Another US Soccer idea...

Next they'll create another damn league for the "Bio-Banded" teams.
It'll be in the So. Cal. treasure chest region soon!

Is there any hope for US Soccer?
 
I agree with all these sentiments. Like the OP, I appreciate their gusto for trying to improve and tweak. This is a wonderfully novel and idealistic concept that should have been killed in the meeting in which it was brought up. US Soccer defines "ambition without reality."
 
Is this designed to help the bigger kid? Have them play with other bigger kids so they can't just rely on their size to make them "look like" a soccer star?
Or for the smaller kid? Let them compete against kids their same size without getting "blown up" by the big kid?
 
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Thanks for sharing tb, wouldn't have seen this otherwise. I don't have any issues with it -- just a 1x event to gather some data and brainstorm ideas based upon it. If we make fun of out-of-the-box thinking then we will never get anything different. Sometimes new things work, sometimes they don't. But you can't be afraid to try. Ask Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
 
I applaud the US for finally bringing bio-banding to everyone's attention. It's growing rapidly in the UK. To those who haven't heard of it, a calculation is made of a player's potential future height, based on their gender, current age, current height and parents ages and heights. From there, a player is given a % based on how close they are to reaching their peak height velocity. Players are then grouped as such: 80-85%, 85-90% or even closer if the player pool is large.

Its a great step in player development and helps those later developers to compete and not be cut from teams because of their height, and then at the other challenges those players who have matured early and just use their size and speed to beat players without learning the technical skills they will need when everyone evens out later down the road.
 
Saw this somewhere else regarding this: why not just keep single year teams in order to closely monitor all of the kids' development? But instead, they do double birth year teams so the smaller kids (who bio banding is really for) are pushed out for a year....it makes zero sense.
 
How about this?
We alreay have several tiers/flights/groups.
What we need are coaches that do a better job with all tiers.
A small but skilled kid at 11 on a Flight 2 team should be getting good coaching so he/she can have a chance to compete when they are able to handle playing against bigger players.
And/or we need referees to crack down on overly physical players at the younger age groups. Don’t let thug ball exist and coaches won’t recruit “enforcers” with poor skills.
 
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Wow all we need is the special designation for these players so they can now wear the new patch:

specialsnowflake.jpg
 
Ugh. the snowflake label is so trite and shallow. Anyone with feelings or opinions is a snowflake? You can think something is wrong or unfair or poorly done and not be wrecked by it. Both things can exist. You can want something to change and also not be shaken when it isn't. Throwing the label of "snowflake" at something is so simplistic and overdone. Man up and have a conversation.
 
Is this designed to help the bigger kid? Have they play with other bigger kids so they can't just rely on their size to make them "look like" a soccer star?
Or for the smaller kid? Let them compete against kids their same size without getting "blown up" by the big kid?

I'm a little disappointed that many are taking a negative stance and poking fun on what is designed to help the USSF put kids in groups that are more commensurate with their physical maturity. If you watched the video and looked at some of the literature on the issue, the answer to your questions are:

Yes, in that it will help the bigger kid (faster maturer) by putting that player with others of similar size, which will demand the bigger kid rely on skill rather than powering through their age group using just size and speed. On the negative side for this group, it will mean some of the early developers will be shown to be mediocre when playing against others of similar physical development.

Yes, designed to help the smaller kid (slower maturer) by putting that player with others of a similar size, which will enable the smaller kids to continue to develop their skills/talent while they wait for puberty to kick in. These late developers are the primary beneficiaries of the bio-banding.

In PopWarner Football, they have a designation called "Older but Lighter," which is essentially similar to the above USSF trial program in that is allows older players under a certain weight limit to play down on younger teams.

This won't disrupt the current age matrix because the jury is still out. It will give the USSF some data as it implements these trial programs to see if making future changes are warranted.
 
Ugh. the snowflake label is so trite and shallow. Anyone with feelings or opinions is a snowflake? You can think something is wrong or unfair or poorly done and not be wrecked by it. Both things can exist. You can want something to change and also not be shaken when it isn't. Throwing the label of "snowflake" at something is so simplistic and overdone. Man up and have a conversation.

Triggered.
 
Seriously, can US Soccer do anything right? I can guarantee that any systematic implementation will make the girls side worse.

Why? Because adversity makes players better. If you couldn’t cut it with your own age group peers, the simple fact of the matter is that you were never going to be a great soccer player. And who is to say that the embarrassment of being a mediocre 9th grade soccer player playing with middle schoolers, instead of your friends and emotional peers, is a better life experience than giving up soccer and filling that extra time with piano?

Do you remember when the age cut off was July 31? It is no accident that most of the best players were born in the last four months of the age range. Perhaps the 3 best players the US currently has to offer (Rapinoe, Lloyd and Morgan) were all born in July. So were Dunn and McCaskill. At least 8 more were born in April-June (Dahlkemper, Horan, Pugh, Sauerbrawn, Ertz, Williams, and Heath). The list of players born in the first 4 months (Aug-Nov) is sparse, however (Klingenberg, Davidson, O’Hara, Short, Long). Shoot, even Wambach, Chastain, Solo and Lilly were born in June or July.

Our best players obviously didn’t need bio banding. To the contrary, those kids who faced the most physical adversity have systematically become the best players overall, with very few exceptions. Removing that challenge is counter productive unless the goal is to try to make everyone happy. And we know that is not US Soccer’s goal. US Soccer’s goal is to destroy soccer in the US with one stupid idea after the next.
 
can someone tell me when are the tryouts for flight 2 - Bio Band: Chubby - 65% Speed - Happy personality?

and please tell me what bio band did Ronaldo, Messi, Suarez, Neymar belong to?

and while you're at it, how many male world soccer stars has the US produced that only made it because of their physical advantage? actually please tell me about US male soccer stars period lol
 
I don't have any issues with it -- just a 1x event to gather some data and brainstorm ideas based upon it. If we make fun of out-of-the-box thinking then we will never get anything different.
Ok, I can get with that. True enough.

a calculation is made of a player's potential future height, based on their gender, current age, current height and parents ages and heights. From there, a player is given a % based on how close they are to reaching their peak height velocity. Players are then grouped as such: 80-85%, 85-90% or even closer if the player pool is large.

and

An objective test is a bone age xray will tell you where your child is at maturation-wise based on how growth plates.

These two points are where I fail to see how bio-banding can be implemented in any realistic way in forms other than one off tournaments like this. Can you imagine the clusterf*#k that would ensue if this sort of process was implemented by our current pay-to-play club director geniuses who (like it or not) are as a group responsible for the products that US Soccer tries to form into international players? No, no, and no.
I'm a little disappointed that many are taking a negative stance and poking fun on what is designed to help the USSF put kids in groups that are more commensurate with their physical maturity.
I think the idea is actually very sound in itself. For years I have wished that schools didn't sort grades by birth year because everyone really does mature (physically and mentally) at different paces, and the ideal situation would be where all students were grouped according to bio-age. But implementing such a change in public schools would be a disaster. The key word is "ideal." Ideal and reality just don't share the same space. And I think US Soccer would be more well served to try to subvert the cancerous growth of pay-to-play than to keep feeding the latest age-group change solutions into an already malfunctioning piece of machinery.
 
So sad that people are failing to recognise the advantages of this system. No it shouldn't be used at every level, but it is commonly used in academies all over Europe and is proving a huge success. The US tries to follow suit and people trash talk it...shame.
 
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