Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Elite Clubs National League was founded in 2009 and continues to lead by daring to do things differently, embedded with grit, collaboration and tenacity – all things learned from the beautiful game. The ECNL protects and propels the integrity of the game and everyone it impacts by facilitating the perfect symmetry of excellence and humility, exclusivity and accessibility, freedom and community. We believe that challenging everyone to rise to their best creates game-changers that live well, long after cleats are unlaced. Born out of the belief in a better way. Continued in the ever-evolving pursuit of excellence.
Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Single Sport vs. Multi-Sport: The Relative Age Debate & Social Media’s Role in Getting Recruited | Ep. 103
Let us know the topics of interest to you!
Can social media really make or break a soccer career? Join us on this episode of Breaking the Line as we tackle this provocative question and much more. We kick off with a heated debate on school year versus birth year age requirements and how these can shape the trajectory of young players. Next, we venture into the digital realm, scrutinizing the role of social media in soccer recruiting. Our discussion then pivots to the validity and influence of recruiting services. Can they really help when budgets are tight, or do they merely serve the already privileged? We dissect the significance of being named to all-conference or all-American teams, reflecting on how these accolades impact recruitment. Don't miss this episode packed with insights, debates, and expert opinions that could redefine your perspective on youth soccer development.
Welcome to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, a bi-weekly podcast covering all things ECNL and all things important to the growth of the game.
Speaker 1:That is no different on today's show, where Christian Labors, the ECNL president and CEO, doug Bracken, the VP and also known as the chief of staff in some circles, ashley Willis, the partnership activation and alumni relations manager for the ECNL, and ECNL's chief medical advisor, dr Drew Watson, they will do the following on this week's show they answer a question from a listener again about possible changes to the school year age requirements versus the birth year. They tackle how players use social media to be recognized. They hit the good and the bad of that topic. They ask about all of the recruiting services that are out there. Are they for real? Do they make a difference? And they also hit on what it means for recruitment to be named to an all conference or an all American team as a player. And finally, they talk about the concepts of being a multi-sport athlete as opposed to a specialized athlete, and we end with Doug Bracken's brain buster. That is this week's show and it starts after this message from Nike Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL.
Speaker 2:Nothing can stop what we can do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, and, as we often do, we begin this week's show with Christian Labors, the president and CEO of the ECNL.
Speaker 3:Thank you, dean. I appreciate that introduction, as always, and we have the normal crew here with the most common guest on our podcast. We're gluttons for punishment from the wisdom of Dr Drew Watson. Welcome back to the podcast, dr Drew.
Speaker 4:That was all very flattering. Really happy to be the most frequent guest on the show. Thanks, Christian.
Speaker 5:And to keep up in your game, though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're going to have to have some sort of syllable. Count on the words that Drew used and capped it like a four-syllable word, maybe five-syllable word.
Speaker 5:We're just soccer coaches here, Drew, so keep that in mind as you use your multi-syllabic words in your medical term.
Speaker 4:Just to point out from the outset that this is Christian's go-to joke here, where he ignores the fact that he has an MBA and a JD and tries to act folksy every time someone expresses himself precisely.
Speaker 3:Well, you use those big words and sometimes I put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and I get confused.
Speaker 5:The good news is, ashley or I don't have any of those degrees.
Speaker 6:We're just going to use medium-sized words for all of the common listeners.
Speaker 3:At least nobody here puts their degrees or their educational background on their license plate, which I've seen, which is a whole different sort of. We can probably talk to a different type of doctor about that. Not yet, not yet All right. So we're going to turn it over, ashley, to you. We've got some questions coming in. They consistently seem to be around the birth year issue, which is not going away. But why don't you bring up those questions? We won't talk about this long, just as a FYI. We're going to talk about social media, we're going to talk about multi-sported athletes and some of the misconceptions with that, and, of course, dr Drew has some study and data on it. We got to bring a real scientist on here and we talk about these things. But we'll start with birth year so we can at least continue to move that discussion forward, ashley. So what questions you got coming in?
