Virginia made it official in an email sent yesterday. Birth year age groups will take effect Fall 2016 and the SSG mandates will take effect Fall 2017.
I told my one 2005's parents yesterday after my state made it official. I'm leaving it up to them as to when and how to tell their son.
This roll-out schedule is ideal for my teams. My U10 team only loses one 2005 born player and gets the benefit of repeating U10, which immediately converts us from the youngest team in the league to an average-age team. And we don't have to deal with the SSG mandates, which means we can continue playing 7v7 on 65x35 yard fields and don't have to deal with the build out line. Given that we already will have played two full years of u9 and u10 soccer without a build out line, I was not looking forward to having that rule in effect for only a single year during our repeat of u10. By the time the SSG mandates take effect, we will be a u11 team and will have ducked the new U9/U10 format. My current U7 team now will have to repeat U7, which is OK I guess. At U9 and U10 we will have to deal with the crowded fields and build out line, but at least the kids won't know any other way of playing. Much easier to adapt that way than it would have been for my current U10 team that already has played for years without the BOL.
Rec soccer specific question on this. How are your rec soccer programs dealing with rule. Do they plan to switch to stay in sync with your competitive/travel programs or do they plan to stay with school year?
I have not heard any announcements from any rec leagues, but my assumption is that all rec leagues that are affiliated with US Youth Soccer (and VYSA, which falls under USYS, if you are in Virginia) will either need to follow the mandates or dissolve their affiliation with USYS. Unaffiliated leagues, like YMCA type leagues, likely won't even know or care about the mandates, much less enforce them. You probably can find on the Interwebs whether the rec league in question is affiliated with USYS. See here for a list of Virginia rec clubs that are in VYSA and subject to the mandate: http://www.vysa.com/Members/34625/index_E.html
Our club is a US Youth Soccer affiliated club. Our travel program and the league it belongs to follows those rules. Our rec program is unaffiliated, though we follow pretty closely with the USYSA recommendations as far as field sizes, philosophies, etc. Our rec players though are not registered through USYSA. We keep it simple and break everything down via school grade.
I know this thread is old, but just wanted to make sure you realized that US Youth Soccer quietly changed the Age Chart again. They were using the starting year of a season to determine age groups, now the chart has been corrected to use the ending year of a season. So for the 2016-17 season that would be 2017. That now doesn't have anyone repeating any age groups anymore. It will have everyone progress and move up at least one age group. The issue that it creates now is the older ones on your current team will actually skip an age group and never play it at all. For instance my son born in 2006 (currently U10) will now go to U11, while some of his teammates that were born in 2005 will skip U11 all together and go to U12. Here is the revised chart: https://usys-assets.ae-admin.com/assets/1/15/US Soccer Birth Year and Season Matrix.pdf
Yes, I'm hip to that. Currently discussing it in the Youth & HS Soccer forum. Thanks for updating the thread for posterity.
The Arlington Soccer Association (Arlington, VA) published this statement– After reviewing information available about the birth year mandate from U.S. Soccer, and after consulting with U.S. Soccer staff and others, ASA’s Recreational and High School soccer programs will both remain organized by school grade. Organizing Recreational & High School age groups and teams by grade fosters the social construct that is key to Recreational soccer, and it provides a framework that is most readily understood by players and parents. As ASA’s Recreational and High School programs are completely ASA-internal operations, organization by grade affects no one else, and it is allowed by U.S. Soccer.
Just read this from the meeting minutes for our local league (November 2015) in Maryland: "USSF national rules changes (age date change, field size, goal size, roster size etc.) and other changes: MSYSA changes will be implemented on 8/1/2016 (fall season) for recreation level Awaiting to hear from MSYSA on Rec Plus and Travel direction"
The USYSA never mandated anything they suggested. How did they get clubs to do what they suggested if you wanted to be in US cup tournament you did it. Maybe now it is mandated I have not been around it for a long time so I don't know for sure anymore.
