Reply to US soccer rumors of changing back age groups?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^college coaches are looking at 16-18 year olds. I ready said to combine the teams at U16. [/quote]

Soooo, you want to through a newly formed team together right at recruiting age? LOL

Look, I get it, your kid is born in the second half of the calendar and is likely on the smaller side. Changing the cutoffs will not make your kid any better or increase his opportunities. Being on the "younger team" is not the same as being on the "A Team" and playing in a even more diluted environment. And what is worse, is this is essentially your personal Rube Goldberg solution to a very small problem, even by distribution sample size standards.

The best soccer nations in the world do not even do this and they have the numbers to support it.  [/quote]

Look, you don't get it. My kid has already comitted to a pretty darn good program. Yes, she is a later month birthday.The vast majority of Sept - Dec kids were pushed off the top team during the age change. My kid survived. She was one of the very few.

This doesn't effect me...but it is the right thing to do. Favoring the early bloomers or the older kid before things have a chace to even out is a awful and stupid method of developing and identifying talent. [/quote]

It is the right idea but the wrong mechanism. I'm sorry, but for middle school and beyond it is DUMB.

There are ways to help smaller kids that need to be normalized in the way that playing up is perfectly accepted for bigger and stronger kids. We have no similar mechanism for smaller older kids.

The two age groupings works for elementary school because of the predictability of size differences at younger ages. But as kids reach middle school birth month plays less and less a determining factor in player size. There are December kids who are the biggest kids on their team. A system that can cluster based on accurate metrics is fine as long as those groups can be reasonably predicted. Your belief that all tall middle school age kids are the oldest is false. And conversely, not all the smallest kids are the youngest by that age either. But in third grade? yeah, it is statistically probably the case. And during those years, to attract and retain kids through the 12 month calendar year is vital for a well developed player pool to draw from at the tween and teen years.

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