Reply to Tired of people telling my son he has a “terrible” birthday

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Age always matters.  It lessons when guys are in their 20s. For women it is a few years earlier.  But it matters.  Kids who are “top” in their group in any sport get access to better teams, events and coaching.  Bill is better than Joe.  But, Bill is eleven months older than Joe.  When Joe is Bill’s age “now” Joe may be better than Bill, but Bill will be improved over where he was 11 months ago.

When kids are 10, an 11 month advantage in age makes the older kid about 10% older than the youngest competitors in the age group.  It obviously makes a very big difference.  A few years back, the US Soccer folks actually tried out a dual system so they would have “younger” kids working with “younger” kids, and “older” with “older”.  You could look at birthdates for youth national team players (started at 15) and see that about half the kids on the national teams had birthdates between Jan 1 and March 31.

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This is all true but for swimming, specifically, birthday does not matter in the same way once they get to high school except with regard to age in relation to school year, with “older for grade” kids having the advantage. Age group swimming is different in that kids are ranked based on age, not grade. At 15+, swimmers are ranked in “open” age groups and compared to cohorts in their graduating class. A February birthday is not the worst but it’s not great either, considering how many people redshirt summer birthdays. There is often a turning of the tables with late spring/summer non-redshirted birthdays who were the top of age group for age group champs but are young for grade. [/quote]

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