ECNL moving to school year not calendar

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

So your answer is what's in it for me and superstitions?

Using this logic if ECNL girls goes SY and GA stays BY all the current Q1 players will switch to GA because that's the new "hitters park".

I would say will be a bigger draw for current Q2 families than Q1. But if your kid going to lose minutes it might be worth the switch from ECNL to GA for their development and confidence.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

The. Wouldn’t it make sense to goto GY for high school ages? Kids can’t be recruited until Junior year anyways.

If indeed the difference once girls are 16 and up doesn’t matter.

News flash it definitely matters even in college most girls struggle because they need to gain muscle to compete with the older girls.

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

The. Wouldn’t it make sense to goto GY for high school ages? Kids can’t be recruited until Junior year anyways.

If indeed the difference once girls are 16 and up doesn’t matter.

News flash it definitely matters even in college most girls struggle because they need to gain muscle to compete with the older girls.

I thought they wanted a jump from U14 to U19 with no in between age groups because all the kids are interchangeable.

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

Just another Q1 parent talking nonsense and trying to ignore the mountain of research….but yeah then SY shouldn’t be a problem for all the Q1 u-littles since it doesn’t matter

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

What podcast?

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

Just another Q1 parent talking nonsense and trying to ignore the mountain of research….but yeah then SY shouldn’t be a problem for all the Q1 u-littles since it doesn’t matter

Q4 Hat, that you? 🤣

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

Guess no cites?

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

Guess no cites?

What is it you want PP to post research about? The ad hominem or the statement that if one’s kid isn’t “in the mix” of the top pack at 16, they’re cooked long term?

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Anonymous wrote:They already know what they are going to do at this point about age spans. They haven’t gotten this far and don’t know. So no amount of emailing them to allow this or that is going to matter.

I don't think they do. The US Youth Soccer guy hinted that they would be creating different rules to accommodate different districts/states. This will never work because districts change start dates all the time. Also it would be impossible to keep track of all the different states and school start dates to maintain up to date rules.

That is for local league. For national league, it can only have one cutoff date with no waivers. And ECNL CEO already hinted 9/1. I will bet my money on it.

We'll see, 9/1 + 60 gets rid of ALL complaints from parents + trapped players.

9/1 by itself still has trapped players depending on the state/district. Which means they'll still have a group of complaining parents.

ECNL will not give a f**k on those parents whose kids are marginal and can only play down to join NL. They will not bring value to ECNL.

Just reread your comment and I don't think you understand how 9/1 + 60 would work.

With 9/1 + 60 players born from 9/1 to 9/1 that year only need to show a birth cert to register to play.

If you were born 60 days before 9/1 you can play with your grade by providing a birth cert and proof of school enrollment at X grade.

All others that are a year older in school but are born 60 days before 9/1 won't be able to play down. (Because they're not in the correct grade in school)

Make sense? Nobody is playing down + all trapped players are addressed.

Scouts would only see one grade playing on the field during showcases.

They will go to a hard cutoff date if 9/1. If I remember right during the last podcast (I know, I know) they brought up percentage of players effected by saying 9/1 will be effect the least amount of players as opposed to 8/1. I would say they have thought it through and are going with a hard date. They don’t want to mess with +30-60 when they can just set the date.

The reason why I know 9/1 + 60 will happen is because it addresses all kinds of issues + makes things easier for clubs to implement SY.

Go listen to it then
They are just trying to minimize the trap player and never said eliminate the trap player. If you do the + 60 might as well go to a 14 month span….they are not going to do that.

You don't want to do this because it allows players to play down a grade in school.

9/1 + 60 doesn't allow (aug july) players who started school early and are a grade ahead to play down with the grade they should be in school.

+ 60 picks up kids born 60 days BEFORE the cutofff (9/1), right? Doesn’t that address kids who started school late (or have a school cutoff (8/1) that is earlier than the soccer cutoff (9/1))? I’m asking about players who are born AFTER the soccer cutoff. 9/1 cutoff for school and soccer says a Sept 2012 kid is u12 and 6th grade (the oldest in her class). But if that kid started school one year early, she’s actually in 7th grade (the youngest in her class) and her teammates are in 6th grade. +60 doesn’t address that, right?