Speaker 6:Yeah, the people want to know. Is there an update on where going to school year is? Other people are denying that it's going to happen. Us Club is saying it could happen. Where are we? What's happening? Can you give the people something to relax about?
Speaker 3:I don't think there's going to be something to relax about, because uncertainty is about the antithesis of calmness, but the answer is that it is still uncertain. There's been a lot of talk in the soccer landscape with the leagues and organizations and, from what I've been told, also with US soccer, and we've had a brief conversation about it. So the short answer is I believe the decision will be made in some way or another in late October or mid-November, somewhere in that timeframe. People have asked the question of who can make this decision, and the answer to that is also complicated because in theory a lot of different people could make the decision and do what they want to. The Federation has some influence on that, but there's a real question about whether there's really any authority tied to it.
Speaker 3:Obviously, you have US club, us youth, you have the different associations, and what we're all trying to prevent here in this discussion is having some people move back to the school year cutoff while others stay birth year, because then that puts clubs in the unenviable position of having two different cutoffs to manage teams depending on the leagues that they're in.
Speaker 3:That is not ideal. The overwhelming feedback we've had and I'm sure, doug, you can confirm this, but the overwhelming thought that we've had in discussions with clubs, with board members at various organizations, is that the transition will be messy as teams are destabilized and rosters are redone, but that the long-term positive of eliminating the trapped eighth grader, the 18-19 glut, roster glut and the induction issues of not playing with school year friends that the long term is worth the short-term instability. Obviously, people have varying levels of tolerance for change and I think there are some people that have expressed the desire not to have any sort of problems in the short-term and will just leave things as it is. But the majority of people seem to say when I say people, I'm talking about the operators, the club people that are actually in charge of putting together rosters are saying they would support doing this as a one-time challenge and disruption to get a better long-term outcome. Doug, are you hearing anything different?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean I have not talked to anyone who has thought this was a bad idea to go back to school year. Obviously our interactions, christian, are with club operators, primarily the people on the ground, so I take that to mean that those folks would be definitely in favor of it, although to your point, it would be a messy kind of thing. I am hopeful that the decision is made in short order because I do think the rumors are causing some significant anxiety among players and families who don't know kind of what's going to happen, because there will be destabilization to point about on the team. So hopefully this time frame can happen because it does require some planning and communication on the club front to make this happen. But I agree, and I think the people that I talk to generally agree, that the long term is is worth, worth the short term yeah, I mean to put some specifics on it.
Speaker 3:you know, for some reason, because I still don't understand it, california does tryouts in december for the prudent for the next july or august. So tryouts for actually for the next July or August, so tryouts for actually August of 2025, occur in California in December and January, which is crazy to me. I have no idea, maybe someday we can have.
Speaker 5:So the teams keep playing. Yeah, they keep playing After a year, even though a kid on that team might not be on that team anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's crazy. So maybe one day we'll have somebody on from California to explain that. There's probably a lot of things about California we could ask them to explain. You live there.
Speaker 3:I know I'm asking questions, but the point of that being, if this decision is made in October, november, that is a very short turnaround for those clubs that are going to have to deal with that change, impacting tryouts up to a month later. But some other specifics to add is there's been some surveys done. I've heard there's a 50-50 split, depending on who you talk to, on yes or no, but that again, a lot of the 50 no is about the short-term disruption. It's not about fighting against the long-term positive, it's just not wanting to deal with the chaos. There was a meeting in, I think, salt Lake this week that USS youth held where this was discussed and I think they're working on aligning with US Club.
Speaker 3:Us Club will have meetings in October and their board will address this, and I think the Federation board meeting is in November early November, where this may or may be a topic. November, where this may or may be a topic. So I think you align those three board meetings of big organizations with lots of players talking about this. And then obviously you know, some people have asked could ECNL just do this on our own? And the answer is maybe or probably we could. But if we do that on our own without any consideration of alignment across the broader youth system, it just makes a real mess for the clubs, who then have different cutoffs for different leagues and different ages and different teams. So everybody's trying to avoid that.
