This happens because at very young ages the kids are separated by gender. If they started out and remained co-ed until U10-U11 many of the issues of girls not wanting to play, refs calling it one sided etc would diminish. The reality is the kids and parents are reacting to bias and nothing more.
You don’t think these kids are bring socialized to that outside of soccer as well? The bias is already there…youth soccer didn’t create it, It’s just reacting to it…not sure its Youth Soccer’s place of fix or change it… What is the benefit of postponing this separation? A separation, I assume, we all agree needs to happen at some point, whether its U9 or U14….is there really a problem that needs fixing?
If the separation is based on skill then it will matriculate naturally. I would not expect a traditionally "high powered" club with a very strong youth program with near a 50/50 co-ed blend for an A team. If at U9 if you took the best boys and the best girls on a team of 12 kids it is likely that only about 4 of them would be girls. It is at the lower level teams where the the blend would be more equal, and in time kids would find their natural gender teams. But at U9 or U10 to simply cut out half the potential player pool developmentally seems silly. If you have 4 or 5 girls who are at or better skill wise than the same age boys why would you not want them developing together versus filling those roster spots with les skilled players simply because they are boys?
This would seem to presume boys skills development is the gold standard…that somehow the girls, developmentally, are getting short changed or are less then…even if that is the case (and not saying it is), no reason it has to be…. Whenever I hear people talking about the girls playing with the boys, it is ALWAYS seems in context of the boys making the girls better…never the other way around, never with the idea it will benefit the boys or that will make the boys any better… If not mutually beneficial, is it parasitic? Ok, a much stronger term than I mean…but the relationship always seems or is presented as one-sided, as in the boys make the girls better….great for girls, but big “so what,” or not worse, for the boys... In any case, I think we already separate by “skill” at far too early…A, B. C, etc teams…but at least we do it by sex [and age] as well…..by removing those separations/groupings, you simply multiply that mistake….instead of 24 “chosen ones” at U9 (12 boys, 12 girls), you cut that number down to 12…all on this rather subjective and fickle concept of “skill” at 8 or 9… I think we would be cutting our nose off to spite our face….I don’t think we improve talent base one bit and worse, I think we drive more kids out of soccer even earlier then we tend to do already…
If it is based on actual skill then why wouldn't the boys benefit? If 3-4 9 year old girls are actually better than the 3-4 boys who are next in line for the same team, how do the boys improve simply by lowering the bar in order to fit the boys on? And boys do benefit from girls playing with them. For one thing, girls will pass and actually understand the concept of teamwork early on. The boys that play with my daughter love it when she joins because they know she will feed them the ball.
And if the handful of actually skilled 9 year old girls (kinda your words not mine) are off playing with the boys, who helping the so-so 9 year old girls get better…the so-so 9 year old boys…unlikely…. At 9 years old you or she might not care about fielding a decent local 11v11 U15 girls team, but by the time it rolls around, you will… It’s not about lowing the bar; it’s about developing the future… I get that you think your daughter playing with the boys right now helps her individually….and on a purely individually basics, its workable, but instituting it wholesale across the board would be a disaster imho… it would gut the player pool…we already lose boys droves to cooler, more popular, sports, and now you want to force them to play with…to be demoted to play with the girls…sorry, but, right or wrong, that's how many will see it...
If 3 or 4 nine year old girls are better than other boys on the team how is that not developing the boys? If you are including the best 9 or 10 year olds on a team how does that not help develop ALL those players? You are acting like I have some quota in mind here. This is solely based on skill and merit. It doesn't have to be instituted wholesale it should just be an option. My daughter easily made a boys Super Y team one year but the league would not let her play in league games. Why? She was among the top players on the team but she couldn't play.
Because the 7-8 better or just as good nine year old boys don’t need a few more better players on the team who happen to be girls and who will simply move on to all-girl teams in the not too distant future… The girls take (spots and opportunities) but leave nothing behind in the end…like I say, great for the individual girl, not so much for the club or team that’s trying to be build a long term boys side… Don’t need gender-neutral “All Star” teams at 9-10….it’s the wrong direction; it exacerbates already existing problems (i.e. what talent or merit actually means at 9-10)… edit: It’s a zero sum game…there are only so many spots available…and the fact is, girls can and do take spots reserved for boys, while boys never take spots away from the girls…it only works in one direction…once again, don’t really have a problem with it, but then I tend not to think about it much either…
So a 9 year old Boy has the clarity of thought to determine, without outside influence, that he identifies as a Girl. But our Government has determined that you can't vote until you're 18. Probably because you're not mature enough to understand the consequences and responsibilities of voting and yet this 9 year old, somehow, is wise enough to determine something vastly more complex and impactful on his life then voting will ever be.