Correct, 9/1 + 60 does not allow kids that are older (traditionally) than their grade in school to "play down" with their grade in school.

Put more bluntly if your kid is a "hold back / regrade" 9/1 + 60 won't let them play with the grade they're in at school.They"ll have to play with the grade up.

So the 9/1 + 60 is basically what USA Lacrosse has done, but limits it to two months as oppose to 3? You have a 9/1 soccer cutoff, but if you’re within 60 days of the cutoff (July and August months) then you can play with your graduation year. So if you’re born Aug 3, 2012, but a 2031 grad as opposed to a 2030 grad since you started late, then you’d play with your grad year since you’re within 60 days from the cutoff, right?

Kind of..

It also makes sure players who are of age but not in the correct grade can't play down.

Different opinion. 9/1+60 is stupid.

Everyone except you knows that you're embarrassing yourself.

Or it’s stupid and makes things more complicated than they need to be.

Anytime you give one subset an option you don’t give the others, it just screws up the system and lends itself to abuse.

Would 1/1+60 make sense? No.

9/1+60 only makes marginal sense because SY isn’t a clean date. But it’s not workable nationally, and it’s not workable competitively.

But it takes a stupid issue, age cutoffs, and just ups the complication, which makes it dumber than the underlying issue.

Welcome to a gigantic duh...

As I've said before I prefer BY because it's easier for clubs to implement + makes more sense.

I've only included 9/1 + 60 detail because it's the only way to implement SY + make it work for everyone involved.

Having a mid July kid and suggesting SY+60 is saying I want to be at the front of the line. Preferring BY over SY in this instance is saying I prefer to be in the middle of the line rather than the back. Just generic selfishness cloaked in pretend empathy.

Believe it or not but my kid is a trapped player and I still prefer BY. From a personal perspective this allows them to "play up" at a more challenging level.

But I would consider switching to a SY+60 league. SY+60 isn't that bad if it completely addressesed all trapped players. It would be nice to go to a tournament and everyone on the field was one grade.

It would be annoying switching to SY to address trapped players and there were still trapped players.

I think you give too much credit to "grades". They can vary especially by district and even more so, between public and private. That's why soccer really should stick to AGE.

SY+60 has an age window and grade requirements.

On paper, perhaps -- although it's not really been documented as an option in this youth soccer discussion anywhere, except as examples from other sports -- where they STRUGGLE with implementation/cheating.

SY+60 eligibility window is 14 months

Only players born between 7/1 and 9/1 would need to provide an additional proof of grade enrolled in school.

You might get a couple of players lieing about their grade in school. But they would still need to be in the 14 month eligibility window. Which means even though they're cheating they're also the same age as other players from different states. Annoying but not the end of the world + would be easy to address. Definately not GY though.

As mentioned several pages back, SY +60 rewards parents that held their July kid back or enrolled them late in states where the school cutoff is in August or September (almost all states). SY +60 guy doesn’t realize/understand/get that part.

What’s your definition of an award in this scenario? Bring the “oldest”? There will always be an oldest and youngest no matter what. The goal is to align as many kids within their school year that works across an entire country.

This argument for grade year is great and all but in this is a zero sum game, more people are against grade year than for it and leagues are against going grade year.

Nobody is argueing for GY.

They are argueing for SY+60 which completely bans the players GY allows.

That's what other sports have tried/trying and apparently failing at because it open's Pandora's box.

Can you give an actual example?

https://www.reddit.com/r/lacrosse/comments/1dck4jr/why_can_youth_lacrosse_not_go_to_birth_years/?sort=top

And Lacrosse made a change to fix that, which is very similar to this SY 60+ thing (I didn’t start that).

Hasn't filtered down very well ... https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1251438.page

So your sample size is a new post you started to get someone else’s opinion?

And that conversation doesn’t even talk about the change. It just talks about what it used to be.

