Several years ago, soccer made the switch to a January 1st cutoff. There was some initial moaning, but that quickly died down and everyone just adapted. It's refreshing to watch kids play against others their own age.
Just not true. Soccer participation is down 4 years in a row and by about 700,000 over the last 4 years as reported by US Soccer Foundation and Aspen Institute.
I agree the soccer change was great and also eye opening. My kid got to play with kids in his grade/birthyear that he went to school with that he didn't before. His birthday was in June so he was use to playing with kids in the grade older before the cutoff change. My big takeaway from it was the kids that played UP had a much easier time while the kids that played down before found it harder playing against kids in their own birthyear/grade. Parents of the kids who were use to playing kids in the younger grade were constantly complaining about everything because their little superstar doesn't score 3 goals a game anymore. Its the coaches fault, other kids on the team don't pass, they are not playing the right position blah blah blah. The difference between the kids in the same birthyear isn't always 12 months. Its not like half the team was born on Jan 1 and the rest on Dec 1. Its usually a couple months. You can't tell me that holding back kids in youth sports isn't an unfair advantage because I saw what happened when kids got taken out of that in soccer and had to play against kids their own birth year. My takeaway was most of the kids who played up were much better off then the kids that played down when everything got evened out. Its funny how if you ask most kids around 9th grade if they would rather play up with Varsity vs stay down on JV most of them want to play up. I'm guessing most of the holdback's were put there by their crazy parents.
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