Speaker 5:Your sense is that we've probably got to have people aligned on this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial. Other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument and so the long answer here, ashley, to the question that you asked, is that everybody just needs to buckle up for some uncertainty and if it happens which I would say it's more likely to than not this is like people waiting for the Fed to announce interest rate cuts it's more likely to happen than not, but we can't guarantee it till it happens. When it does happen, it's going to create some chaos, but hopefully it'll be good for everybody long term. Does that answer that, ashley?
Speaker 6:Yeah, pack your patience. Pack your patience on the decision, pack your patience when it actually happens. Pack your patience, people.
Speaker 5:That was a very artful way to say we don't know. It was Good job.
Speaker 3:You could probably measure intelligence by the amount of time somebody's willing to say I don't know, Maybe that's another study drew could do are you making a play for people who think you're more intelligent?
Speaker 3:no, I'm just saying there's a lot of people who aren't very intelligent that claim to have answers for everything. But that's a really good segue, actually, because you're talking about patience. So let's go to something that probably reflects a complete lack of patience in society, which is social media and the uh demand, everything now that we've created, or the very self-focused orientation that social media can drive, because we'd like to talk about some of the social media and recruiting social media and some of the impacts it has on soccer and debate argue, soccer and debate, argue. Agree, we'll see on some of the topics that come up to this. So I think the first one we were talking about prior to the call was what appears to be this major trend of players promoting themselves on social media in an effort to boost their collegiate recruitment. I'll just leave it there and ask who wants to take the first stab at that. I tweet, therefore I get recruited. Let's take that as the premise.
Speaker 5:Well, drew hasn't said anything yet, so let's, I'm putting him on the spot.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, maybe it's sort of the guy on the outside looking in. I mean, do you guys have any perception that that would work? I mean, I assume in the end, ultimately, you know, people are going to do things because they think maybe it's effective, but they're probably only going to last if they actually are. I mean, do you have any expectation that that sort of attention grabbing by players is actually going to get them anything tangible in terms of long term opportunities?
Speaker 5:them anything tangible in terms of long-term opportunities? No, when we were talking about this subject and this podcast, the bottom line and I think we all agree the bottom line your recruitment will be almost wholly centered around your ability to play soccer. That's the long and short of it. So these other things that are out there, and social media being one of them, will be a tool that you can use to perhaps market yourself at some level, but at the end of the day, coach is going to sit down at your game and watch you play, and that will determine whether or not they're interested in recruiting you.
Speaker 3:Let me ask Ashley because it's a good statement, drew that if it doesn't work, it's not going to survive long term. Yeah, at least in theory, that's what Darwin would say, right? So you like that reference, drew. Let me go to Ashley. Ashley, why do you think people are doing this? Because some of it's tweeting of highlights, which, ok, I can see at least some value to that, in the sense of if somebody hasn't seen you play and you have a really good highlight, although we can talk about some of the absurdity of some of the highlights that are selected as well that don't really show anything. But that's one thing. But there's a lot of other stuff of just that seems irrelevant to performance that people do. Why do people? Why do people feel like this is important or impactful?
Speaker 6:I don't know Short-term. I think people think that it helps. I don't see. I can see it from both sides. Yeah, the more a coach can see you the better. So I'm going to bombard these coaches with video and eventually I can get their attention and they will come to a game and or I'll get invited to an ID clinic or this. That or the other thing is probably like the short-term goal. The long-term I have no idea. I don't think it really helps. Because, to Doug's point, it's if you're good enough, you're good enough, you will get recruited, you will get's. If you're good enough, you're good enough, you will get recruited, you will get seen if you're good enough. But I think kids have this idea right now of social media is the end-all, be-all. We're seeing it with the NIL deals and everything that your social media does hold so much weight these days as an athlete, but I think they're using it more as, like they think, a tool.
