Anonymous wrote:My son's U16 ECNL team has three kids that go to the same high school. The other 15 go to 15 completely different schools. He's been on teams that had boys in three different grades on the same team. The kids were also from 5 or 6 different areas. There really isn't much reason for this school year thing anymore, because the kids gravitate to a certain club for whatever reason they have.

Sorry to say there is a reason. It’s not about going to the same school. That does not matter. The issue comes in both 8 and 11-12 in a way it does not with calendar year. The U18-19 is a disaster for the 20-30% of juniors on what is a team of seniors preparing to go to college. (which used to be only a junior team or only a senior team). They want to play high level for their junior year and get seen/recruited the spring of their junior year but the rest of their team checks out come spring as they are graduating. Same happens in 8th for kids who want to play but their season stops so all the freshman can play high school. This does not matter for MLs because they don’t allow high school ball. In school year everybody is going to college at the same time u less their parents redshirted them (a choice some make). It’s a mess for a large chunk of kids which is why ECNL has tried so many workarounds in their policies (ie- 8th graders can play down for half a year (dumb as they don’t even know the teams they are then thrusted into mid year and then those teams real players get benched because roster bloats with 20-30% more kids for 6 months. Its a mess). I wish they would revert and stop the stupidness of having a program geared toward college recruiting that makes that process messy at best.

It’s more than a couple of kids that are we are talking about. Roughly 25%. My kid is amount 5 trapped players on her 2011 ECNL team and the 2010 team above her also has 5.

Anonymous wrote:School grade makes sense as in terms of recruiting process. But it’s easier to manipulate the system this way.

I’ve seen kids being held back to give them advantage on sports.

But of course they could avoid gaming the system by going August through July instead of pure grade.

Right now calendar year is causing problems for trapped players but it doesn't seem that going August through July or making exceptions for a few trapped players would cause a problem for players born in the beginning of the year.

School grade makes sense as in terms of recruiting process. But it’s easier to manipulate the system this way.

I’ve seen kids being held back to give them advantage on sports.

I'm starting to think people who say they prefer one over the other need to qualify with when their child was born. I'm sure all the May - July parents say they prefer calendar year and all the October - December parents prefer school year.

New poster here. Have kids in soccer and basketball. AAU is based on grade, soccer is based on birth year.

These are obviously very different and different kids get advantages depending on birthdate.

I have been happier with soccer and calendar year. In basketball, there is much more room to manipulate the system, having kids redshirt or stay back in grade, etc. I much prefer the soccer approach using calendar year.

My ECNL daughter is born in October. A friend of mine said it's not a big deal if ECNL changes to school year. My daughter would just stay on the same team, as she's a starter now. Her team won't replace her.

My response is I wouldn't assume that to be absolute. If a bunch of August - December kids who weren't in ECNL or coming off the bench joins the team, there's no guarantee that my daughter would be a starter anymore or play lots of minutes. So that forces us to change her team to her school class.

It sounds like it's the best thing for her high school years regarding recruiting anyway. We're in the trapped year people are talking about. She's finishing up 7th grade now and will be in middle school next year, when 16 of the 20 girls on her team will be in high school. We don't know what this fall/winter means for her, when her team shuts down for high school.

My son's U16 ECNL team has three kids that go to the same high school. The other 15 go to 15 completely different schools. He's been on teams that had boys in three different grades on the same team. The kids were also from 5 or 6 different areas. There really isn't much reason for this school year thing anymore, because the kids gravitate to a certain club for whatever reason they have.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They already switched from school year to calendar year like 10 years ago, they’re not going back

Don’t agree that they wouldn’t go back simply because they already switched a decade ago. Not saying it is happening but it’s not etched in stone in perpetuity.

Parents who have adult boys now, said baseball changed from school year to birth year and then back to school year. They said number of boys playing the sport dropped, so it was moved back to calendar year. This kept kids in the same grade at school playing together when they were in elementary school.

That makes sense for lower level club where most of the kids want to play close to home. The higher you get the less the kids live in close proximity. Between kids playing up, kids sandbagged to be one year behind most their age in school, kids who travel an hour to practice, and kids on the normal age path and local, there really is not benefit to adhering to the school year for soccer age groups.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They already switched from school year to calendar year like 10 years ago, they’re not going back

Don’t agree that they wouldn’t go back simply because they already switched a decade ago. Not saying it is happening but it’s not etched in stone in perpetuity.

Parents who have adult boys now, said baseball changed from school year to birth year and then back to school year. They said number of boys playing the sport dropped, so it was moved back to calendar year. This kept kids in the same grade at school playing together when they were in elementary school.

Anonymous wrote:Yall. This thread and the union thread need to die. ONE PODCAST suggested this. Now everyone is making plans. Some of you guys need to step away from your echo chambers. You are becoming the people you mock

Actual, the last 2 ECNL podcasts covered issues with calendar year and said the next one would also. So there's that.

Expanding the trap player allowance for a couple of kids per team born in Sept-Dec could be the needed tweek while sticking with calendar year...year...year (that was an echo of course.)

A more open biobanding seems to abused in MLS Next so this solution would cause probably more problems than solutions.

Anonymous wrote:They already switched from school year to calendar year like 10 years ago, they’re not going back

Don’t agree that they wouldn’t go back simply because they already switched a decade ago. Not saying it is happening but it’s not etched in stone in perpetuity.

They already switched from school year to calendar year like 10 years ago, they’re not going back

Anonymous wrote:Likely Not going to happen, this would go against FIFA Standards, US Soccer Standards, US Youth National Team Standards, Olympics Standards and almost all International level sports governing body grouping standards.

This is why US Soccer moved to the birth year standard.

If a kid is good enough to play for a youth national team, he/she is worth the time it takes a scout to find out what year he/she was born.

There's no reason for a league with scholastic players in it to conform to a non-scholastic calendar.