Congratulations Mounir on the successful completion of your USSF D License.

As coaches are life long learners in the sports specific knowledge or football, and the many accompanying disciples including physiology, and psychology.

Great to see the staff embracing their education both externally with National Governing Bodies, and internally with Fremont YSC.

We would also like to wish the best of luck to Nishant Raj, and Kyra Gupta, who will be traveling to Orlando, Florida to participate in the TopTekkers Nationals this month, following their selection from the recent TopTekkers event hosted in September. We wish the players and their families safe travels to the event, and the best of luck with the event and possible further selection to participate in the International Event hosted in Manchester, England.

We are incredibly proud to be sponsors of the Tri-City Volunteers Food Bank, believing in the importance of sports organizations supporting their community.

Please help to support our 2023 Thanksgiving Food Drive, by donating items from the list attached.

Thanksgiving Food Drive

We will be opening our office on Tuesday November 14th, from 6pm to 7.30pm, for donations to be dropped off (44100 Old Warm Springs Blvd, Fremont).

We greatly appreciate your support with the Thanksgiving Food Drive.

Relative age effect has a significant impact on the youth athletes sporting experience. It is often the reason that players are selected or deemed as talented at younger ages, as their effectiveness is misunderstood to be talent, where it largely the physical and cognitive bias due to their birth date; the bigger, stronger, faster, individual dominating over the smaller, slower, less physically developed individual due to their date of birth.

What is Relative Age Effect?

Relative Age Effect (RAE) is an observed effect where athletes at the top level of sports were born in months earlier in their sports relative cut-off period. If the cut-off for a sports league is December 31st, an athlete born in January is 11 months older than an athlete they are competing against who is born in December.

https://usatodayhss.com/2017/relative-age-effect-is-when-you-are-born-more-important-than-how-good-you-will-be

Impact of Relative Age Effect

Researchers have found that cut-off dates for school eligibility can have a long-term impact on student performance because it can cause some students (those born just after the cut-off date) to be older and more mature than others (those born just before the cut-off date) when they begin school. Skills accumulated in early childhood complement later learning, which means that relative age differences at the start of formal schooling can be long-lasting if relatively older students are better positioned to accumulate more skills in the early academic years because of their cognitive and emotional maturity advantage.

The idea that arbitrary eligibility cut-off dates can have sizeable consequences is even stronger in sport where, in addition to cognitive and emotional development, physical development plays an important role. After all, scouts choose children according to what they see.

Youth sports are organised by age brackets according to a cut-off birth date. In most European youth football leagues the cut-off date is 1 January. In the UK it is 1 September. Players born just after the cut-off tend to be stronger, bigger, more mature, and have more coordination, greater self‑esteem and better decision-making skills than players born at the end of the eligibility year. Since several months of development can make a huge difference in these variables, these players tend to perform better in a given game, watched by scouts, and are more likely to be identified as talented than those born in the later part of the eligibility year. Once selected, they benefit from having more high‑quality coaching, deliberate practice and experience, and are given more opportunities to further their development.

A skewed birth distribution over-representing individuals born early in the selection year has been documented extensively for many other sports, (including rugby, tennis, baseball and ice hockey), in many countries, and was found to be prevalent in youth and senior competitions. The effect remains even to the top level.

Of course, talent does not depend on exactly when you were born, so the talent detection system shows a huge relative age‑effect bias

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2022/oct/24/next-generation-2022-why-scouts-select-players-based-on-the-relative-age-effect

What Can We Do About It?

At Fremont YSC we have addressed this in a number of different ways, and ways in which to support not only the individual player, but also to help support the parents awareness of relative age effect.

• What? No player in the U8 to U10 age groups is cut from the program, all players are welcome. We believe this should go up until U12, but we are also held back by the US culture of winning, as this has a knock on effect of how clubs are selecting players and approaching games on weekends.
  • This immediately removes the bias of selection, as coaches are not looking to pick a player to impact the team, but instead players are deciding whether they want to play for the club, and be part of a learning process.
  • Players are placed into groups of similar birth months, where physical and cognitive development rates are similar. In addition, our club structure allows coaches to move players throughout the season, where maturation is a consideration both physically and cognitively so placed in appropriate groups, and not groups being created based on effectiveness to win games.
• How? We do not place an emphasis on winning, but are process driven and encourage learning from experiences.
  • When coaches know they are not judged on outcome, but the environment created and alignment to the process, this has a positive effect o players as they are all given the same opportunities.
  • We do need the parent support with this, as external pressure will interfere and have an effect.
• Who? We account for all players from U9 to U16, early and late developers must be a consideration.
  • All players jersey numbers are assigned based on their date of birth, and not their placement on a team.
  • This helps as a reminder to parents about their child’s age within a group, and how factors out of their control can effect their rate of development, so not to compare to others.
  • As a club we define success as an individual journey, were our objective is to support players to reach the identification programs of external pathways into regional and national selection, PDP and ODP.

