Changing back to Grade Year vs. Calendar Year for Fall 2025?
- Thread starter RandomSoccerFan
- Start date
pitchplease
SILVER
is this for ecnl or mls next also?
Makes sense but they should start it at the 2010 year because those are incoming freshman.
The 2009 -2007 should remain the same until they age out.
Praise God. That was the worst decision ever! Talk about complete chaos and destruction on some clubs in 2016, while others sought their revenge on their competitor and bought their players with full rides bought by some parents.
At the end of the day, I don’t know how much it matters. My daughter, a trapped ‘06 and a 2025 grad, played with her ECNL team who had all 2024’s…she will play her last year with ‘07’s in her club. I actually think it helped her. Did not hurt her, late Nov Birthday. Got her in front of coaches earlier…we actually thought it benefited her as she was and early 2025 commit in late June of 2023. Making the change makes sense to eliminate all the rules for trapped players, but at the end of the day, if you can play, you can play, and coaches see that at the ECNL/GA events. Guess it depends on your situation, perspective and experience.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
I can't speak to which is better, or which was better, in terms of development for college recruiting. I can say that going by grade (with effectively a Sep 1 dividing line), instead of going by age (with effectively a Jan 1 dividing line), is a logistical nightmare, at least how it is handled (or mishandled) with youth basketball, which uses grade level / graduation year all the way through. With soccer, it's pretty simple to show whether someone has a birth certificate that has the right year in it. With basketball, they need to produce a report card, and a birth certificate that shows the proper age, which may be anywhere from Aug 1 to Sep 15 depending on particular league and region. "Home schooling" effectively means you can call it whatever grade you want, and nobody tends to confirm whether the birth cert is the correct age - with many either pretending to be unaware, or actually being unaware, of whether someone is eligible. Like any other youth sports, none of it really matters until someone tries to place a standout player on a lower grade level / age level team than is appropriate - and it seems to happen *way* more often in basketball than in soccer.
This will cause problems for tournaments. One leagues tournaments will have a certain age cutoff and other leagues will have a different age cutoff.
Net affect is there will be less cross league play because coaches won't want to break up teams that work in one league just to play in a different leagues tournaments. (This is assuming other leagues don't align with the changes ECNL implements)
Will leagues like SOCAL also have to align for youngers?
Teams won't be able to play internationally because outside of the US teams are defined by calender year.
Will also force the rankings app to apply some kind of multiplier or demultiplier to normalize data. But again if there's less cross league play it will be difficult to define rankings. (Or at least the data will be less valuable)
Net affect is there will be less cross league play because coaches won't want to break up teams that work in one league just to play in a different leagues tournaments. (This is assuming other leagues don't align with the changes ECNL implements)
Will leagues like SOCAL also have to align for youngers?
Teams won't be able to play internationally because outside of the US teams are defined by calender year.
Will also force the rankings app to apply some kind of multiplier or demultiplier to normalize data. But again if there's less cross league play it will be difficult to define rankings. (Or at least the data will be less valuable)
All will follow ECNL, just like they followed GDA.
Technically this would give an advantage to ECNL teams that would be able to field players 4-5 months older then GA teams. Assuming GA stuck with calender year. Personally I don't care either way. Top teams and top players will find a way to make things work reguardless.
Socially and for the sake of giving high school (free soccer) players a platform (not attacked) to showcase and play for their community is why I personally care. Community soccer needs to be encouraged, not just travel soccer for those who can afford it. HS Soccer needs funds, support and better coaching and then you could have a very good thing. Telling little girls with dreams that if you don't do it this way, you will miss out is not cool. Not a good play IMHO.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
Of all of the potential issues, this is likely minor. It doesn't matter whether a team calls itself 2007, 16U, or chartreuse. As long as it can identify the team entity and associate other incoming games with the same entity, age/grade doesn't matter much. He'd need to make a call about how to show the sorted data, if some leagues are using age and others are using grade, but IMHO it's unlikely that there will be differences between the major leagues after only a short time.
As for comparing old season data to new season data for carryover teams, it probably doesn't matter much. After ~6 months it doesn't affect much anyway. One viable option is to just not count old data before X date, and make a hard switchover. I believe that's what YSR did years ago when it converted the other way.
MLS Next is unlikely to follow. As Carlsbad points out, there are international tournament rules and MLS Academy teams will follow those rules in order to play internationally. The MLS Next teams will be forced to comply.
I'm talking girls' soccer.
I think you're correct but the Academies won't care either way since they're all about playing up and looking for higher level competition.
Actually, no. The projected goals for and against are done regardless of age, so the app will just keep recording results of team v team. The Top N lists will be all over the place, but the actual data will be unchanged.
They are when they play the non-academies, but in GA cup or international tournaments, they tend to bring mostly age-appropriate players (because even they fall prey to defining themselves based on results).
Is this boys too or just girls? If it's for boys it's saying "ECNL is for high school players, MLS Next is not".
I'm hearing about an increasing trend of high level girls usually having to be gone for national teams moving to home school/independent study. These players are also on an accelerated path for graduating High School. How do you think they would treat these girls? Just base it on expected graduation year? Forced them to move up if they are ahead of schedule? I guess you can ask that same question with players that fall behind or get held back.
The old system still went by birthdate. It was Aug 1 instead of Jan 1, but otherwise the same.
So, if you were held back or skipped a grade, you played with kids your age, but a different year.