Get ready folks

whatithink said:
It won't happen, just because you say so. It never happened previously so there's zero reason to think it will now.

I do know parents who started their kids late or made them repeat 8th grade, but that was all to do with HS sports, never club. I've even seen parents pick a small HS for their kids because they'd likely make the team but in a bigger one they might not. None of these kids are elite and there are not enough of them for any club or org to twist a system to suit them.
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Maybe ECNL is big enough to keep different leagues from fragmenting on SY definition details.

But there will be waivers provided for redshirt kids to play on SY grade teams.
 
whatithink said:
All the talk of redshirting etc. is just nonsense and scare mongering. None of that happened previously, so there's zero reason it would happen if they make this change. The only thing complicated about the environment now is the number of letter leagues.
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I'm not as confident as you are. It absolutely does happen right now, in all sports that I'm aware of, that go by SY. It varies based on competitiveness / geography / $, but it is a key difference between youth sports in 2024 and what we may remember either in our youth or even a decade ago. I think it would be rare if soccer was somehow immune.


whatithink said:
There's potential for high impact on existing teams, but that's not a cost ($) thing. Fwiw, I've seen plenty of kids/parents (non elite) switch teams so that their kids can play with their school friends. Soccer to them is a healthy social experience.
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I should have clarified. I meant that there is a huge switching cost for the environment as a whole - not that there is any direct $ cost change for an individual, or even much $ for the overall environment. The cost is the loss (and creation) of thousands and thousands of teams from one season to the next, and all of the downstream effects.
 
whatithink said:
I do know parents who started their kids late or made them repeat 8th grade, but that was all to do with HS sports, never club. I've even seen parents pick a small HS for their kids because they'd likely make the team but in a bigger one they might not. None of these kids are elite and there are not enough of them for any club or org to twist a system to suit them.
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In basketball, this isn't as small a minority as you'd think. If you look at the more competitive national leagues, or if you look at the standouts nationally in the middle-school / early high-school ages, it is very, very common to find kids that have been held back so they can play on a younger age team. In soccer - it's accepted that those at the tip of the spear are playing up 1, 2, or even 3 years in their teens on their way to college or even the pros. In basketball - it's instead more common to see the best players do everything they can to stay on a younger team, so they can stand out among their peers on the regional or national circuits.
 
whatithink said:
All the talk of redshirting etc. is just nonsense and scare mongering. None of that happened previously, so there's zero reason it would happen if they make this change. The only thing complicated about the environment now is the number of letter leagues.

There's potential for high impact on existing teams, but that's not a cost ($) thing. Fwiw, I've seen plenty of kids/parents (non elite) switch teams so that their kids can play with their school friends. Soccer to them is a healthy social experience.
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How long exactly have you been involved in kids sports? This is a pretty bold statement to make. Its literally happening right now. Parents are using these new soccer "schools" to redshirt or even delay further their kids from starting high school. You honestly think it was never done for a club team before the switch to BY so the kid could play on the younger team. Come on. It was done before and it will be done again. Shoot the parents that are doing this right now will be able to move down club teams if they switch the rules. Are you really in SoCal? Maybe you don't know how competitive and ruthless it really is. Its getting worse every year.
 
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Scrub It Kook said:
I believe this is how travel baseball works today. Instead of U14 (Under 14) it will be 14U (14 and Under). Some of the parents I know with kids in travel ball said the cut off is 9/1. Parents still hold their kids back in baseball despite not impacting club too much because they are trying to make the Varsity HS team as a freshman. A Freshman who makes (and starts) Varsity catches college scouts attention.
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Bumping this to the top. I think the change (if it goes through) will have less impact on Club than High School soccer. High School is where the kid held back/red shirted gets to play varsity as an 18 year old freshman. Happens all the time in high school baseball, but maybe not to that extreme. However their travel ball team has a DOB cut off of 9/1-8/31.
 
