Seems a lot like "everyone gets a trophy" mentality.
Get ready folks
- Thread starter soccer4us
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whatithink
GOLD
Surely more like maximizing your customer base - its a business at the end of the day with tickets to sell, shirts to sell, advertising revenue to generate etc. and the more participants / customers, now and into the future, the better the prospects for the business to expand and be successful.
Like I said, let rec and community programs cater to the classmates playing together (granted club soccer is mostly rec soccer with a steeper price tag). Retention has nothing to do with calendar cutoff, or at least very little. Additionally, we have little evidence that cutoff has any material impact on participation numbers. The biggest impact that calendar cutoff has is apparently on the emotions of parents.
Thatonedad
SILVER
Soccermomma24
BRONZE
Make the change in 2025 ECNL. No one wants to play on a team for a whole year that will disband in 2026, like a lame duck
By that standard: what does it matter if they change it?
If any leagues does this, they sure can care less about clubs. Imagine having 5 teams do school year in ECNL and 40 teams do birth year? What a mess.
It doesn't, as I said a few times before on this thread. It's just a distraction from what's really wrong with youth soccer and a waste of time, effort and energy. This thread is illustrative of how misguided our priorities are when it comes to youth soccer in the US.
whatithink
GOLD
99.9% of youth soccer is rec level, with levels from low to high in both price and ability.
If they go it alone, I hope they keep a strict age cutoff.
You already see clubs who recruit a wrecking ball and have her pick up a yellow in every hard match. The last thing we need is for that wrecking ball to be one year older because she was “held back.”
Thatonedad
SILVER
From a friend
“Sounds like the plan being presented is a recommendation all US Club teams play up next year. This does not go against the mandate and allows all their teams who want to start early the opportunity to do so. Teams can stay BY and play regular age group as well.”
US Club/US soccer meeting to decide. Will have answer hopefully sometime today.
“Sounds like the plan being presented is a recommendation all US Club teams play up next year. This does not go against the mandate and allows all their teams who want to start early the opportunity to do so. Teams can stay BY and play regular age group as well.”
US Club/US soccer meeting to decide. Will have answer hopefully sometime today.
DeaconSoccer12
BRONZE
This seems like a scary proposition for fall birthday players to drop down to a team "playing up". Unless it is in stone that Fall 26 will by SY. You risk leaving a team and then having to try to claw back up if SY does not end up happening.
That is actually one of the more sensible propositions I've seen. Club teams can move flights pretty easily based on overall competitive level, and if they just move up younger players to align their teams with school years as desired, this wouldn't violate any existing rules. It might make the clubs which do so less competitive in terms of metrics (compared to clubs which do not), and obviously would be disruptive to existing teams, but otherwise wouldn't have much effect in general (ie: leagues could still align with BY for official age cutoffs for divisions, etc.).
It seems like there is a huge amount of astroturfing around this issue also, though, explicit and implicit (eg: "start early" implies the change is a done deal, whereas in reality that seems far from accurate, particularly given this backing off recently and the "we intend to listen to the concerns from all the interested parties" note from US Soccer). I suspect this proposed change was pushed by a vocal few, with a lot of fake support, and when it got to the actual discussion there was a non-trivial amount of "why TF are we doing this" push-back. I would guess that, propaganda notwithstanding, this is not an inevitable change at this point.
I wouldn't personally be upset if my son's club implemented this change for fall 2025, even without anticipating this was a "done deal" for the future, and even though my son would be negatively affected (having been born in Feb), and even if that meant his fall team would no longer be playing at flight 1. However, I suspect the clubs would get some push-back from other parents, who are more vested in the "status" of the flight and perceived competitive level of the team, and it might affect some ancillary things (eg: invites to tournaments based on ratings). I suspect there would be some mixed up-take on this, but as noted, it does seem like a reasonable compromise, particularly where this is a pressing issue within specific clubs.
That's what I think as well. However, 99% of the parents will pay a coach to make their dd or ds elite.
This doesn't seem that "scary" to me, although perhaps I'm not fully understanding the implications.
In my son's club, for example, there are teams at each age bracket. If they reshuffled the teams to have roughly 50% of the players "play up" for 25/26, to align the teams with SY, that would be fine imho; the teams would probably play at lower flights in the falls, but no big deal otherwise. If SY doesn't happen in 26, and looks like it's not going to happen, they would just reshuffle the teams again then, and adjust flights as appropriate. The only bad effect there is disrupting who you're playing with (eg: team chemistry, etc.), but that's not a primary concern for me, at least, in terms of the club experience. It's not like you'd be dropped from the club, just because they are shuffling teams around (although with other clubs that might be more of a concern).
That said, as noted in my other post, I'm also not sure there would be a lot of incentive for clubs to do it proactively anyway, so it might be a moot concern. But, at least in my case, I don't think I'd care either way, and don't perceive much risk if they did.
Also, that proposal (ie: allowing teams/clubs to organize such that they "play up", without changing any of the other BY rules generally) would allow, for example, the ECNL to mandate "playing up" to SY for all ECNL teams if they wanted. Then clubs could just decide based on participation in ECNL if those teams would be aligned that way, etc., and those teams could also participate in external BY tournaments and such. That seems like it would be fine, generally, at least as far as I can tell.
So ECNL has 3 scenarios for 25/26:
1. Keep in BY. Definitely not an ideal solution since ECNL is ready. There is no point to waste another year.
2. Allow certain number of Q3/Q4 to drop down to their grade. This is a good compromise to allow a smooth transition and reduce trap players.
3. All ECNL teams transit to SY and play up in BY bracket. This is the best solution, but it needs to be blessed by US Soccer.
For #1, see astroturfing note: "waste another year" assumes an outcome which is by no means certain. ECNL may be dead set on adopting SY, but that doesn't mean all of club/other soccer will follow suit.
#2 might be a "compromise", but would exclude those teams from playing within the BY frameworks which would presumably be standard outside of ECNL, which might not be very desirable for those teams (unless they "played up", in which case this is equivalent to #3). Also, still assuming a conclusion, via "smooth transition".
#3 does not need to be "blessed by US Soccer", as far as I can tell. Clubs can already have younger players on older BY teams. No permission is required for ECNL teams to organize like this now, and moreover, ECNL could presumably mandate this for teams which want to compete in their league.
That's how I see it, anyway. ECNL should proceed with #3, everyone else can proceed as normal, and we can all see how it works out a year from now (best outcome for all parties, imho).