I've neither seen nor heard any talk that leagues can't combine years into two-year age groups. In rural areas, that's a necessity -- and I have heard higher-up people recognize that fact.
Interestingly, at least one club director has signed the petition. Nice to see one voice an opinion on it. My son's has been noticeably silent on the subject.
Thanks for the response. I wonder if it would make sense for the national organizations to create age groups with combined birth years, for example: 01/02 and o2/03 in which more advanced 02 players who are ready can play against slightly older kids and get some better competition, but if you have a late growth spirt or are new to club soccer you can play in the 02/o3 age group where you are one of the older kids. Seems like that would give clubs the flexibility to do what is best for each player and at the same time allow existing teams to stay together as well as address some of the other issues people are raising.
If that were the solution, seems far better to stick with August-July birth years. I don't see how two-year age ranges that pit youth players against kids 24 months older than them possibly could be seen as an improvement over any 12 month age range.
rural areas? I live in a metro area with a million people and divsions are determined in this way. Yes some teams are made as U-11, U-12, U-13, etc., but a lot of us do it based on two year increments. People are way over thinking this change. After the initial year of implementation, there is no difference than what we are doing right now.
Except for kindergartners (if any rec leagues decide to go birth year as well), eighth-graders whose teammates will spend a season playing high school soccer instead, 12th-graders whose teammates will graduate, and a few others.
The rec league I run goes by our school year grades (Dec-Nov), so we are not far off. We've always done it that way. No difference really. In our area, 'freshman' sports were done away with. If you don't make JV, your 'freshman team' can have 7th, 8th & 9th graders on the team. No big deal. And again, leagues can have a 'U-19' team rather than U-18 or U-17 and get those teams to remain in tact.
Your view that there won't be much impact is shaped by the fact that you happen to live in one of the few parts of the country where school grade age groups are pretty closely aligned with a calendar year. That's far and away the exception to the rule. The vast majority of us live in areas where the school cut off is around September, and for us there will be more impacts than there will be for you.
Yeah, and we've been running our leagues for years with that odd cut-off. Speaking from experience, its no big deal if you break up grades and/or have players requesting to play up. We've done it for a long time. Its not the big deal that you all are making it out to be. If you are ultra-competitive clubs you will have hard cutoffs to remain competitive with other ultra competitive clubs. The rest of you will go about with 'oh well we {won/lost} because that kid was older. No big deal.
Agreed that it's no big deal what you call the age groups, U14 or U19 or '02 etc. What is the big deal is the # of trapped players every year. Athlete's born Oct-Dec, in most of the country, could be left without teams to play on or against since most of their birth year peers could be either: high school freshman would would opt not to play club soccer during their school season or college freshman, not needing/wanting to play club soccer. Next year take '02's for example, the early group will be freshman, the later group, depending on school cutoff in your area, will still be in 8th grade
Same here. I still think there is a chance they will rethink this. I get where the push to go to birth year grouping is coming from. But I do not understand the need / drive to accelerate the age groups and field progressions by a year. The DA has used the birth year groups for years now. Why decide now that they are doing it wrong and the DA kids should start full field a year earlier. Especially when as you mention the official statements have centered around how US Soccer wants full field to start later than what some states are currently doing. It also pushes the competitive entry teams to such a young age. The new U12 DA teams were already planning to start the DA process a year earlier than currently. Now a redefinition of the age groups would push that to two years earlier. IMO that pushes this stuff too far down the age range. Basically it actually seems to encourage single sport specialization and playing / training as much soccer as possible before age 10.
go back and look at the Reyna release years ago. Those plans and training recommendations were not geared to well rounded multi-sport athletes. No surprises here.
This is the Northern California "final" implementation matrix. http://norcalpremier.com/home/894044.html
10 yards per player on the field for a team. 7v7 70 yards. 9v9 90 yards. That will be max length. Will likely allow for range of 10-15 yards. The issue is for clubs that have two fields going across big fields, it is hard to find 85-90 yards of width to put in small fields.
Here is the field size implementation for Cal South: http://media.calsouth.com/data/Downloads/Top_Stories/2015/USSF_SSG_Chart_112315.pdf?rev=3A93 U10, which technically wouldn't exist and just be called 2007, would have a range of 47x30 to 70x50.
I can't believe they are going to have 2004 girls (11 and 12 years old) playing with a size 5 ball. I'm not sure that any female should be using a size 5 at any age.
Season starts in August of 2016. A kid born in December of 2004 will be will turning 12 at the end of the season. A kid born in January of 2004 will be 12 the entire season and will turn 13 before state cup for most parts of the country. (I think)
All season we've been playing out of the backfield - no punting. back field is okay but with a new keeper the concept is odd. u10 there are rarely girls who can throw that well and only a few who can really hammer the ball with their foot. We spent most of the season on our side of the field as a result. It was frustrating but I see why now (the no punting part). Other u10 teams (less one) all used their keeper to bring the ball down the field with punts. They will see a difficult time when transitioning.