Listen - NO ONE WANTS a true grade/grad year system because WE ALL AGREE that having the potential for a 24 month disparity between players isn’t good. What’s being discussed is not that. And if people really are having a hard time understanding that then there is nothing more anyone can do or say to help them do so.

Don't gaslight that thread. There's some clear questions about SY+90 and they pretty much don't think much of it.

I can’t tell if you’re joking

Anything SY+## is a joke, aka fiction. Lacrosse confirms expanding beyond 12 months causes disenchantment.

Does it though? Lacrosse seems to have had a bigger problem with the straight grad year.

I’m honestly having a hard time wondering why people are so butt hurt about a 60 days, or 61, etc. It’s just a reasonable solution to keep kids in the same school year.

Because playing down a year is viewed as cheating and it is not one of the options.

But nobody is playing down with SY+60 in fact it specifically protects against this.

July and August birthdates will be considered holdbacks, cheaters etc as they will need grade waivers to play down a year. This isn't the first rodeo for soccer so they aren't going to open the floodgates for parental harassment meaning the will hold fast to a 12 month window.

They’re not playing down a year. Can’t help you if you can’t grasp that.

Yes, they are playing down by definition if they are outside the established 12 month window.

We’re not talking about a 12 month window. We’re talking about grouping kids in their same grade with a slightly more flexible (and realistic) timeframe that includes all kids within a grade while protecting against extreme cases of holdbacks.

Yeah, I get it. You want a 12 month window with a few days shy of a full 2 months allowance for kids to playdown who will be referred to as cheaters. Like they are scorned in lacrosse.

Call them cheaters if you will. Scorn away. That’s all noise. What matters TO THESE KIDS is being able to play with their classmates like everyone else and not getting trapped, consistent with the dual goals of school year registration.

People making the argument about playing with classmates don't have kids that play at high levels of soccer or are U little parents with no understanding of travel soccer.

💯
Also, there is such a glaring disconnect between the rec level/U-little comments on here and what ECNL is actually - National level players, teams and competition! These players, teams and clubs represent ECNL — and the comments on here are so disconnected from that reality.

When kids enter youth soccer, they want to play with their friends which tends to match school year.

And if they reach the end of the youth line, they often want to play in college so playing school year again makes sense as it matches college scouting.

Two different scenarios but same linear path, school year.

A divergence to birth year along this path would be bizarro and pointless.

I get the thinking that SY matches college scouting.

It’s incorrect. College scouting follows players, not teams.

"There’s also the recruiting aspect. I spoke with multiple coaches who coach both high school and ECNL and they all said college scouts need a streamlined process. Think about it, they go to these showcase events and have to look up the graduation year of a player. With NCAA recruiting rules, they might be able to talk to one but not the other. Besides, working with a school-age calendar would make synchronizing events more fluid." https://goodgamekid.substack.com/p/us-soccers-missed-goal-the-case-for

You realize your quote made PP’s point? Coaches / Scouts follow players. Age cutoffs don’t matter.

College scouts need the streamlined process that school year would offer compared to birth year to scout players. Your scouting teams thing is a dead cat argument.

?

I’m pretty sure college coaches and scouts have their systems setup just fine, and don’t need youth coaches to tell them how to do their jobs.

Just because you think you know better, doesn’t mean you’re right.

They don't as illustrated by the author who knows better, hence the quote. And explains why youth soccer is going SY and how it's one year paralysis is a cop out.

Kicking and screaming won't stop SY.

🙄Ok genius, I am a SY proponent.

The point I’m making is that college coaches didn’t make this change, didn’t request it, didn’t even complain about the youth age cutoff.

Critical reading is clearly under taught. Author quotes someone, who spoke to youth coaches and is 3rd hand opinionating on what he thinks college coaches should want, using a 2 party removed appeal to authority. It is a worthless and uninformed opinion. And there is nothing of value from it that you can rely on as support of any position. The fact that the worthless opinion supports SY, doesn’t mean squat.

Critical reading lesson - Here are the dead give aways that can help you.

1) when the person quoted is giving an opinion of what others think / feel / need. It’s
Even less valuable when it’s a quoted person saying “I know a person who knows a guy and this is what the guy thinks.”

