born August - December is a bad system. It is not a system, it is the simplest possible way to do this on paper without any additional consideration for impact. It not only needs to be disrupted, it needs to be replaced by an actual system that is more fair and equitable, something that actually solves for various issues, whatever calendar range it is based on. At minimum, if it stays as birth year, recruiting system should adapt to accommodate trapped players so they can be looked at with the rest of the team and elite leagues should lift the limit on trapped players playing ‘down’ while their peers play HS ball or disallow that garbage altogether, like MLS Next. And that’s just the beginning of it.

So changing it to a system that disenfranchises children just for being born in May - July is a better system?

The simplest system is birth year, hand down. The fact that someone would argue differently, imo, is not in good faith.

Also, the belief that recruiting processes currently don’t take the birth year and / or trapped players into consideration is also ludicrous. The idea that over 10 years of a birth year banding, that has been done before, and has been done in other sports, is just not accounted for by coaches, whose futures and finances are directly impacted by the results of the teams they can assemble is also ludicrous.

It’s just excuse making: “My son would be playing for Clemson, Stanford or UNC if it were not for his birth year…it really crushed his development.” “We spent 5 years in club soccer, but she quit at 14 because she couldn’t play on a team with her friends due to her November birth month. If she’d kept playing, I bet she’d be playing for FSU or Big Blue. Now she just plays on her club’s 4th team and her HS team.”

Nobody knows the future. It’s all counter factuals with the trapped kids. I promise nobody who has a Q4 kid get into their dream school is complaining about having a “trapped kid.”

Except that a trapped player is taking over the spot of a player who needs to be committed and has less time to be seen by colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Elite: a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.

Everyone isn't elite and everyone isn't supposed to make it to the promise land

Lots of trapped kids with the right attributes, motivations, discipline and talent do just fine.

We just heard from several parents who have trapped kids with different experience. Why do you seem so worried about this potential change ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But why have them at all? Why let this problem exist when it could be solved. You are arguing, without data, that it's not a big deal. It could be just fixed and then we could argue more about biobanding and D1 recruiting Europeans instead.

Because it's no big deal.
Trapped kids in Maryland train with other kids not playing HS soccer from August to November

Every MD club I know have training for trapped kids and EDP has a special league just for kids not playing HS

People seem more concerned with their kid playing with all their teammates