No, you are simply diluting talent based on gender. If those 3-4 girls are BETTER than the boys than they deserve to be on the better team. Those 3-4 boys did not earn that A team spot based on merit or skill, they made it based on being a boy and nothing more. It isn't a zero sum game. At some point perhaps those boys improve enough to displace the girls or other boys on the team as happens anyway. I am not talking about girls being skilled "for being girls" here, I am talking about girls who are flat out better than many of the boys are.
No, we separate talent based on gender…those 3-4 better girls don’t deserve anything under our current gender based system, however, they (or at least their parents) certainly feel entitled to more options then the boys have… Girls have three options: Play at their age, play up, or play with the boys… Boys only have two: Play at their age or play up… Once again, don’t really care…more bothered by the sense of entitlement you project and the complete inability to see or admit how harmful the widespread application of what you suggest would be to long term development, especially on the boys side… Boys, who only crime is being a boy and being not quite so talented at a young age, are losing developmental spots because some girl takes advantage of an unfair and one-sided entitlement…an entitlement they will use for a few years until they move on to where they are supposed to be… A boy who is more advanced than his age peers would simply play up….why isn’t that good enough on the girls side?
People sure are making a lot of assumptions about a story they know absolutely nothing about beyond what an obviously offended parent has told them. IF this story is true (and that's a seriously big if), my guess would be that this child is actually intersex (way more common than most people think), has been living as a boy up to that point, and is currently transitioning to a girl, which I would assume involves taking hormones that will eventually make them less male and more female. But really, there's so little real information here that it's not worth getting worked up about on either side. Although it does bring up the interesting question about what to do with children who weren't born as specifically gendered as most. But as has been pointed out, pre-puberty it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference on the field.
1. If the girls are actually better it is not being entitled, they are better and they should be allowed to play where their skill is a best fit. 2. Playing up is not a benefit to girls who are smaller and simply need to play the game at a faster speed and playing up with girls does not necessarily provide anything much beyond size and speed. It is more appropriate to play at a more relative size and speed. Frankly, you seem to be fixated and stuck on the notion that young girls, and this is all I'm talking about here, that young girls can be both better than their cohort boys and that boys cannot benefit from playing with and against a player who is as good or better than they are. Mia Hamm for Christ's sake played up on boys teams in her teens because she could. So at a certain point, yes, it would take a Mia Hamm to crack that boys team. That 1. this means that this would not be as wide sweeping as you fear and 2. I would love to hear the argument about how those boys suffered by having Mia Hamm as their teammate or opponent.
I would appreciate it if you stopped assuming i fabricated this story. Its utterly ridiculous to assume that. And I was never offended by it, just posted it on this forum to have a spirited debate.
The exception is that a Teen girl can play and dominate while playing up against boys. That I agree with and that is the point. But to believe that 8, 9, 10 or even 11 year old girls cannot play as well or better than many of the boys their same age? No, that isn't the case because if it was then I'm raising a generational talent myself. But at young ages when development is the primary focus kids should be grouped by overall skill and if that means that a couple of girls are on Timmy's team then so be it. Perhaps those boys that lost a roster spot to a couple of girls might learn something about merit versus entitlement. They might just lose a job opportunity down the road to a woman who is simply better than they are.