Speaker 5:But I think they're using it more as, like they think, a tool. Could you look at it like let's make this, you know, dumb it down. I mean, is it like handing out flyers? That's what it feels like, but it's, like, you know, obviously on social media, electronically. But, christian, I mean, would you say it's like that? Hey, here's a flyer, maybe a little tease about what I'm doing or what I've done, or video, or whatever it is, and that is the kind of the draw to come in. I mean, there's a reason why advertisers advertise on social media. Because I'm on Instagram and I click on these shorts, that, these running shorts that are going to change my life, and I mean it's not.
Speaker 3:Those are the shorts that make you fast.
Speaker 5:I've tried all of them and that didn't work yet and I'm going to keep working on it, I'll let you know, but I think that it's, it's, maybe it's that it's the, it's the handing out the flyers, getting people.
Speaker 3:I could see that to a degree. I mean, let's, let's put that example, you know, in in perfect frame. Handing out flyers happens when you're playing in front of people who are sitting and watching you and that's helping them to identify who you are and then find out information about you, like contact if they like you, or academics to see if you fit into the university. So if we're going to take that perspective and compare it to that, then I suppose I could see social media. If you're actually tagging the schools that you're interested in who may not know about you and say, hey, at whatever university of whoever here is a highlight for my game this weekend and I'm really interested in your school.
Speaker 3:I can see that as a way of maybe getting somebody to be aware of you who may not be, or to know that you're interested in them who may not be. But I wonder how much it's that and how much it's just you know sort of. You know, I was listening the other day and somebody said said we're the most photographed generation in history and a lot of those people taking photos of themselves, you know, and how much of is driven by that. Where there's, there isn't a lot of intentionality to it, it's, it's just self-focused I don't know, creation, maybe right.
Speaker 4:you're trying to create an image, there is an extent to which the attention around these things is its own goal, like there's surely some portion of this that is in service of their soccer career. But there's also a tremendous amount of incentive to become a social media influencer and just have a large following, and to the extent that posting things about yourself serves both. It may not all be entirely in service of just getting somewhere from a soccer standpoint. It could also be that kids are just aspiring or learning how to be more influential online, with the long-term goal of garnering attention in a way that ultimately leads to more financial outcomes. Whether that's as a soccer player or whether that's as a social media person I don't spend enough time around it to know for sure, but there wasn't any such thing as like a flyer influencer, right, but there is within social media, and it may be that they're serving two ends, not serving as a newspaper influencer. It may not all be entirely in service of their soccer career. It could be sort of two things at the same time.
Speaker 3:That made me think of a quote from Raymond Ferhan and I know I've referenced him a couple of times because he's a really smart educator but his quote was we individually develop to play a team sport, and I thought that was a really powerful statement because it puts the purpose of individual development within context, which is, ultimately, you can be great individually, but if you don't add to a team and help a team perform, then you sort of fail in the purpose of individual development. And it makes me wonder and we've had this conversation, I think, in other areas of talking about does it help individual development when people are so focused on individual outcomes, you know, as opposed to their ability to contribute to team outcomes? And I do think it's the some of the posts that I've seen that I think are that I do like more are the ones that are talking about the team and the and supporting each other versus just hey, here is me and here's what I do. One area that came recently it goes back to this roster limit of NCAA and players who have unfortunately lost their roster spots because of the roster cap of 28 and a power four.
Speaker 3:I can see that where there's been some really positive on social media where a player announces hey, I am no longer committed. I'm looking for an opportunity, one that's a great announcement, to get it out there quick to people and then their teammates supporting that player saying, hey, this player is available to the degree. I don't think it's a teammate reference necessarily, it's just getting the information out. There's a balance here to me on how much soccer, and maybe it's everything in society, is so individually focused at the expense now of any sort of collective accomplishment or goal. And maybe that's just me, but that bumps around in my head.
Speaker 5:It seems like there's a brand building culture now for some of these individuals. And to Drew's point, maybe that's calculated so that there's an end that doesn't necessarily only include being recruited for soccer. Maybe it's hard for me I'll just say that's for me personally to connect with it, because that's not how we did it, that's not how we came up in it, that's not what our experience has been in the game. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, right? So some of this I don't want to be get off my lawn guy on this.
Speaker 3:Well, you start, you sound like get off my lawn guy a lot, but just yeah, so.
