Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:If US Soccer goes back to school year, then there will be no “trapped player”. I see people mixing in ideas of bio-banding and playing up, but that’s all noise. The term “trapped player” is specific to kids who are born in (September?) Oct, Nov, December and therefore are in a different school class than the kids born Jan-September.
That’s it, nothing fancy or strange. Sure, there will be edge cases of kids who are held back or moved forward in school, but for the vast majority, the move would re-align them for the purposes of college recruiting.
Frankly, if I had a trapped player I would want this. It really sucks for the kids who are sophomores in HS during that crucial year when all of their teammates are all-in on recruiting. Most significant is just the sheer number of coaches that show up. If you are U17, you might have 60-120 College coaches show up at your ECNL showcase or Jeff Cup game. When you are U18/19, it’s 35 coaches, and half of them are only showing up to make sure the kids they already signed aren’t slacking off.
Won't there still be players whose soccer year and club year are misaligned? If the soccer year starts 8/1 but the school cut off is 10/1, the August-September kids are playing a year "down" compared to their school year, right? Is the answer just that there are fewer of them or they are somehow not "trapped"?