Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Will this change affect high school teams at all?

Not at all.

Red-shirted kids will still have their day.[/quote

This is great. I'm so excited. (Sorry June lady)

It's even better--because they will have been playing up year when they hit Fresmen year with the kids now on a team a year below.

It won't effect college recruiting either.

It absolutely will affect college recruiting for Jan.through July kids because all the players for a particular recruiting year won't be on the same team, so college coaches will have to decide whether to see games of the older (Aug. to Dec.) players playing "up" with kids a grade above or see games with the younger kids in that recruiting year (Jan through July) who are playing "down" with some kids in the grade below. College coaches will sensibly think that if the Jan thru July kids wer good enough, they'd be playing up so won't spend any time looking at kids playing for teams in their actual birth year. So instead of benefitting, many Jan thru July kids will actually be harmed because they're forced to play against kids a year or more older in order to be seen by college coaches during the prime recruiting period for their particular class.

This is not reality. The vast majority of kids I have known who went on to play in college attended that college's summer ID camp where the coaches get to see them play over several days, and where the players, according to my DD who has been to several of these ID camps, are grouped by HS graduation year not calendar year.

+100

Colleges even red-shirt themselves.

Large college ID camps may group players by graduation year and that's one important way to get the attention of a particular school and show you're interested in that school. But that involves the player doing the work of placing him/herself in front of the coach. Once a player has demonstrated s/he is interested in a school, the next step (or the first step for those players who can't make it to an ID camp) is getting the coach to come see you play in a competitive environment at tournaments, showcases, etc. and when it comes time for a coach to come evaluate a player on his own time, you can bet that the coach is much more likely to go to the games of the older age group for the recruiting year he's looking at. Their time is already limited and it's more difficult to split their time going between games of different age groups.

Regarding redshirting, that statement is untrue as applied to soccer. A player might not play during a given year, but colleges don't give those players an extra year on scholarship (which is what redshirting is).

Have things changed since the late 80s?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This will probably benefit my DD who is a March birthday, but she and her rec coach are upset because more than half the team is going to have to be replaced with different players. These are girls that he has trained for 5 years now and are part of the once-cohesive team. Now he'll be with a whole different group of girls. Plus the other girls will have to move to a different coach on a new team, and will probably be split up between different coaches.

Why not just have the younger kids "play up" and keep the same team together?

If coach has been training the same girls for 5 years they are getting to the point where having a few U10's playing alongside U11's in the U11 age group is not going to condemn the team to the bottom of the league.

I had my rec team play up a year this past year just to make sure that we did lose some games (your kids will learn much more from losing 3-2 then they will from winning 5-0).

That is a good point, and it might happen. I'm sure the league and coaches are still talking about what to do to best benefit current teams and coaches. However, the league might not care about what is best for individual teams/players when they are organizing the overall league. They tend to put most of their focus on the travel groups, which absolutely will be reorganized to maximize their results. There will be no playing up in travel if the kids can't make the higher teams during try-outs. The rec coaches have considered splitting off from the league anyway now that they are in SFL, I think. It will be interesting to see what happens. I assume after a couple years everyone will be used to the new system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is great. My son is June and I'm so excited

Weird.

Do you think his birthdate bestows spectacular ball skill? You know soccer is not size-dependent like Football and Basketball. Some of the best players in are league are the tiniest.

Anonymous wrote:I'm interested in the various comments about whether the age group change will affect college recruitment. We are a couple of years away from this, but my understanding is that recruiting is very different now than it was even a few years ago. I have heard that most college coaches give priority to ECNL and Development Academy events, with a few of the very top tournaments like Disney still being pretty well attended. I imagine that club teams that play in the USYSA regional and national championships will also have their players recruited without too much effort from the players. I have been told that except in very rare cases, there is no recruitment done based on high school games (might not be true of top prep-school teams, if the coaches are connected).