Speaker 5:So I think it's a tool. If I look at it, I think it's a tool that players can use correctly or incorrectly, I don't know. I mean we. I think it happens both ways.
Speaker 3:So let's wrap up this part of this topic, ashley, with some summary thoughts. One is that and I think Doug's 100% right you can be the world's best social media creator. If you can't play soccer, you're not going to be recruited because you have unbelievable content creation on Instagram, however obvious that is. Maybe it needs to be reset. Number two is be careful of the highlights that are out there, because a highlight that shows you winning a ball and then driving it into the distance and then just cuts off right before it goes out of bounds isn't exactly a supportive highlight and I think there's people who need to think a little more about that. But maybe targeted posts is a helpful thing in getting someone to be aware of you.
Speaker 6:Other suggestions on the social media part of recruiting I don't know if every detail of your life needs to be summarized in a tweet day in and day out. I think this current generation of players does have like some fascination with wanting to put every little detail of their day online. We don't need to know that, like you're out there grinding after school and I went to three classes today and I drank chocolate, milk and like I run a six minute mile. Like we don't need to know that, as a recruiting goes like that, Nobody cares, sort of thing. Everyone should be working.
Speaker 6:So to that point, I think like, yeah, watch what you say online because that could turn the wrong coach or team off. But on the flip side of like yeah, you do need to have like targeted posts. Of like if you want to go to a school in a certain conference, then yeah, probably tag those schools in your posts, instead of just being like hey world, I'm going to put a school in Florida, a school in Washington, Texas and Colorado all in the same post. Like now you're just like throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Speaker 3:So you're also assuming those schools are actually following you if you don't tag them?
Speaker 6:Yeah, Right For sure. There's just a few like tweets that come to mind where I'm like, oh my goodness, and I enjoy them for like my own sick humor but I think kids really need to take a look and like get educated on what schools are looking for and then what is going to be like. I don't want to touch that kid with a 10 foot pole.
Speaker 3:Maybe this is a call-out. If somebody has a story about how social media has helped them actually in a recruitment in a positive way, that was not largely due to their performance or that was something that got somebody aware of them, it would be interesting to hear that because that might guide people in doing more of what that person did than just the generic posting. Maybe that's something we'll get in a question, ashley.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and I think like there is value in it at the same time, because now you're seeing coaches post like hey, I'm going to be at ECNL Florida then in January, and tweet me your schedule, sort of thing. Like I see that all the time which I can see from a coach's perspective of that's really helpful to have like every single tagged person like tweet, like it. All you have to do is pull up that tweet and you can see everyone's schedule, sort of thing. Like okay, I was going to go watch that kid anyways, so I can see it of value from that regard. But at the same time, like you don't need to tweet them 75 times a year of like here's my clip from playing some podunk team and some weird tournament.
Speaker 3:Like there's an equal balance, you don't bombard them that's interesting because I I can see value for a school, like you just said, and saying, hey, we're looking for players. If you're interested in our school, tag us and we'll. I can see that. But that's coming from the school directly to sort of this pool of players who are all probably following that school.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 3:You know, versus a player who's probably not being followed by the vast majority of colleges. I don't know why they would be.
Speaker 1:When we return, these outstanding four individuals will be talking about the value of recruiting services Are they for real? Do they matter? And then also the value of making an all-conference for all-American team.
Speaker 2:That and more after this message from an ECNL sponsor. Soccercom is proud to partner with the ECNL to support the continued development of soccer in the US at the highest levels. We've been delivering quality soccer equipment and apparel to players, fans and coaches since 1984. Living and breathing the beautiful game ourselves, our goal at Soccercom is to inspire you to play better, cheer louder and have more fun.
Speaker 1:Visit Soccercom today to check out our unmatched selection of gear expert advice and stories of greatness at every level of the game. Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Once again, here's Christian Labors.
