High School Forfeits

[Carlsbad7]

The city league is almost all Lausd so scholarships don’t play a role there. That’s why it’s been more of a problem in city (all public) then southern (which is a mix including privates and where kids can get scholarship waivers). One issue is whether privates should be allowed to do what public’s can’t under the scholarship exception. The other has to do with kids using drop pick up (“quitting” their hg club and then going back after the high school season) and mls ad players called up to play with hg team as guests or for flex, reserve players who didn’t expect to play but get called due to absence of others, and futures players caught in between (neither fully hg or ad). The fix (aside from the scholarship exception) is pretty simple: if you play for an HG team at any time starting in the fall season and during that school year, you can't play high school.

I agree with you but what do you do when your best HG player gets a full ride scholorship to some private school on condition that they play soccer for them? Is MLS ready to blackball a player if they do HS soccer? This is the only way you can actually enforce a no play HS soccer rule. Which nobody will follow if it has no teeth.

If Private Schools wanted to work with MLS the way to do it would be to pay MLS and get the player on loan from the club they're under contract with for X amount of time (the HS season). But I dont want to give anyone any ideas ;-).

 

[CAZZZ]

I know some MLSN HD players are on open division teams. I assume there is a "pass" to make them legal HS players.

 

[Grace T.]

Gardena posted on insta regarding the disqualification. They said they are disappointed, this rule has been “weaponized” but respect the ruling. They further said the disqualification resulted from the pre season not league play and not playoffs. That sort of misleading because the pre season is taken into account for the wild card berths in case teams are in especially competitive league brackets. $10 says what most likely happened was flex before players “quit” their mls hg teams. Issue is high school play starts mid November but flex falls in December. The girls trip up with the thanksgiving ECNL tournaments too from time to time but ECNL is better at moving them out of club and into school play earlier.

 

[SuckItTrebek]

Regarding these forfeits: Is the player getting removed from the high school team playoff roster or does the entire team get penalized and DQ'd from CIF play for the remainder of the year?

 

[Grace T.]

Regarding these forfeits: Is the player getting removed from the high school team playoff roster or does the entire team get penalized and DQ'd from CIF play for the remainder of the year?

Entire team. The argument is that but for those players, which the coaches knew were MLS HG, the team might not have made the playoffs. The counter accusation is that people are using these DQs strategically to punish rival HS teams and clubs (Eric has an article in the Times today in the defense of whistleblowers). The issue is CIF doesn't have enough people to check every roster against every game, so only really investigates when it matters (playoffs). City section is also easier to find people doing this than Southern because it's almost all LAUSD and private schools (with scholarship waivers, which requires looking at student financials) aren't in the mix.

 

[CruzControl]

Such an infuriating situation. The MLS and CIF are equally guilty of ruining the prime of so many kids’ soccer careers.

MLSN insists on scheduling games during the high school season for the entire homegrown league. Not just the pro academies, where a small fraction of kids might go pro. But for the entire HG league. And yes, they do enforce this rule. Last season, they suspended multiple kids for their entire spring season after catching them playing high school soccer. (Doubly ruining these particular kids’ soccer primes.)

CIF insists on enforcing bylaw 600, which prohibits play for outside teams. I’m not sure why the rule exists at all, but surely CIF could consider an exception for MLSN soccer players (like it does for futsal, indoor soccer, fall soccer, and spring soccer). MLSN is at the top of the youth soccer pyramid. It provides the best exposure to college scouts. And these kids have worked their whole lives to get there. The payoff for their hard work and talent should be playing for their school. For the pride, for the confidence, and for — finally — an audience that isn’t just their parents. In a sane world, CIF would want to honor their sacrifice and talent and provide these kids the high school sports careers they’ve earned.

It’s fine to attack the rule-breakers as cheaters (rules are rules, even dumb ones), but the real crime is MLSN and CIF not recognizing how desperately these kids want to represent their schools on the soccer field. The adults conspiring against them are either out-of-touch with or just don’t care about the very children their organizations exist to promote and protect.