From my reading, if you are not on an ECNL or DA team or very top club team, the onus is on you to contact the coaches and go to the college ID camps and clinics in an effort to make sure the coach has an opportunity to evaluate you. If that is all true, it doesn't seem like a coach's evaluation at a tournament will make much of a difference in the odds of a player making a college team. Can anyone with very recent experience of the college recruiting process comment on how much of a role tournament showcases play for recruiting for kids who are not on DA/ECNL/national level teams?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is great. My son is June and I'm so excited

Weird.

Do you think his birthdate bestows spectacular ball skill? You know soccer is not size-dependent like Football and Basketball. Some of the best players in are league are the tiniest.

Why do you assume that kids born in any particular month will be larger? Whichever kids are older (whether it's the birth-year system or the school-year system, and unless they're late-maturers) will have an advantage in endurance (this is the big one, according to research, at least until the growth spurt), foot speed and coordination, perception and visual tracking, and emotional maturity, but not necessarily in size. The oldest kids on the team, and the earliest of the early-maturers, are often the smallest, not the biggest.

Also, while the greatest footballers of all time and of today were/are very, very short, most professional soccer players are of average height. For every Atomic Ant there are hordes of Cesc Fabregas types. Weird, isn't it?

Anonymous wrote:

June is the middle of the year--not the beginning. Confused by it all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm interested in the various comments about whether the age group change will affect college recruitment. We are a couple of years away from this, but my understanding is that recruiting is very different now than it was even a few years ago. I have heard that most college coaches give priority to ECNL and Development Academy events, with a few of the very top tournaments like Disney still being pretty well attended. I imagine that club teams that play in the USYSA regional and national championships will also have their players recruited without too much effort from the players. I have been told that except in very rare cases, there is no recruitment done based on high school games (might not be true of top prep-school teams, if the coaches are connected).

From my reading, if you are not on an ECNL or DA team or very top club team, the onus is on you to contact the coaches and go to the college ID camps and clinics in an effort to make sure the coach has an opportunity to evaluate you. If that is all true, it doesn't seem like a coach's evaluation at a tournament will make much of a difference in the odds of a player making a college team. Can anyone with very recent experience of the college recruiting process comment on how much of a role tournament showcases play for recruiting for kids who are not on DA/ECNL/national level teams?

This is my understanding as well. My kids play in what is considered a "top"/large club (but not ECNL or DA), with coordinated college recruitment support provided by the coaching and technical staff, but even still my understanding is successful player placement involves targeted, "smart" individual outreach between player/club and college coaching staff, attendance at college ID camps, and very little reliance on hoping to get noticed at some big showcase tournament.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

June is the middle of the year--not the beginning. Confused by it all.

The current system has a July 31 cutoff, so kids born in June are 10-11 months younger than the oldest kids. In a calendar year system, they'll be in the middle instead. As others have posted, it's unlikely to make much of a difference either way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm interested in the various comments about whether the age group change will affect college recruitment. We are a couple of years away from this, but my understanding is that recruiting is very different now than it was even a few years ago. I have heard that most college coaches give priority to ECNL and Development Academy events, with a few of the very top tournaments like Disney still being pretty well attended. I imagine that club teams that play in the USYSA regional and national championships will also have their players recruited without too much effort from the players. I have been told that except in very rare cases, there is no recruitment done based on high school games (might not be true of top prep-school teams, if the coaches are connected).

From my reading, if you are not on an ECNL or DA team or very top club team, the onus is on you to contact the coaches and go to the college ID camps and clinics in an effort to make sure the coach has an opportunity to evaluate you. If that is all true, it doesn't seem like a coach's evaluation at a tournament will make much of a difference in the odds of a player making a college team. Can anyone with very recent experience of the college recruiting process comment on how much of a role tournament showcases play for recruiting for kids who are not on DA/ECNL/national level teams?

This is my understanding as well. My kids play in what is considered a "top"/large club (but not ECNL or DA), with coordinated college recruitment support provided by the coaching and technical staff, but even still my understanding is successful player placement involves targeted, "smart" individual outreach between player/club and college coaching staff, attendance at college ID camps, and very little reliance on hoping to get noticed at some big showcase tournament.