Speaker 3:All of the individual accolades, right. So you have player rating services, which have a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about them. You also have awards, and you know there's recently been some stuff on All Conference and ECNL and some very misunderstood discussion about those things. And so maybe, Doug, let's talk about the importance of the rating services, let's talk about how awards impact or don't impact and maybe correct some misconceptions on that on that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, I think rating services first and foremost.
Speaker 5:I mean, I don't know how you would ever rate a bunch of kids or kids teams. That's about these services taking a stab at something to get more eyeballs. I think at the end of this season you generally know who the best teams are based on how they did, you know in the proven kind of championships. That's going to speak for itself rather than a rating service. And I equally on the player front, I think it can be really incredibly hard. And to your point about individuality and the desire to be individually recognized, it's not great because I just don't know how you would take all the players and accurately rate them.
Speaker 3:So this is like hey, I'm the number whatever player in the Midwest according to Mike Rich yeah.
Speaker 5:Oh, I mean probably most people probably would agree with that. Maybe it's nice to see your name or your kid's name in one of those and brings you some pride, some joy, but I'm not sure they're worth like stressing over.
Speaker 3:I think what you're saying. Doug and Ashley, I'm sure you have a comment on this, but you're rating by some anonymous internet company on where you fit in a recruiting class. I hesitate to think that's ever gotten somebody recruited by a coach saying oh, I didn't realize that this recruiting agency rated this player so high. Maybe I should recruit them.
Speaker 5:I mean, maybe it got them to your game because they were interested. I don't know, maybe it didn't.
Speaker 3:I don't think you're reaching Doug.
Speaker 5:But if you think about this, like, let's, if you break this down, we're not talking about the schools that have unlimited recruiting budgets and all that kind of stuff, because there are those out there that are going to see you and take, but there are schools that don't have that, and so maybe some hook like you're the 191st player on x recruiting service, maybe it does help guide some of these coaches to watch some of these players play, because they just the resource wise they're not, they're not going to be able to do it all on their own, so they're looking for something maybe and I?
Speaker 3:I would hate to think that's the case, I mean that's the thing I can think of, but I mean you think about player rating in sports where it's easier to do it.
Speaker 3:I mean if you think about tennis, where everybody's playing each other, there's a pretty clear reason to be rated. If you think about a sport like track and field, where there's a clock, you know, or there is a clear objective measurement of performance, everybody's rated. You turn that over into soccer and you know you're going to struggle to find straight line correlations here between speed, power or anything measurable and soccer performance. So, I think we all absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 5:But if you are let's just say you are the head coach at University of Wisconsin Parkside, limited recruiting budget kid sends you an email and says they are the number 20 rated player in blah blah, blah blah versus a kid that just sends you something and they don't have that. Does it change? Do you? Are you like?
Speaker 3:hmm, I even go this, I don't know who blah-biddy-blah is, but he, I hope he has a elaborate record of talent identification and development to support his ranking service but what, if you like, got a note from a player who says they're an ECNL player versus a player who isn't?
Speaker 5:Does that make you go? Hmm, maybe I would be more likely to go watch the ECNL player, because my perception is that it's a good place to play.
Speaker 3:That's a fair point. I think there are some truth to that. It's easier to be recruited in the UCL by a landslide than if you're not. But again, that goes down to you're going to have a lot of colleges at your sideline there, so they're going to see you. So actually, what do you got? You're nodding, you're shaking your head, we've got a lot of.
Speaker 5:I just want to. Just I want to put a bow on that, because maybe Wisconsin Parkside does not.
Speaker 3:I think if we got Billy Bain into this conversation he would talk about maybe finding a better way of use of data to target your recruits than some Mr Blah-Bee-Bla's recruiting service.
Speaker 5:I feel it from my experience and this was obviously a long time ago, long before all these things, but I was the head coach at Union College in Kentucky and so trying to figure out players it's challenging. So what is it? What are the things that differentiate those players and make you go? I'm going to go to that game, cause otherwise it's kind of just a crap shoot, isn't it Like? If there are no things to differentiate and I'm not talking about the power for here, so I'm just saying something to think about, cause it was hard at union college again, you know, 30 years ago.