What’s happened in the boys’ playoffs, and to the Muir girls’ team, is an embarrassment to the people running things. And it’s heartbreaking for the kids on these teams, and their parents, and their fans, who’ve been disqualified because of a rule that nobody likes or understands.

CIF exists to promote athletic excellence in high school sports, because high school athletics is its own reward, and yet they seem committed to preserving a rule that just ruined the season and is turning otherwise good kids into rule-breakers and tattle-tales.

MLSN exists to develop talent and grow the game in the USA. And yet they intentionally keep the best high school soccer players in the country off the field for high school games. That disrespects the game and, even worse, the kids who play it.

Let them play.

 

[Grace T.]

Such an infuriating situation. The MLS and CIF are equally guilty of ruining the prime of so many kids’ soccer careers.

MLSN insists on scheduling games during the high school season for the entire homegrown league. Not just the pro academies, where a small fraction of kids might go pro. But for the entire HG league. And yes, they do enforce this rule. Last season, they suspended multiple kids for their entire spring season after catching them playing high school soccer. (Doubly ruining these particular kids’ soccer primes.)

CIF insists on enforcing bylaw 600, which prohibits play for outside teams. I’m not sure why the rule exists at all, but surely CIF could consider an exception for MLSN soccer players (like it does for futsal, indoor soccer, fall soccer, and spring soccer). MLSN is at the top of the youth soccer pyramid. It provides the best exposure to college scouts. And these kids have worked their whole lives to get there. The payoff for their hard work and talent should be playing for their school. For the pride, for the confidence, and for — finally — an audience that isn’t just their parents. In a sane world, CIF would want to honor their sacrifice and talent and provide these kids the high school sports careers they’ve earned.

It’s fine to attack the rule-breakers as cheaters (rules are rules, even dumb ones), but the real crime is MLSN and CIF not recognizing how desperately these kids want to represent their schools on the soccer field. The adults conspiring against them are either out-of-touch with or just don’t care about the very children their organizations exist to promote and protect.

What’s happened in the boys’ playoffs, and to the Muir girls’ team, is an embarrassment to the people running things. And it’s heartbreaking for the kids on these teams, and their parents, and their fans, who’ve been disqualified because of a rule that nobody likes or understands.

CIF exists to promote athletic excellence in high school sports, because high school athletics is its own reward, and yet they seem committed to preserving a rule that just ruined the season and is turning otherwise good kids into rule-breakers and tattle-tales.

MLSN exists to develop talent and grow the game in the USA. And yet they intentionally keep the best high school soccer players in the country off the field for high school games. That disrespects the game and, even worse, the kids who play it.

Let them play.

Mlsn is a national league and exists for the benefit of the academies. Everyone else is cannon fodder. Because of weather around the country, and because of gridiron football, there's no national high school break...every state is different. Yet there aren't enough academies to keep the academies just playing each other even if there were a national high school break. You can argue over whether the private school scholarship exception is unfair, but the answer for the rest is simple: if you want to play high school don't play MLS HG: you can play ECNL or MLS AD. MLSN exists to create pros, not college or high school athletes.

As to CIF we can argue over whether it's fair or not but the rule exists ostensibly to prevent overuse injuries. High school involves two games a week and practice every day in a very short time frame. If you are throwing on MLS games, practices and travel, that is a lot;. If you have an MLSN coach demanding a player be there on a Tuesday at 8 and a high school coach demanding the player be there until 6:30, who's the kid going to say no to?

counterproposal: eliminate the private high school scholarship exception. MLSN should publish all rosters of players who play in a HG game including futures and reserve/AD players playing on guests slots starting with the fall season and make it searchable for all coaches. Anyone who plays in a HG game for that year should be banned from playing high school

 

[Karlton Athletic]

Mlsn is a national league and exists for the benefit of the academies. Everyone else is cannon fodder. Because of weather around the country, and because of gridiron football, there's no national high school break...every state is different. Yet there aren't enough academies to keep the academies just playing each other even if there were a national high school break. You can argue over whether the private school scholarship exception is unfair, but the answer for the rest is simple: if you want to play high school don't play MLS HG: you can play ECNL or MLS AD. MLSN exists to create pros, not college or high school athletes.