I'll go on the record as saying that the birth year changes SUCK. They should have grandfathered everything u10 and above and started it with all incoming U5/U6 players. I know, it will all settle in a year or 2 and we'll all forget about this and go on our merry soccer way. There may be quite a few other coaches in my situation. We are a Gu11 team. We've had ups and downs, but have overall been pretty successful. We've added a few players and lost a few over the last 3 years. We play 11v11 right now. The league that we play in has said that for U12 (next Fall), we will be playing 9v9. But they aren't changing the Age Band until 2017 (silly, right?). I refuse to cut a 5th/6th grade girl just because some adults thought that shifting the age band back 6 months is going to make the USA a male soccer super power in 20 years. I coach for the love of the game. I don't get paid and I don't want to get paid (I've had offers. But then it becomes a job. I already have a job). I have girls on our team that love playing with each other. I have some that were not asked back on"higher" level teams a few years ago. They may have quit soccer if they didn't come to my team. When I told parents of the US Soccer Changes coming up (birth year and SSG), many of them went into panic mode. There have been tearful parent meetings. And child anxiety over what will happen to their team next year. We aren't an ECNL team. We aren't trying to get kids into ODP. A few may wind up playing high school. Maybe some will even play in college. But, we compete each game. We teach solid fundamentals. We have fun. We don't put a ton of pressure on the kids and if they "screw up", I don't berate them or take away playing time. In the next year or 2, is when they say 70% of kids will quit playing sports. If this statistic is accurate, only 4 of my 15 girls will still be playing by the time they are 13. So we are planning on switching leagues next year to keep our team together for at least 1 more season (since statistically, this may be the last season for some of them anyway). This new league will play 11v11, but is adopting the Birth Year ages for 2016. If we stayed in our current league, we would have stayed in the top flight, because we finished in first place this Fall. The team is made up of 2004 and 2005 birth year kids. The league switch will mean that we are playing in the 2004 birth year. So, about half of our kids will be playing up. We will start in their 3rd Flight (lowest competitive flight). We'll see. Maybe it's a bad move. Maybe the younger players will develop more playing against girls 14 months older. Maybe they'll be outmatched each week and it will be a terrible decision. It's a risk we all seem to be comfortable with (for now). We had a team parent "vote" to see what everyone wanted to do. The vast majority voted to play up to 2004 and even the one's that didn't vote that way said "we'll do whatever everyone wants if it means we get to stick together." From the emotional side of youth soccer, "the powers that be" didn't think things through very well. I don't care whether your team is considered "recreational" or "competitive" - Every single youth soccer game i've seen played is both recreational (even at the highest levels, nobody is making a living) and competitive (even at the lowest levels, kids are competing as best as they can).
Ia asked in the other thread....but I'll ask here too. Who do the fall birthdays play with their senior year when half their team graduated the previous year and their too old to play with their spring born classmates and fall born juniors from the previous calendar year?
When I coached kids we never had a team of all one age. Too hard to find players good enough in one age. Our under 19 were in three year age group 18, 17 and 16s.
This seems to be the part that throws a lot of you into a tizzy, the whole 'playing up.' Seems a lot of you do one year age groups. I've been coaching travel soccer for nine years now, we've always played in 2 year groups. U-10, U-12, U14, etc. We play some U-11 and/or U-12 teams, so yeah, I'm used to having kids play with/against players almost 2 years younger or older. Its not a big deal. Dumb. Kids are the flexible ones. They will adjust very quickly. Its the adults that like to complain.
I probably toot my/our horn a lot in here, but the age group changes don't really affect us negatively To me, it's testament to the program that we're building players that can play. We've managed to develop consistency through age groups. Cleansheet is right, it's more the parents. It's not unique to use either: I can think of at least 2 other clubs in our state assoc. that shouldn't be affected either.
That is the part of the new policy that I think is significant--going to single year groups. When the announcement came I went back and looked at the earlier materials I had. It was all expressed in two-year groups. I think 2-year groups forces coaches to face development issues and also leads to better skills and tactics because coaches have to incorporate younger players into the team, raising the importance of technical and tactical aspects. The younger players typically cannot win through superior physical skills alone. I think 1-year groups will encourage coaches to select the more physically mature kids, particularly in the crucial 10-14 age ranges. With 2-year age groups, there is a better correlation of the growth spurt. The majority of kids will reach that point during the same age group.
There are clubs that are one year clubs, mainly the 'premier' clubs. Usually because they can form them. As a town club (with high standards, but open to all that sign up) we are forced to mix it up. Our league doesn't show any indication that they will go to one year breakdowns. Most clubs won't have the player numbers, especially at higher ages. To me, as a U-12 coach, the stupidity is that this (traditional) age group U-11 & U-12 has been split. 12's toward the full field, 11's to smaller size. And you'll notice that heading issue splits the group as well.
Our league in Virginia voted last night to go to calendar age groups. There was talk that they might not adopt the VYSA edict, as mandated to VYSA by USSF, but that was based on ignorant hope rather than being grounded in truth. The truth is that our league had no choice but to adopt the mandate or give up their VYSA membership, which never was going to happen. There was no discussion at the meeting of the SSG mandates, which does make me wonder how they are going to adopt them for the following year. It only really helps to delay the implementation if you are taking steps now to prepare for later implementation. So far as I can tell no such steps (like talk of how to address field and goal issues) are being taken today.
Kentucky is adopting the new SSG mandates starting in 2016-17 but they're not being strict on the goal sizes since that's a huge expense...as long as they're close (7 x 21 instead of 6.5 x 18, for example). I know Ohio North is, not sure about Ohio South but I'd assume that's the case. Once these start going, other states almost have to adopt if they plan to play in tournaments and leagues in neighboring states.
Hey clean at our club players were in two year age groups. So we could not put one age group per year because too hard to find really good players. So every year we would lose some of the older players they would become the younger guys at next age group. So the players were used to playing with different guys every other year. The following year they were back together again.
That's exactly where we are. Nick, I ref a lot of EDP and ENY cup games. Many of the club teams in the NYC area are playing single age teams now a days. They also converted to the calendar year a few years ago outside of USYSA sanctioned leagues, which had our higher level clubs at a 'disadvantage.'