Scrub It Kook said:
Bumping this to the top. I think the change (if it goes through) will have less impact on Club than High School soccer. High School is where the kid held back/red shirted gets to play varsity as an 18 year old freshman. Happens all the time in high school baseball, but maybe not to that extreme. However their travel ball team has a DOB cut off of 9/1-8/31.
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nobody knows exactly how the rules would work if they switch it back. I can tell you though there's very little enforcement of any rules at the ECNL level. Shoot there isn't even a rule book for this current season in place right now. That should tell you a lot.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
If in the rankings app power definitions were added to different leagues to compensate different league cutoff dates two things would happen.

First, club rankings would stratify based on league power definition.

Second, top teams from leagues with less power ranking would search out teams from higher power leagues to beat and magnify the win.

As an example. Top Hat would be able to move themselves into the top 5 every summer when they play in tournaments. Then during the GA season they'd need to blow out opponents 10-0 to maintain it.

Things quickly become a nightmare to maintain.
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You are fundamentally misunderstanding how Soccer Ranking works. What you are describing would apply to points based or bonus type rating/ranking, with GotSport Rankings as the best example. If you're ranking teams by how many points they win, and different leagues, tournaments, or other competitions all have different point ratings - it makes sense that they are essentially power rating the different competitions when they choose how many points to award. And as I think most can see - this method does not work, at all, at least as implemented by GotSport. Terrible teams are rated highly because they do well in nothing tournaments that somehow all have high point values, awesome teams are rated as bottom-dwellers because for whatever reason they don't appear often in GotSport-ranked tournaments.

But SR doesn't rank any tournaments, or compare them against eachother in any way. All that matter is how this team entity did when they competed against this other team entity. That is essentially it. Whether they were in the same league, different league, tournament, playoff, whatever - all of it is "rated" the same as a game. The results of these games are all that goes into adjusting the rating. All that is necessary is the ability to determine what represents a team entity, and as long as you have that, the rest falls into place.

Your predictions don't make sense in this context.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
You are fundamentally misunderstanding how Soccer Ranking works. What you are describing would apply to points based or bonus type rating/ranking, with GotSport Rankings as the best example. If you're ranking teams by how many points they win, and different leagues, tournaments, or other competitions all have different point ratings - it makes sense that they are essentially power rating the different competitions when they choose how many points to award. And as I think most can see - this method does not work, at all, at least as implemented by GotSport. Terrible teams are rated highly because they do well in nothing tournaments that somehow all have high point values, awesome teams are rated as bottom-dwellers because for whatever reason they don't appear often in GotSport-ranked tournaments.

But SR doesn't rank any tournaments, or compare them against eachother in any way. All that matter is how this team entity did when they competed against this other team entity. That is essentially it. Whether they were in the same league, different league, tournament, playoff, whatever - all of it is "rated" the same as a game. The results of these games are all that goes into adjusting the rating. All that is necessary is the ability to determine what represents a team entity, and as long as you have that, the rest falls into place.

Your predictions don't make sense in this context.
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How would the soccer rankings app address when one league has players that are 6 months older than other leagues but the "same" age/grade/year of competition?

You have two choices. Either ignore the differences or apply some kind of "power" ranking to the teams that are 6 months older to normalize the results.
 
SuperSoccerStar said:
How long exactly have you been involved in kids sports? This is a pretty bold statement to make. Its literally happening right now. Parents are using these new soccer "schools" to redshirt or even delay further their kids from starting high school. You honestly think it was never done for a club team before the switch to BY so the kid could play on the younger team. Come on. It was done before and it will be done again. Shoot the parents that are doing this right now will be able to move down club teams if they switch the rules. Are you really in SoCal? Maybe you don't know how competitive and ruthless it really is. Its getting worse every year.
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In my 15 years in youth soccer, playing in multiple Socal tournaments every year, I have never seen or heard of a single instance of a kid playing down. There was the experiment a few years ago where smaller kids were bio banded, but that's not what's being discussed here.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
In basketball, this isn't as small a minority as you'd think. If you look at the more competitive national leagues, or if you look at the standouts nationally in the middle-school / early high-school ages, it is very, very common to find kids that have been held back so they can play on a younger age team. In soccer - it's accepted that those at the tip of the spear are playing up 1, 2, or even 3 years in their teens on their way to college or even the pros. In basketball - it's instead more common to see the best players do everything they can to stay on a younger team, so they can stand out among their peers on the regional or national circuits.
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We're not talking about basketball though.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
Maybe ECNL is big enough to keep different leagues from fragmenting on SY definition details.

