Reply to ECNL moving to school year not calendar

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are really trying to help the players, you have to move off of a yearly calendar. You would group players by their birth months.

So groups would be Jan-march, April-June, July-September and October- December. This would address the problems with the current system.

Look at the players birth month on your team. If you are on a top team it will run something like Jan-March 60%, April-June 25%, July-September 10%, October- December 5%[/quote]

That would help some players but not others. For example, you'd be doing a disservice to kids with later birthdays who would benefit from and be challenged by playing with stronger earlier birthday kids.

At some point in this quest to make things as equal as possible based on age, you're going to run into individual differences that regrouping isn't going to solve.[/quote]

No you miss the point. Right now the kids with the earliest birthdays generate the highest number of “top” team players. These kids because they are older have an advantage by playing on the “top” team x confidence and playing/practice time. This advantage is locked in once you are on a “top” team at an early age,

In reality each month should generate about the same “top” team players. The current system loses around 60% of the players with potential each class year just because of age difference. “Playing Up” in the younger years is not as beneficial as people think. [/quote]

I believe I got your point. There's no disputing that top team kids are disproportionately older kids. However, any cutoff is going to be a balancing act between age effects and other factors that make stronger/weaker players. If you form teams by 3-month age groups then age effects will be mostly erased, but unless you are choosing from an absolutely huge pool you'll usually just end up with 4 teams that are mostly weaker because the "top" team players are actually spread across the calendar year if not perfectly evenly. At the extreme you could have a monthly quota system, where you pick the best kid from every birth month and call that a starting lineup, but is that what anyone really wants?

A better way might be to stick with teams over whatever age window is most convenient/least painful (e.g., Aug 1-Jul 31 year, but doesn't HAVE to be that), but take into account relative age when selecting players.

The best way might be to avoid locking out (or in) players at very young ages for any reasons including birth month. Have a relatively fluid pool where players actually do get moved around based on recent development level. But that seems to be what exactly no one really wants.[/quote]

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