Seconded.

My brother was not given the chance to play with a DA club (thanks asians parents ) due to how far away it was from our house so he played for the local club. He got on the radar of Ivy (Brown, Penn, Dartmouth), NESCAC (Williams), and Centennial (JHU, Swarthmore) conference coaches purely from college ID camps and contacting coaches on his own.

And even then, I would say he got kind of lucky.

If you want to play in college, unless you are out of this world talented where it takes about 10 minutes to see how special you are as a player, I would highly suggest you make the sacrifice and play DA, ECNL, MLS academy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm interested in the various comments about whether the age group change will affect college recruitment. We are a couple of years away from this, but my understanding is that recruiting is very different now than it was even a few years ago. I have heard that most college coaches give priority to ECNL and Development Academy events, with a few of the very top tournaments like Disney still being pretty well attended. I imagine that club teams that play in the USYSA regional and national championships will also have their players recruited without too much effort from the players. I have been told that except in very rare cases, there is no recruitment done based on high school games (might not be true of top prep-school teams, if the coaches are connected).

From my reading, if you are not on an ECNL or DA team or very top club team, the onus is on you to contact the coaches and go to the college ID camps and clinics in an effort to make sure the coach has an opportunity to evaluate you. If that is all true, it doesn't seem like a coach's evaluation at a tournament will make much of a difference in the odds of a player making a college team. Can anyone with very recent experience of the college recruiting process comment on how much of a role tournament showcases play for recruiting for kids who are not on DA/ECNL/national level teams?

This is my understanding as well. My kids play in what is considered a "top"/large club (but not ECNL or DA), with coordinated college recruitment support provided by the coaching and technical staff, but even still my understanding is successful player placement involves targeted, "smart" individual outreach between player/club and college coaching staff, attendance at college ID camps, and very little reliance on hoping to get noticed at some big showcase tournament.

Seconded.

My brother was not given the chance to play with a DA club (thanks asians parents ) due to how far away it was from our house so he played for the local club. He got on the radar of Ivy (Brown, Penn, Dartmouth), NESCAC (Williams), and Centennial (JHU, Swarthmore) conference coaches purely from college ID camps and contacting coaches on his own.

And even then, I would say he got kind of lucky.

If you want to play in college, unless you are out of this world talented where it takes about 10 minutes to see how special you are as a player, I would highly suggest you make the sacrifice and play DA, ECNL, MLS academy.

And implicit in the post about your brother is the other huge factor in getting recruited/being able to play in college: good grades (and in some cases, scores).

Anonymous wrote:I truly wonder how popular youth soccer would be if colleges did not give any boost in admissions for recruits. Like if it was something not considered at all.

I wonder how many kids would still want to push themselves and play and how many parents would want to sacrifice.

There seems to be a disconnect because the whole concept of 'soccer mom/dad' doesn't exist in europe or south america but our players are lightyears behind in quality.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I truly wonder how popular youth soccer would be if colleges did not give any boost in admissions for recruits. Like if it was something not considered at all.

I wonder how many kids would still want to push themselves and play and how many parents would want to sacrifice.

There seems to be a disconnect because the whole concept of 'soccer mom/dad' doesn't exist in europe or south america but our players are lightyears behind in quality.

Very interesting question. Do the kids that attend residential soccer academies in Europe throughout their school years also continue to focus on their academics, or are they singularly focused on soccer, with no real back-up plan? Or are they academically strong too? I feel like these days in the US it's not good enough to just be a good soccer player - you also have to be an excellent student, do community service, play an instrument, cure cancer, AND excel in your sport. I think sometimes the college scholarship (or even just the opportunity to play soccer in college) is an overvalued goal. Certainly it can't be about the money - we could probably pay for our kid's college if we hadn't paid for 9 years of travel soccer and invested that money instead!