ECNL moving to school year not calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

You ever notice how DEI and RAE seem like the same arguement?

You are going to have to point out how a strategy to solve a problem relates to an unrelated scientific finding to us non racists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

You ever notice how DEI and RAE seem like the same arguement?

You are going to have to point out how a strategy to solve a problem relates to an unrelated scientific finding to us non racists.

I would say that in both situations people just move the goalposts around however it fits their arguement.

Also if you don't believe in RAE or DEI people call you racist or just say you're "wrong".

Also also in both situations it all depends on specific defining criteria. As an example at the highest levels of youth soccer RAE isn't even considered. This is because there are freaks of nature playing 1-2 years up and dominating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

You ever notice how DEI and RAE seem like the same arguement?

You are going to have to point out how a strategy to solve a problem relates to an unrelated scientific finding to us non racists.

I would say that in both situations people just move the goalposts around however it fits their arguement.

Also if you don't believe in RAE or DEI people call you racist or just say you're "wrong".

Also also in both situations it all depends on specific defining criteria. As an example at the highest levels of youth soccer RAE isn't even considered. This is because there are freaks of nature playing 1-2 years up and dominating.

Got it. You only believe in problems that affect you, that is how they are related.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

You still don't need waivers. Just make the rule "if you're enrolled in xyz grade and born 60 days from the cutoff you can play with that age group" This would be to address different school start dates across the nation only.

General FYI I prefer BY because of all the nonsense SY brings up. As you've seen on this thread. By tieing the cutoff to something not school grade related you avoid all the complexities which makes things 10x easier to implement at clubs.. Just wait, SY differences from state to state + tournaments with all kind of oddball rules to accommodate everyone will get annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

You ever notice how DEI and RAE seem like the same arguement?

You are going to have to point out how a strategy to solve a problem relates to an unrelated scientific finding to us non racists.

I would say that in both situations people just move the goalposts around however it fits their arguement.

Also if you don't believe in RAE or DEI people call you racist or just say you're "wrong".

Also also in both situations it all depends on specific defining criteria. As an example at the highest levels of youth soccer RAE isn't even considered. This is because there are freaks of nature playing 1-2 years up and dominating.

Got it. You only believe in problems that affect you, that is how they are related.

Stop you're embarrassing yourself.

See I can provide responses that don't even relate to the conversation to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

You still don't need waivers. Just make the rule "if you're enrolled in xyz grade and born 60 days from the cutoff you can play with that age group" This would be to address different school start dates across the nation only.

General FYI I prefer BY because of all the nonsense SY brings up. As you've seen on this thread. By tieing the cutoff to something not school grade related you avoid all the complexities which makes things 10x easier to implement at clubs.. Just wait, SY differences from state to state + tournaments with all kind of oddball rules to accommodate everyone will get annoying.

- That’s a great suggestion - having a window for a cutoff to align with grade for the leagues that go SY. 60 seems reasonable and would likely solve that issue across the country with different start dates.

- There are good arguments for both SY and BY. The issues you bring up on SY is likely the reason US soccer punted on any decision until 2026 and left it to the leagues to decide. They will come up with guidelines to address those things. If some leagues go SY and some stay BY I think you will see less crossover tournaments at the younger ages, or a lot of different divisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

You ever notice how DEI and RAE seem like the same arguement?

You are going to have to point out how a strategy to solve a problem relates to an unrelated scientific finding to us non racists.

I would say that in both situations people just move the goalposts around however it fits their arguement.

Also if you don't believe in RAE or DEI people call you racist or just say you're "wrong".

Also also in both situations it all depends on specific defining criteria. As an example at the highest levels of youth soccer RAE isn't even considered. This is because there are freaks of nature playing 1-2 years up and dominating.

Got it. You only believe in problems that affect you, that is how they are related.

Stop you're embarrassing yourself.

See I can provide responses that don't even relate to the conversation to.

What?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

You still don't need waivers. Just make the rule "if you're enrolled in xyz grade and born 60 days from the cutoff you can play with that age group" This would be to address different school start dates across the nation only.

General FYI I prefer BY because of all the nonsense SY brings up. As you've seen on this thread. By tieing the cutoff to something not school grade related you avoid all the complexities which makes things 10x easier to implement at clubs.. Just wait, SY differences from state to state + tournaments with all kind of oddball rules to accommodate everyone will get annoying.

- That’s a great suggestion - having a window for a cutoff to align with grade for the leagues that go SY. 60 seems reasonable and would likely solve that issue across the country with different start dates.

