Reply to US soccer rumors of changing back age groups?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Playing with your grade makes sense. I think it would keep more kids involved in competitive soccer. It is a fact that some athletic kids move on to other sports from lost opportunity. My daughter is young in the ulittles, her best friend is dying to play with her and can't because they are born different years. She is doing rec instead and another sport more competitive. I'm not saying this girl is the next Alex Morgan, or even that she won't end up in travel down the road, but thousands and thousands of these small examples add up for impact on participation. I personally quit soccer way back and moved on to other sports because I couldn't play travel with my grade. I missed the cutoff by a few days. I was able to play other sports with my friends and got more into those. I was nothing special, but again, all these things add up.

The biggest problem to that, however, is that states have different cutoffs. September 1 is by far the most common with some more earlier/later in August or September. Very few, most notably pockets around NY, use calendar year. There's no perfect answer but I say pick something that works for the most people and maybe give a 30-day buffer for an outlier based on that jurisdictions cutoff. Are we really gonna be up in arms if a girl born August 15 plays because that state has August 1st? This really only screws the calendar year school districts, which are a small minority. I have no good solution for that.[/quote]

For me, the "play with schoolmates" issue is very short-sighted.  Yes, there "could" be friends on the same team, but my DD plays on a team with 18 girls and none attend to her school, yes even those in same grade.  They come from all over.  Think if you live in a dense county or DC even, chances are you live in same MS or HS district will be very rare.[/quote]

This may be true for megaclubs and older ages, but this is about participation as a whole. In a lot of the country and with smaller clubs, a lot of soccer IS where many of the kids go to school together, or a cluster of schools where people know each other in that town. Kids coming from all over is not the norm for the masses and most of the country. If a change is made, it is to get more little kids into soccer and more to stick with it as they hit the teenage years. The bigger picture is very different than your DDs type of team, albeit many on here also have kids on that type of team.[/quote]

So, crux is, there is no 'on field' benefit, just to each their own.  Blow up clubs - again - for one reason that doesn't benefit a majority.  I could easily say then play HS ball and let mega clubs, with girls and boys with aspirations of college and beyond, compete based on the international standard.  Likely, US Soccer could make any rules for <U13 and then start playing by "the rules" come U13.  Either way, you're blowing up mega teams and competitive teams for those who would "like" to have friends on the team.  About as selfish as a reason ever.[/quote]

I'd actually argue that to harp on about a tiny percentage of elite, older teams at the expense of encouraging greater participation for hundreds of thousands or millions of kids across the country is about as selfish as it gets.[/quote]

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