Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

There are zero mental gymnastics required for birth year…the school year stuff never made sense because from a U(age) perspective with cutoffs in August - that’s the cutoff that requires mental gymnastics, regardless, the gymnastics aren’t hard - any parent that can’t do the mental gymnastics requires for sport registration probably isn’t employable.

At young ages I rarely had schoolmates on my teams. Only until middle school and HS when the pyramids consolidated did I play with any schoolmates, but not many. But HS soccer was also the recruitment pathway back then. NPL, Classic and ODP were also the competitive places to get looks. The world is different.

The idea that ECNL teams are made up of school mates is sort of ludicrous on its face. HOWEVER - there are some HS coaches in states like Cali, PA, NJ, MA that have regulations for club soccer to incentivize HS soccer where the coaches recruit to the HS to keep the club teams together as much as possible. Those are typically not ECNL or GA players though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

They may or may not be actually better but they are actually older.

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

Anonymous wrote:I keep shaking my head at all these comments. Did any of the parents of kids playing today play when they were younger? The age groups aligned with the school year none of this mental gymnastics was needed. Problems were created when the change was made while solving nothing. There are two sides obviously Q4 parents want their kids to not be trapped and have an advantage of playing with their classmates instead of always a grade older. The other side must just be scared that the Q4 kids in their kids grade are actually better than them.

Anonymous wrote:How can ECNL be different than US Youth Soccer and MLS Next?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.

How does being born in October and playing club soccer separate you from your school and neighborhood friends?

My daughter is an October child. In 1st grade a bunch of kids wanted to join soccer from club flyers they got handed out at school. My daughter was separated from her classmates when we went to club practice. I thought it was strange and my 1st grader wasn't sure if she wanted to keep playing soccer. We were told soccer isn't grouped by school grade. It's calendar year. She stayed though and I think she's been better for it, playing against "older" competition. She plays ECNL and most of the kids are born in the January - April months. My guess is that the ECRL team is going to be more of the May - August kids, 3rd team end of year kids?

I do believe that kids drop out when they're still in elementary school at the end of the age year, when they're in 2nd - 4th grade because they can't compete with kids a grade ahead. My guess is that if all the kids are in the same grade, the May - July kids will stay with the sport because they're playing with friends from their class at school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.

How does being born in October and playing club soccer separate you from your school and neighborhood friends?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.

How does being born in October and playing club soccer separate you from your school and neighborhood friends?

The impact for trapped kids is the transition to HS when their teammates are 9th grade and they’re a MSer.

And then in HS the same kids become athletically-orphaned when they become seniors and their teammates all just graduated.

It’s really a social-emotional argument, not a competitive / athletic one.

ECNL is kind of funky on this topic because it’s a narrative driven by a small minority of parents - and the impact is largely not on ECNL teams but on the clubs lower tiered competitive teams (classic, NPL, etc).

Aren't they closer to their classmates who they've been with since elementary school than they are to their club teammates who they spend much less time with?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.

How does being born in October and playing club soccer separate you from your school and neighborhood friends?

The impact for trapped kids is the transition to HS when their teammates are 9th grade and they’re a MSer.

And then in HS the same kids become athletically-orphaned when they become seniors and their teammates all just graduated.

It’s really a social-emotional argument, not a competitive / athletic one.

ECNL is kind of funky on this topic because it’s a narrative driven by a small minority of parents - and the impact is largely not on ECNL teams but on the clubs lower tiered competitive teams (classic, NPL, etc).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.

How does being born in October and playing club soccer separate you from your school and neighborhood friends?

Anonymous wrote:Lets reset the conversation. In the podcasts that kicked off all of these, the ENCL honchos clearly say changing the date back WILL NOT fix RA, just move the date.

What it will fix is trapped players AND the fact that RA PLUS being separated from friends and classmates seems to lead to more kids dropping out of the sport early on.

That's all! There is no fix for RA in this and in fact they also don't support biobanding.