- There are good arguments for both SY and BY. The issues you bring up on SY is likely the reason US soccer punted on any decision until 2026 and left it to the leagues to decide. They will come up with guidelines to address those things. If some leagues go SY and some stay BY I think you will see less crossover tournaments at the younger ages, or a lot of different divisions.

BY teams can always "play up" in SY tournaments. So that's not an issue.

The problem will be that BY clubs won't want theur teams playing up against SY teams and being at a disadvantage.

What will happen is the two groups BY and SY will completely seperateand rarely play each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

This is the perfect response to illustrate one doesn’t understand RAE…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

You still don't need waivers. Just make the rule "if you're enrolled in xyz grade and born 60 days from the cutoff you can play with that age group" This would be to address different school start dates across the nation only.

General FYI I prefer BY because of all the nonsense SY brings up. As you've seen on this thread. By tieing the cutoff to something not school grade related you avoid all the complexities which makes things 10x easier to implement at clubs.. Just wait, SY differences from state to state + tournaments with all kind of oddball rules to accommodate everyone will get annoying.

- That’s a great suggestion - having a window for a cutoff to align with grade for the leagues that go SY. 60 seems reasonable and would likely solve that issue across the country with different start dates.

- There are good arguments for both SY and BY. The issues you bring up on SY is likely the reason US soccer punted on any decision until 2026 and left it to the leagues to decide. They will come up with guidelines to address those things. If some leagues go SY and some stay BY I think you will see less crossover tournaments at the younger ages, or a lot of different divisions.

BY teams can always "play up" in SY tournaments. So that's not an issue.

The problem will be that BY clubs won't want theur teams playing up against SY teams and being at a disadvantage.

What will happen is the two groups BY and SY will completely seperateand rarely play each other.

you're talking a 3/4 month difference, 90% of the teams are going to remain intact and a couple players will have to move around... BY teams aren't playing up, lol. A 2009 SY team would probably have 1 or 2 players born Sept 2008 - Dec 2008, the rest of the team would be born in 2009 - 2010 and a BY 2009 team will be filled with 2009 - 2010. I don't know why there are hundreds of pages on this thread, it's not that big a deal, get over it, move on. Someone will also be the oldest and someone will always be the youngest regardless of BY or SY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

- I agree that after a certain age RAE becomes less of an issue. I think most people agree that RAE is prevalent in younger ages because of the growth/maturity/etc. disparity between young kids only months apart. It’s from there that the kids who are “older” by only a few months get selected for the better teams, better trainings, etc. because of their size, speed, etc. and that compounds until they are older and it levels off. The “younger” portion those kids that have enough skill to keep up until things level off will eventually be fine. But the others get left behind, put in worse teams with less training, and then just dropout for baseball/football/basketball. That’s the argument. Do with it what you will.

- I think most people can agree that blanket waivers is probably not a great idea. There should be some guardrails. It seems MLSN has some. The discussion with waivers on this forum with the SY argument has been waivers for the Aug. kids who are in that purgatory position based on whatever the cutoff may be (8/1 or 9/1). In that situation, the kids with waivers would at most be 30 days older than the next oldest kid in the age group they are playing down for, but playing with kids in their grade.

If we agree that RAE has little to no impact on kids at U13, then this limited form of waivers shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Your comments about coaches exploiting a waiver rule and questioning whether the kid is just good or older perfectly highlight the RAE impact. The fact of the matter is there will always be an RAE impact no matter what you do (SY, BY, GY).

You still don't need waivers. Just make the rule "if you're enrolled in xyz grade and born 60 days from the cutoff you can play with that age group" This would be to address different school start dates across the nation only.

General FYI I prefer BY because of all the nonsense SY brings up. As you've seen on this thread. By tieing the cutoff to something not school grade related you avoid all the complexities which makes things 10x easier to implement at clubs.. Just wait, SY differences from state to state + tournaments with all kind of oddball rules to accommodate everyone will get annoying.

- That’s a great suggestion - having a window for a cutoff to align with grade for the leagues that go SY. 60 seems reasonable and would likely solve that issue across the country with different start dates.

- There are good arguments for both SY and BY. The issues you bring up on SY is likely the reason US soccer punted on any decision until 2026 and left it to the leagues to decide. They will come up with guidelines to address those things. If some leagues go SY and some stay BY I think you will see less crossover tournaments at the younger ages, or a lot of different divisions.

BY teams can always "play up" in SY tournaments. So that's not an issue.

