Reply to US soccer rumors of changing back age groups?

Forum Index » Soccer

Reply to "US soccer rumors of changing back age groups?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]One of the suggestions is that kids will be more apt to play with their schoolmates than their teammates. YMMV, but it's being looked at as one way of keeping kids playing past the magic 13-year-old point where 75% of kids quit the game. They may be more likely to play with classmates they see on and off the field, rather than teammates they just see at practices and games.

I don't agree at all. My son is a U14 and his closest friends from school don't play soccer at all. He's made an entirely new group of friends through travel soccer, and it has worked out great.

Perhaps the kids from his school would still be playing if they were in school year.[/quote]

No, they like baseball or do not like sports at all.   Why does the "move back to school year" assumption assume that the baseline is all tweens wanting to do soccer, but dropping out because they are not with classmates?   Soccer is not for everyone, and that is fine.  People can have other sports interests, people can not like sports.[/quote]

Well, honestly, because the role of soccer's governing body is to keep as many kids playing soccer as possible, especially now with the pandemic driving kids out of sports entirely.  The switch to birth year was made for the convenience of coaches and scouts looking for that small percentage of top talent, and was not in the best interest of the vast majority of soccer players in this country.  Moreover, as other have noted, the birth year age groups create specific problems for trapped 8th graders and high school seniors.  These are often players who are very interested in soccer, but who are left with less than ideal arrangements when their teammates move to a different level based on their grade in school.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics