We had our final open field session for my middle school team tonight. Best turn out I had all summer. Kids did great. Couldn't be happier except... ...earlier today I found out that my assistant who I was counting on to handle my 6th grade team will not be coaching this fall. First practice is next Wednesday. Thanks for the early notice, guy. I don't think he was planning on calling me to let me know or anything. So now I'm scrambling to find someone else to take his place. How's your season prep going?
Definitely ready to get rolling. A combination of returning and new players, and some that I don't know particularly well yet, so looking forward to getting to see the early sessions and get the preliminary sense of it all.
I'm sitting the fall season out due to other commitments. I'll be taking the 2nd weekend and getting my grade for the USSF D Course at the end of August. It's going to be interesting considering I haven't coached a practice session since mid May.
Haven't seen it posted here, but USSF passed a new bylaw about age groups. Mandatory starting Jan 1, 2017 ALL age groups will be based on calendar year, so Jan 1 through December 31. No teams will be grandfathered in. I believe state associations can decide when the adoption will take place (they can start early than 2017).
Well, it says it won't start until August 2017 - which is two years from now. In a world that only cares about cashflow and keeping the current business system together, I'll only believe it when I see it.
Don't get me wrong. I hope they do it. But, USSF isn't USYSA which isn't US Club. I can only imagine convincing everyone.
Obviously this is more of a concern for tournaments and the least concern for rec players. My understanding is that a lot of clubs don't register their rec players. It also shouldn't be a concern for competitions regulated by other bodies--such as state athletic commissions regulating scholastic athletic competitions. In states not on a calendar year already, I wonder if a trend will develop where clubs cut current players and replace them with older players born in the first quarter. I would expect to see it in U14 to U16 boys and U10 to U12 girls, where three months can see a big difference in physical age. Especially with the girls teams, because those age groups are still in the skill development stage. Coaches are more likely to value physical abilities higher relative to ball skills at that stage of development .
Apart from Regionals, I don't think I've ever been affiliated with anything but USSF—so I didn't even think about that. I'm not sure where USYSSA or US Club exists. Champions League? It's really immaterial to us coaches or at least it should be. The biggest push back is going to be from parents on successful teams that are going to be split apart by this move. Brace yourselves for a lot of self-serving outrage.
Agree it's immaterial to coaches. Splitting up of teams will definitely be part of the discussion and the one more commonly voiced by parents, but the bigger self-interest will shake in multiple directions, contrast the parents with kids with August-October birthdays who currently are the oldest in the age group versus those with kids with January-March birthdays who will move from middle of the age list to the top. I suspect there is a team out there that has only August to December birthdays that won't have to be split up at all (if that's their decision), but they won't be happy going from being one of the older teams in the division to one of the youngest. The impact of birthdays is quite interesting and deserving of more analysis in figuring out how to maximize the player pool.
I think this move isn't about reducing the relative-age effect (early vs late birthday) because you're still dealing with a 12-month window. This move just aligns our national teams' birthdays with the rest of the world. Can anyone shed some light on why this would be important?
Other than international or interstate competitions, I cannot imagine how it would matter. (I think interstate competition outside of border areas is a mistake. Travel distance ought to be limited to something like 60 miles or less.) I suspect most international youth play is not by US club teams traveling, but groups put together specifically for the trip. So not matching ages, would only matter for foreign clubs wanting to bring teams to US tournaments. So my guess is that it is about drawing more foreign club teams to US youth competitions and making it easier to manage interstate competitions like USSF DA.
Looking forward to the fall season but the league has been such a shambles this year, it's ridiculous. We were supposed to have our annual coaches' meeting this last Tuesday. They canceled on the day. No explanation. Just said they'd email out instead. Over a week later and we've still heard nothing from them. The main office for the league is relocating this same week. So the admin people have had no email or phone lines for 4 business days. The main soccer facility we have here is a massive collection of fields in one complex. It's pretty nice. You have to book them online. Only, they haven't bothered entering that main complex into the reservation database yet. So here we are, again more than a week into the pre-season, and we can't formally reserve space for our practices. We're just going to turn up tomorrow and hope for the best. I did try to call to make sure it's open (as, I'm guessing, many others have too) but, like I said, no phones. No updates on the website - but that's nothing new. Don't know why they couldn't have moved in the months that there's barely any soccer. Don't know why the database wasn't updated well before the pre-season started. Don't know if we'll ever get any of the information we were supposed to get in the coaches meeting. Don't know how people who've done this for years can still be messing up this badly. I'll be happy once we start playing some actual soccer.
we had our first callout/practice/free-for-all of the fall season today. lots of kids, lots of kids without physicals, and lots of my good players missing. whoever called soccer an organized sport was full of shit. we'll see how many more show up tomorrow. sounds like you better avoid board meetings, or you'll end up with a job.
Good soccer coaches are not organized concerning other things needed in the game. Bad soccer coaches are pretty good at organization on the other things needed in the game. There is a tremendous amount of white collar crime involved in youth sports. These guys steal money from the organization when they find themselves in a hole. Don't trust anybody that runs a club or an organization.
Isn't US Club already on the calendar year? If they really want to make it easy, just do it the same as the school year for grade determination in most places (12/1).
Other than some organized 'pickup soccer nights' I am free for the next few weeks. May do the NSCAA Level 6 diploma in a few weeks in NJ. Already have USSF 'E' license, this is the equivalent from NSCAA. Haven't been in the coaches classroom in a while, so I figure this a good reintroduction. Sets me up to be able to do the national diploma in the future.
But is December 1 the grade demarcation point "in most places"? In my state the cutoff for public school is October 1. Of course, that means that just about everyone holds back their kids when they are born in September and more half hold their August kids back. And probably a quarter of July birthdays get held back too. Even some June kids who are "not quite mature enough." I've even had people ask me why I didn't hold back my kids who were born in May, a full 5 months before the cutoff. Must be nice to be able to "play down" like that. We don't allow THAT in soccer!
No, there isn't any one correct answer. But it certainly seems that the age groups should be standrardized nationwide to allow for tournament play and for apples-to-apples comparison among players. And once you decide to put everyone on one standard, it seems to make sense to make it the same standard that the youth national teams use, i.e., a calendar year. But I'll admit to being a little biased. When I grew up, everything was on a calendar year basis and I liked that a lot better.
looking forward to it. coaching my younger son's team again (and hoping he actually plays instead of flaking out on Saturdays) my older son is playing in a u10-u12 (4th and 5th grade and one sixth grade girl) so hopefully he enjoys it, for once he won't be one of the larger kids and can't just push his way through. I won't be the head coach, but probably assisting.
We have a gu11 team with a 15 player roster. We play 11v11. 5 of the girls are 2004 birthday. The rest are 2005. I wish I knew what was happening next year with birth year changes. If this is the last season we get to play together, I want to do some special things.