But there will be waivers provided for redshirt kids to play on SY grade teams.
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Why would there be waivers provided? Just because some small majority of parents want it isn't a reason to do it. Why would soccer consciously open that can of worms?
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
I'm not as confident as you are. It absolutely does happen right now, in all sports that I'm aware of, that go by SY. It varies based on competitiveness / geography / $, but it is a key difference between youth sports in 2024 and what we may remember either in our youth or even a decade ago. I think it would be rare if soccer was somehow immune.




I should have clarified. I meant that there is a huge switching cost for the environment as a whole - not that there is any direct $ cost change for an individual, or even much $ for the overall environment. The cost is the loss (and creation) of thousands and thousands of teams from one season to the next, and all of the downstream effects.
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I genuinely think you're a conflating HS shenanigans with club.
 
whatithink said:
In my 15 years in youth soccer, playing in multiple Socal tournaments every year, I have never seen or heard of a single instance of a kid playing down. There was the experiment a few years ago where smaller kids were bio banded, but that's not what's being discussed here.
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We've caught multiple players on our own team, submitting altered birth certificates to play down. To say that you haven't seen anything in 15 years is less about how little cheating goes on and more about how observant to it one may be.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
How would the soccer rankings app address when one league has players that are 6 months older than other leagues but the "same" age/grade/year of competition?

You have two choices. Either ignore the differences or apply some kind of "power" ranking to the teams that are 6 months older to normalize the results.
Click to expand...

I still don't think you're getting it. There is no power ranking for teams, clubs, leagues, etc. All that matters is the team entity. You can go in right now, and change a team from 2011 to 2010. Or 2011 to 2012. The rating doesn't change a whit. But the ranking will change, as it will now be sorted with the older or younger teams.

However that team entity performs, that's the rating. Now it's probably up to them whether they keep their team as one, call them two different teams, and whether either are linked to the prior. And maybe there will be guidance if the shift becomes reality with the new season.

In none of this, by design, is there any concept of power ranking for the age, tournament, or any other grouping.

There is no normalizing, no ignoring, no other factor ever needed.
 
whatithink said:
Why would there be waivers provided? Just because some small majority of parents want it isn't a reason to do it. Why would soccer consciously open that can of worms?
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Some people want all the 2026 players at the same games, so it’s easier for college scouts to assemble a 2026 recruiting class.

I agree that it‘s a bad idea. It doesn’t even achieve the stated goal. If you want to know how good someone is, you want to watch them playing up, not down.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
I still don't think you're getting it. There is no power ranking for teams, clubs, leagues, etc. All that matters is the team entity. You can go in right now, and change a team from 2011 to 2010. Or 2011 to 2012. The rating doesn't change a whit. But the ranking will change, as it will now be sorted with the older or younger teams.

However that team entity performs, that's the rating. Now it's probably up to them whether they keep their team as one, call them two different teams, and whether either are linked to the prior. And maybe there will be guidance if the shift becomes reality with the new season.

In none of this, by design, is there any concept of power ranking for the age, tournament, or any other grouping.

There is no normalizing, no ignoring, no other factor ever needed.
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Ugh... So your choice is to ignore the differences and let a 6 month player age differential not be normalized.

That's fine but in theory banding will occur because older players are playing against younger players in the same age group.

Personally I'd want to accommodate for the age diffences to normalize the results.
 
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