2) “Think about it” is a typically a tell that they’re trying to make something sound like common sense. That is a phrase used to convince, not to present facts. Critical thinking cap should go on your head when you hear phrases like that.

3) “ synchronizing events more fluid” and “streamlined process” those are buzzy, but meaningless. They’re used to sound more authoritative (remember, the quote is of a person who talked to youth coaches, who apparently have a direct channel into the brains of college coaches)…so why does the quoted need to sound authoritative? Because it’s an opinion, not a fact. Critical thinking would also call into question both positions; how is college recruiting NOT streamlined? What does making synchronizing event more fluid mean, doesn’t that sound contradictory? Etc etc etc.



I’m solely for SY because it removed the trap excuse. I don’t think age cutoffs matter, so if they don’t matter, why make it an artificially obstacle / limiting belief to some people’s journey. But creating issues that don’t exist in order to make age cut-offs sound more enticing that what they are is stupid, and in my view, dishonest. You don’t need a better reason than “removing the trap excuse.”

"So yeah, a body like the ECNL, whose goal is to get its athletes college exposure, is naturally going to be in favor of the switch back to school year."

😑 based on the reasoning that college coaches don’t know how to do their jobs and follow teams not players….

ECNL is in favor of SY because it maximizes their roster spots, not because it makes college coaches lives easier.

Trapped players take up a roster spot that can’t be explaced. This is the same reason clubs hate playing kids up.

Again, just because some guy says he knows a guy who knows a youth coach who told him that is what college coaches want, doesn’t make it true.

No dog in the fight. But I was listening to a soccer podcast with a D1 coach and he was saying it does make things easier with school based teams. Allows for them to be more efficient with their limited time at showcases.

That’s one guy who I doesn’t speak for everyone but I would assume most coaches would prefer SY to BY when recruiting in the U.S.

Either way "easier" doesn't matter.

College coaches are paid to win. Presenting turds on a platter might visually look more appealing but nobody is going to eat it. This is what ECNL/GY people don't understand. How a league presents its players does not translate into coaches finding the best players that allow them to win. It doesn't matter how players are presented the top players don't change.

The whole field of marketing finds your anonymous hot amusing.

Does SY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

Does BY chage who the best players are on the field during a game?

The answer to both is no. Not in the short term. Also if a recruiter identifies a trapped player and moves on because they're not graduating in the year they expected it's highly likely another recruiter will identify them before they graduate. It's also highly likely that the recruiter will keep an eye on them + reach out when NCAA allows.

The answer to the 2 questions is relative to the other players, yes without question.

MLB hitters don't want to hit in pitcher's parks the year before they become a free agent (and vice versa for hitters). And MLB has a crazy number of scouts and stats to try to overcome such inconsistent issues such as ball parks. That says everything you need to know about how to get noticed for the big payday.

If you think it makes a difference at 16-17 years old you are fooling yourself. All this handwringing over age groups when college has no age grouping. There are 4 year gaps in college. If you're afraid your "trapped" player won't show well giving up a year then college is not for them. There is no hiding and regardless, there is little competitve difference once kids hit high school ages.

Opinions of the future are a dime a dozen, SY and BY competing against each other in the market is going to be a great experiment.

There is always someone at the younger end. The groups have always been a year. Someone is the oldest and the youngest by a year. This is hardly an "experiment". Talent is talent. If you need a cutoff to rise to the top it isn't for you.

Now we will have two competing 12 month periods. First time top of youth soccer will have both, BY and SY competing. Will be a nice experiment.

it won't make a difference. Talent is talent.

And wrong hubris is wrong hubris.

Again, if you believe you need a cutoff to better expose your kid's talent then she isn't as talented as you think she is, but you already know that is the case. You feel you need this change because she isn't standing out as is. At 16 years it will not make the difference you hop it does.

Can cite any research to support your beliefs?

Guess no cites?

What is it you want PP to post research about? The ad hominem or the statement that if one’s kid isn’t “in the mix” of the top pack at 16, they’re cooked long term?

The belligerence is too obvious, might want to hide it better.