Through a framework and structure that supports the individual player, we remove the bias from relative age effect, and focus is always on the individual, and curriculum is designed to be proactive at age appropriate phases, factoring in the physical and psychosocial needs of the player. All curriculum design and periodized training is supported by evidence based research, which ensures the youth player is getting the best possible opportunity, no matter their date of birth, and being coached like a youth player, so not to be specializing early or treated like a professional. Professionalism comes from the clubs operations and coaches behavior’s.

A great article from Changing the Game Project – https://changingthegameproject.com/winnings-the-great-deodorant-but-that-is-not-always-a-good-thing/

“Winning tends to mask things that stink, to bring positive vibes to a group, less finger pointing, and more acceptance of team roles, playing time, and more. After all, it is hard to argue with results, and certainly at the professional level of sports coaches are paid to win. That is what you will always be judged upon. We always want positive vibes on our teams, and players bought in to the culture and the plan.”

As adults we often reflect our own perceptions and expectations onto kids, and being in an adult world where outcome is important, we subject he kids to this mindset. However, we are in different stages of learning and experiences. Kids are in a process, they are building experiences and learning. With such a race to nowhere going on in youth sport, we don’t allow for the process, but for immediate results, and this effects learning. Our focus shifts from process driven, deep learning experiences, to immediate result rote learning. Sadly, this later approach does not benefit the long term, nor the individual players experience.

Yet I also see a sinister side to this quote, often at the youth levels, where winning tends to mask lack of development, poor coaching, playing, and parent behaviors, lack of playing time for certain players, and more. “But we won the league” or “Well, we won the tournament” is used as an excuse for not giving children meaningful playing time, promoting athleticism over skill development, and coaching through fear based manipulation. So many coaches and clubs are willing to compromise so much to win, as it tends to get most parents, ADs and coaching directors off their back. Sure, a few kids may quit, but they are the weaker players. We get so many calls about this scenario, and we must do better.

We have turned the youth game into an adults playground. Through adult ego, be it coach, parent’s, or directors, we have lost focus on what the youth player needs. The business model that drives youth sports dictates the actions and behaviors of the adults.

The solution to this is great engagement with parents, helping support parents on what is important in youth sports, and how this can be achieved.

The solution is coaches being lifelong learners, continually developing themselves and learning what modern approaches and evidence based research supports the youth player, not relying on traditional methods that we now know do not work.

The solution is giving the game back to the kids, empowering them, and letting them know that we love to watch them play, we are here to support their holistic growth and not just focused on an outcome of the game they have little control over, not meaning in their long term development.

See our earlier article on learning – https://fremontyouthsoccer.com/2023/10/player-learning-evidence-based-approach-to-modern-coaching/

Research has shown that youth sports is still dominated by traditional methods, whether this be the understanding of learning, rote learning where information recall is dominant, or coaching behavior’s where shouting and controlling players is still the go to action of a coach.

Football is a complex and dynamic environment, where learning is affected by these characteristics, and to compound the effectiveness, there must be an understanding of the learning phases of the individual child; this is key to understanding as to why the youth game is a completely different game to senior/adult level football.

Player development is long term, with short term learning aims providing direction is what is a non-linear learning experience.

See the following presentation for more depth to what is learning in youth sports.

Parent Engagement – Pedagogy

All training sessions tonight  have been cancelled, the current AQI reading has lead us to cancel due to the unhealthy air which has detrimental affects on youth players health.

For more information about the Air Quality, player welfare policy, please see the following link – https://fremontyouthsoccer.com/air-quality/

We wish all the people fighting the fires all the best for their safety, and the health of everyone affected.

A big congratulations to Natalia Medina on her first collegiate game as a freshman against Cabrillo College.

With a roster of 25 players, Natalia worked hard all pre-season to earn a starting spot in the game, making her debut and starting the game as a #10 (center attacking mid).Natalia went on to secure the win by scoring a goal in 90^th min of the game, with Evergreen College the eventual winners, 3-1. Cabrillo College hadn’t allowed a goal in conference last season.

Natalia scoring a goal in her first game as a college athlete is a big accomplishment. Natalia demonstrated great confidence and comfort on the ball, as well as an ability to use both feet in taking her goal.