They sure are.
Get ready folks
- Thread starter soccer4us
- Start date
Yeah and the “trapped” player can go play on the younger team during the break. Last year in Southwest we played the whole first half of the ECNL season over again during the high school break. I don’t know what they are doing this year. This whole trapped player is such bullshit.
I think MLSN and EA will be "forced" to do SY once approved, otherwise it will be a huge mess for the summer tournaments which can be important revenue for the club. MLS Academy will stay in BY and they will be fine to play against 5 months older non academy team.
This is not generally true for boys, where recruitment is mostly junior and senior year. So, say coaches start scouting a team at U17, then the trapped players are watched earlier and have 3 seasons to be recruited instead of two.
whatithink
GOLD
The trapped player can’t talk to college coaches when the rising Juniors are being signed as they are a rising Sophomore.
I like that better than what exists now. Or make the interest low enough to just cover admin fees and a little profit.
That said, dumping student loan debt on taxpayers, many of whom paid for their own college or were responsible enough to not borrow money they couldn't pay back, is disgraceful. When did "consequences" for your actions become a bad thing? To your point, I think a good electrician can probably make twice that in CA.
How is the US the richest country in the world when we're $35 trillion in debt? Rich how? I guess if you just keep printing money and sticking it to your taxpayers, with no concern for paying what you owe, it's the good life. Reminds me of Gavin Newsom always talking about how we're the 5th largest economy on the planet. Uh, based on what? Does he not have access to the checkbook? Does he not know how underfunded major programs are? Does he pay attention to the current status of California's debt? In less than 5 years we went from $100+ billion in surplus to estimates of $25-$50B in debt.
When you make things "free", they lose value... and nothing is ever free. It's just someone else paying for it. So what happens when you have 40 qualified applicants for a job instead of 6? What happens to that salary? That isn't going to end well. What's even more interesting to me is how our UC system gladly accepts 2x or 3x the tuition from students from other countries and then denies American high schoolers.
To be clear, players can reach out to call coaches all they want whenever the want, but coaches can't reciprocate.
whatithink
GOLD
Sure, but the rising Juniors are being recruited and offered and will continue all through their Junior year. The "trapped" players can't be during that period. When they are rising Juniors, they are competing for spots with "trapped" players from the year ahead, while trying to get recruited etc. They could end up on team where most players are already committed for their Junior & Senior years which could be problematic for them ... or not, idk and I doubt anyone else really does either, bar anecdotally. Whether its an advantage or disadvantage is all anecdotal also as far as I can see on here.
That pretty much sums up the cutoff date debate for me.
Club season should run similar to High School. Wasn't a fan when they switched it up 7 years ago. By High School your kid needs to be able to play with older players and hold their own. 14 year olds could be playing with 18 year olds. Hit college, mine was 17 starting the season and there were 23 year old players due to covid years. Kids will adapt pretty quickly.
whatithink
GOLD
For the top teams, yeah. The premise seems to be that numbers have dropped, and the rationale seems to be that the age group change is a factor. I would have to assume that someone has looked at the data and recognized that the drop off correlates to the younger grouping. That data must be available as everyone is registered with a birth date. So, if that's true, then this makes sense - but we don't have the data to confirm, and nobody seems to be quoting data to provide justification.
Speculation, but my suspicion is that at best there is a correlation, and not causation. The pandemic lockdowns have skewed all data (trust me I deal with it everyday). Participation rates for all youth sports have declined post-Covid (and all youth sports were declining pre-Covid). Like I said, I couldn't care less either way, but the basis for the switch is more of an emotional perception than factual. And again, this akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Also lets not pretend that the soccer organizations are doing this because they're worried about kids playing with their classmates, or the 3 months when 8 graders won't have games with their club team. It's all in an attempt to increase participation for $$$.
Maybe while they change the age cutoff dates they could also set a "joysticking" cutoff date, like no joysticking between August 1 and July 31. That would help both trapped players and un-trapped players.
PurpleCrush
BRONZE
Interested to see the chaos that comes of this change since it looks like it will be in effect for Fall 2025. SOCAL tryout guidelines are going to be a headache. You'll have 2010 (and older) players locked in until end of State Cup in March/April and possibly many teams splitting at the end of their run. Then on the other side you'll have some 2011's that may want to go find a new team earlier than the end of State Cup.
Is your player a trapped player?
According to the definitions used by you and others, he was, but I never considered him to be trapped in anything. In 2017 with the BY change and with a September birthday he went from being one of the oldest to one of the youngest. Combined with the fact that he was a late bloomer, he was always the smallest with rare exception through his U16 MLSN season when he stopped playing to concentrate on football (and still 5'3" 95 lbs). The age cutoff didn't favor him, but so what, no one is entitled to being one of the biggest kids on the team. He developed other skills (including some dark arts) to compensate for his lack of size. He's now 5'11" 150 and I'd love to see him play soccer now...but that's not going to happen.
If parents are going to whine about their kid not being able to play with classmates and having 3 months with no games when they're in 8th grade, then maybe competitive soccer isn't a good idea for their family.
Did he play MLSN his 8th grade/9th grade year or was he in a different league?
95 lbs playing american football? Please tell me he was a kicker.
Kicker, starting corner and kick returner as a freshman on JV. He got launched a few times trying to make tackles, it wasn't pretty. Have your ever seen baggy football pants?