The problem will be that BY clubs won't want theur teams playing up against SY teams and being at a disadvantage.

What will happen is the two groups BY and SY will completely seperateand rarely play each other.

you're talking a 3/4 month difference, 90% of the teams are going to remain intact and a couple players will have to move around... BY teams aren't playing up, lol. A 2009 SY team would probably have 1 or 2 players born Sept 2008 - Dec 2008, the rest of the team would be born in 2009 - 2010 and a BY 2009 team will be filled with 2009 - 2010. I don't know why there are hundreds of pages on this thread, it's not that big a deal, get over it, move on. Someone will also be the oldest and someone will always be the youngest regardless of BY or SY.

I’m for SY. But the VAST majority of SY supporters don’t understand anything except “this is a potential advantage for my kid.” You cannot meet them with logic, to them it’s all “BY don’t want to play against SY because SY wins!”.

[Anonymous]

holy cow you guys are still going on about this???

Your kids must be below average players if you are this worried.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:holy cow you guys are still going on about this???

Your kids must be below average players if you are this worried.

i'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick then read 540+ pages of a BY vs SY "argument" which no one has any input into...you know what happens if some leagues adopt SY? NOTHING, people will still join teams playing in that league. It was SY like 6~7 years ago and everyone was fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aug. kids parents are worried.

My kids born in December so no, just trying to figure out how this would affect her friend who’s a few months older born in August and is in 7th grade.

I’m not sure how a waiver makes her 16 her freshman year?

It's because parents with $$$ will get what they want.

Pretty hard for ECNL to not give a held back "regrade" kid a waiver to play down when there's 30k stapled to the application.

Because of this ECNL avoids the entire discussion by not allowing waivers.

For sure. People who are crazy will just hold a kid back or homschool them to acomplish the goal and greese the wheel with some cash.

By 2028 ECNL will be Grad Year. Especially now that JC kids don’t waste eligibility. ECNL wants to extend the cash cow. Will have a U20 team for high school graduates who don’t get recruited. When that happens I hope you can survive the panic attack.

And this is why BY leagues will do better than SY.

Once the corruption bridge is crossed there's no going back.

What do you mean my “do better” because the team won’t be as competitive due to them being younger. Or do you mean more participation and will do better financially?

Most parents with Aug to Dec would not want to play BY or maybe they will? We will find out over the next few years.

I just don’t see kids and families who have kids with actual talent will be afraid of a few kids being held back. I’d be willing to bet we would see less then 5% of players would be hold backs on the girls side.

SY + RAE only matters up until u13 and on lower level generally not competitive teams. Once you get to the highest levels of a sport ie GA MLSN ECNL nobody cares about playing with their friends at school or what month of the year you were born. It's all about can your kid provide enough value to help their team win at the highest level.

Reguarding why letting players play down via waivers is bad is because the action calls into question if the player playing down is actually good or just older. It also opens up the door to coaches exploiting playing down by specifically searching for these type of players. You end up with a team that beats everyone else full of kids playing down on the roster. If SY alternatives (BY) hold the line and do not allow playing down and stay high level parents and players will go to that league because it seems more fair and professional.

Reguarding the u19 comment after the age of 18 what age you are no longer matters at the highest level. Either you're good enough to play or you're not.

Is the Jan kid good or just older?! lol same logic dumbass…BY parent doing mental gymnastics

You’re an idiot. You don’t understand RAE.

Explain it then…is the Jan 2014 kid older or better than the Dec 2014 kid?

Is the Dec 2013 older or better than the Jan 2014 kid?

I was referring to the comment that waivers are bad because we will not know if the kid is good or just older…just like BY is bad because the Jan kids play with kids a grade under them…dumbass

That’s the point. You don’t understand RAE.

You can trot out the same smarmy bromide “are they better or just marginally older” remark through all of youth soccer. But once they get to college or pros nobody says it. But if it was a truthful remark about 16 year olds, why wouldn’t it be true about 20 year olds?

You know the answer intuitively. Maybe not the RAE aspect of it, but intuitively you understand that 11 months of maturation at 6 is different from 14, and is different at 18, etc.

But the idea that you can glibly just undercut any kid by rolling out that glib little statement that makes you and other parents feel better about their own kids situation is pretty lame.

So are you for or against trying to address and fix RAE?

This is the perfect response to illustrate one doesn’t understand RAE…

Thank you. So many people assume RAE is about short kids around the teenage years w/o actually reading the research.