As to CIF we can argue over whether it's fair or not but the rule exists ostensibly to prevent overuse injuries. High school involves two games a week and practice every day in a very short time frame. If you are throwing on MLS games, practices and travel, that is a lot;. If you have an MLSN coach demanding a player be there on a Tuesday at 8 and a high school coach demanding the player be there until 6:30, who's the kid going to say no to?

counterproposal: eliminate the private high school scholarship exception. MLSN should publish all rosters of players who play in a HG game including futures and reserve/AD players playing on guests slots starting with the fall season and make it searchable for all coaches. Anyone who plays in a HG game for that year should be banned from playing high school

I'm with you. Our school did their first ever soccer "Friday Night Lights" event this past season, renting floodlights (NIMBY neighbors!), inviting the cheerleading team and marching band, lots of food trucks... Great event with lots of people watching. Feels like the kids are representing something, not just a club their parents are paying thousands of Dollars to.

The pay to play clubs have robbed soccer of that, and schools don't owe them anything. Play ECNL or MLS AD if you want to play High School, or figure out how schools can be integrated into the pyramid better.

 

[CruzControl]

But MLS Next does exist to create college players. This is from their own press release last December regarding Fest: "We expect nearly 500 college scouts representing approximately 250 collegiate programs in attendance.” I hear you re cannon fodder but bragging about college scouts suggests that at least care a little bit about the other kids It's not a huge ask. They'd have to extend winter break by about a month to accommodate high school season.

If CIF's only reason for Bylaw 600 is preventing overuse injuries for individual players, there are surely ways to achieve that without an outright zero-tolerance ban against cross-play that ends up ruining entire seasons and playoff brackets for hundreds of kids.

Banning the private school exemption makes the problem worse, not better. The solution is letting the kids play the game they're good at.

Moving to AD or ECNL is a backwards move in terms of exposure and prestige for college recruiting, which matters to a lot of the players.

It's strange to me that people want to penalize talented soccer players for wanting to play both MLS Next and high school. The solution -- easily accomplished if a handful of administrators could be convinced otherwise -- is to let them play both. The rules preventing it are reversible.

Friday Night Lights is a great idea! Even better if the best soccer players at school are on the field!

 

[Grace T.]

But MLS Next does exist to create college players. This is from their own press release last December regarding Fest: "We expect nearly 500 college scouts representing approximately 250 collegiate programs in attendance.” I hear you re cannon fodder but bragging about college scouts suggests that at least care a little bit about the other kids It's not a huge ask. They'd have to extend winter break by about a month to accommodate high school season.

If CIF's only reason for Bylaw 600 is preventing overuse injuries for individual players, there are surely ways to achieve that without an outright zero-tolerance ban against cross-play that ends up ruining entire seasons and playoff brackets for hundreds of kids.

Banning the private school exemption makes the problem worse, not better. The solution is letting the kids play the game they're good at.

Moving to AD or ECNL is a backwards move in terms of exposure and prestige for college recruiting, which matters to a lot of the players.

It's strange to me that people want to penalize talented soccer players for wanting to play both MLS Next and high school. The solution -- easily accomplished if a handful of administrators could be convinced otherwise -- is to let them play both. The rules preventing it are reversible.

Friday Night Lights is a great idea! Even better if the best soccer players at school are on the field!

You glossed over the parts about no national calendar with a uniform high school break (some parts up north play in the fall), and the need to keep the pro academies year round. It is a huge ask. The stuff about college scouts is just advertising....MLS exists for 1 reason: to make pro players...there's ECNL and AD for otherwise...and they (almost always) don't recruit out of high school for college soccer (if anything these days its the overseas academies)...you want D1 recruitment, go to Flex (which BTW exists where it does due to the European calendar for European scouts and teams to be able to come over and check out players), don't play high school.

 

[Grace T.]

Calabasas joins the forfeited schools. No final for that one. Just win by default since too late to organize a new playoff. Chavez now too.