Which makes perfect sense due to the association with sports and college. The school year dominates NCAA rules, recruiting dates, and eligibility. Why the hell anyone thought moving the year group dates to a calender year would make things simpler is mind boggling.
Feels like it might not be true at this point. I guess they could've been waiting for playoffs to be over, but seems really late to make this change.
I was seeing some discussion boards mentioned 2025-2026 season. Would make sense just like we heard of RL 2 happening in April 2022 but it wasn’t implemented until fall 2024.
Is it possible to be in motion already? The only reason I say this is because for example at SurfCup this year 2010s which are mostly incoming freshman are considered “youngers”. Last year when the 2009s were also incoming freshman they were considered “olders”
Yes, bio-banding = late developer.
Thanks!
Trapped players get a bad deal when they have no team to play with when they are in middle school and most of their club team is playing High School. Four months of no games, and practicing with younger teams is a challenge. Then they can't communicate with College Coaches during prime recruiting events with their team, because they are still Sophomores, when most of the team is Junior. Then again when they are Seniors, they have to go find a new team to play with, because their team graduated, and moved off to College. Birthyear system screws about 10-15% of all club players. Grade year has the potential to create a problem for what, 0.05% of the players who will be recruited for European or Professional play.
They kind of fixed this. Last winter the 2011's and the 2010's in ECNL would of went on break and had nothing to do since they are not of high school age yet. At least for Southwest most of the clubs got together and made a winter league so 2011 and 2010's had something to do. The trapped 2009's who had their team go on break for high school who were not in high school yet were allowed to play with the 2010's. I imagine the same thing will happen with 2011 and 2012's again this winter and the 2010's that are not in high school yet will play with the 2011's. Two ECNL seasons ago they didn't do this and the break for the 2010's was ridiculous. Considering they keep lowering the ECNL start age ECNL really needs to think about this and create a formal winter league for those birth years and not leave it up to the clubs. Do seniors at that level really still play Club soccer anyway? Most will be committed to play college before the Junior High School Season starts. If you really want to play go to another league but isn't that why they have that last team with 2 years? So currently its 2007/2006. 2010 Freshman, 2009 Sophomore, 2008 Junior, 2007/2006 Seniors.
Some do and some don't. This is one of the big problems. The trapped players 2007/2006 are just starting their Junior year, they are in the same grade year as 2008, who can't play with the 2008 teams. A lot of Seniors are dialing back, or hanging it up, effecting lots of teams. It created a bad deal for the Juniors starting their year, who will be playing with 2008 teams next year.
It wasn't even ECNL it was the Clubs that did it. It was a repeat of the first half of the southwest schedule basically. Isn't it good for the kids to get a break though? Or they can do other sports in that time frame. If they really really want to play soccer I'm sure they can find somewhere.