As I have said, repeatedly, I have no problem with the one-off girl playing with boys…Mia Hamm quality or not; however YOU have NOT been talking about the one off, but 3-4 out of a roster of 12. In any case, girls playing with the boys one off is a fairly common practice; I see at least 1 (boys) team at year that my son plays against that has 1 or 2 girls on it; it doesn’t shock me, it doesn’t bother me…my son has an indoor team(U15 last season) that regularly has a girl play on it, once, doesn’t shock me, it doesn’t bother me…quite frankly she is as good as all the boys, and certainly better than some.. What I oppose it’s a systematic approach that allow girls to takes developmental roster spots away from boys…actually, what I really want is to keep the player pools of both sexes as large as possible; and what you are suggesting, I fear, would shrink them…. Whatever the goal, whether it be the high school team, college scholarships or the National Team, soccer is divided by sex…and you can’t pretend that divide doesn’t exist. And as such, it’s unfair, and even counterproductive in the long run, to give one sex more development opportunities than the other…thinking the “rules” don’t allow to them is the definition of entitlement; and like it or not, soccer is divided by sex… The fact that you might think your club has a weak girls side, is no reason to invade and, in the long run, weaken the boys side. And yes, taking away developmental roster spots at young age from boys who would otherwise have them, is weakening the boy’s player pool in the long run….I would even say, it’s a shortsighted approach that weakens the girls side in the long run as well…but, let’s face it, you don’t care about that…your argument is very narrow and self-centered. There is zero foundation that an all-girls development system is inherently weaker than an all-boy development system…which you seem to be implying…that girl that plays on my son’s indoor team, didn’t get that good playing with the boys; she got that good playing with the girls at our club since she was 9… Once again, if your club has a weak girls side or development program, that’s a club-level issue, not system-level one…the girls our club develops are every bit as good, skill wise, as their male counterparts….if you can’t say that, then maybe you should be looking for a new club…
Nobody (certainly not I) is saying a girl can’t play or “hang” with the boys…or that a girl can’t be just as, or even more, skilled or talented then her male counterparts… I would say it’s you who think girls have something to prove and that they are somehow considered, in general, weaker soccer players compared to the boys….don’t project your baggage on me…
My kids club is in fact an extremely strong Girls club. And she trains and plays with another predominately boys club. Spots are not being taken away from boys. If they can't beat a girl for the spot then they should be on the B team where they were placed. On the flip side then there is no evidence that 9 year old girls playing with boys would weaken the boys program. I am not pretending the divide doesn't exist, I'm saying that at 8-10 years old the divide does not need to exist to the extent that it does. What is the difference if it is one girl who is on the boys team or 3-4 as long as they are as skilled or better than the boys with whom they are playing with or against? Why does that bother you? I've never said this needs to carry beyond the simple merits of skill and earning a spot on the team period. At a certain point yes the girls matriculate out based on, you guessed it, MERIT.
You kinda did when you said "The fact that you might think your club has a weak girls side, is no reason to invade and, in the long run, weaken the boys side." How is adding stronger players to a developing, "technical phase" player pool "weakening the boys side"? Remember, 8-10 years old is all about the technical foundation. This is not a formation or "team building" stage of development. At 11-13 I completely agree with you but the purpose of the technical phase of development is about improving the individual skill level of the player, that is it. And in that type of environment skill should be matched with skill. At the formation phase then yes, go to gender based teams, because that is the purpose of that phase of development.
Can boys tryout and displace girls for spots on your Strong Girls-Only club team? Realistic, not going to happen…but if it did, it would weaken the long team development of that girls program since less girls are now in the development pipeline at a high level…you would and should have a problem if that was case…. YET, you think its perfectly ok, for the same situation on to occur on the boys side…why is that? You can say your aren’t promoting taking away spots from boys until you are blue in the face, but it doesn’t make it true…if there are 12 roster spots on a boys team, and 15 kids tryout, and 1 goes to a girl, that girl is taking away a spot from a boy…period, end of story….now, if that’s the girls only or best option or if the team need the numbers, so be it…but to be on a Boys team just make some BS point while also being part of a Strong Girls Only program…well, good for you…
Temporally adding stronger female players to all boys teams lessens the number of male players that can be trained/developed. We don’t care about talent at 8, we care about potential talent, which is far more uncertain….but it should go without saying, an 8 year old girl will never be a strong 15 year old boy…yet, that average 8 year old boy just may grow up to be one…
No it doesn't, it just puts them on a B team where they belong at that time. I'm also not talking about 15 year old kids, I'm talking about 8-10/11 year old kids who are all learning the fundamentals of soccer. Some kids, who have more advanced technical skills than others, regardless of their potential at 15 should be placed with kids of a similar skill level until such a time as B team players develop and prove to be better. We matriculate teams based on skill already, what about this is so hard for you to understand? Kids are primarily learning movement with the ball and movement without the ball. Why does that need gender separation? Almost 40 years ago I played little league with a girl who was both a pitcher and our shortstop. She was good and didn't weaken our experience or team. As we got older she went to softball or something else. No boy quit baseball because of it. The player pool wasn't decimated and it certainly didn't feel like an invasion. For a brief period of time her physical abilities matched those of the boys and she played where she belonged.
When a person tells a story that is very much in line with the political zeitgeist on one side or another, and when that story relies on a falsehood as its premise (that pre-pubescent boys are drastically superior physically to pre-pubescent females), it does make a person wonder. My apologies if this story is actually true, but personally I take everything I read online with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to politically hot topics.
I asked you for the name of the league, you never provided it. This is a huge topic in the law these days and if a soccer league decided to create a policy relative to transitioning players, I find it nearly impossible to believe that it would be as you stated - a note from a health care provider. Gender identity does not hinge on a note from a health care provider. Until you state the name of the league, I am considering this story fabricated.