Speaker 3:Well, you didn't have a hard time, doug, identifying the best players. You had a hard time convincing them to come to union college I had a hard time. I didn't that's no disrespect to college, I'm just saying no no, absolutely not.
Speaker 5:I had a hard time identifying the kids that I could get to go to college yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Ashley, what do you got?
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah. I think you have to be wary of some of these sites that are like oh, I'm a three star, I'm a four star, I'm a five star According to Doug's Blah Blah Blah site. Just because there's some services out there where, if you pay, they will give you three stars. If you send in two videos, they will move you to four stars. You send in more videos, you move to five stars.
Speaker 3:You don't give- I think that's called content marketing or something like that.
Speaker 6:I don't think that's what content marketing is, but sure yeah, I just think you have to be kind of like a little bit wary of looking at those sites. If you have to pay for the service, you're probably paying at least for like to get like the three stars. It's not going to be legit. It's not an actual player identification service of people out there looking and know what they're looking for. It's like oh, you gave me 75 bucks for the year. You're three stars. Oh, you submitted two videos. You can have three and a half stars, Things like record.
Speaker 3:I will give you guys stars for money. I mean, if you want to pay me, I'll give you stars for money.
Speaker 6:No, that's how. I'm employee of the month Three years in a row three months in a row. You said three years in a row, three years in a row, three years in a row really ahead of yourself here. Actually listen, I gave him a very large check, so I just, it's just ongoing you 17 stars.
Speaker 3:Actually, you are 17 star.
Speaker 5:Recruit for the cnl what's funny about not funny, but what's interesting about it is the very best players who are more likely to be in these services or garnered these accolades aren't the ones that probably need them for coaches to see them, because people are going to see them because they're the best players, right, so it's probably those who aren't necessarily at that level. Maybe that need you know and I I try to analogize this to like, if I'm on a team and I'm the 18th player, then I need to know the things that I need to do to remain and stay on that team and compete and all those things. There it's probably different than the best player. So maybe it's the same way in the recruiting. On the recruiting perspective is depending on kind of where you are, and then you could also ask the question do these, do these players know where they are and what does that you know mean for their them in their process?
Speaker 6:I think if you have the same amount of stars as a kid in the national team pool and you've never been called into a camp and you look at your profiles and you have the same amount of stars, you're probably being taken it's an interesting statement it's a hot take, but I mean, it's probably the same thing, right?
Speaker 6:if I'm looking at the national team kid, that's like at the u17s here in october, and I have the same amount of stars, I I'm like, oh, they wouldn't know me if I walked up to them on the street, like I'm probably, oh, my $75 that.
Speaker 5:I'm giving to Christian is his lunch. Drew, you're an endurance runner. Are you ranked?
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, it's pretty objective and you can see exactly where I stand. There's no amount of bribing that's going to change how long it takes for me to finish a race. Hey, can you change this zero to yeah? Yeah, can you just take a few hours off of this number?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think in the end these things like whether it's the social media part or the sort of how websites for ranking stay alive it's all kind of about attention and I don't imagine this has happened yet. I worry a little bit about, you know, the PR folks at Wisconsin State or wherever turning around and then pointing at this as like celebration of their recruiting, right, so like we recruited this player who's ranked blah blah on this site, and that these things become sort of like self-fulfilling. That's how I worry that things like this kind of get legs is that, you know, for somehow, in some effort to objectify soccer performance, we end up with a list, players start pointing at it, then the groups that recruit them start pointing at it as a way of validating their recruitment and you end up in this sort of cycle where you never actually have a meaningful, truthful evaluation of anybody, but it perpetuates itself and people start putting more value in it. That's sort of what I believe.
Speaker 5:That ship has sailed, my friend.
Speaker 1:That ship has sailed Well let's-.
Speaker 5:You can read any bio on any one of these kids on their college roster.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, well, I mean Instagramming, tick, tocking, anything else. Your performance speaks for itself, and I think one thing I would say here is I would hope the message to most, most players is you don't really need to worry about social media. If you worry about your performance and there are things you can probably do on social media that may Doug to your point help you, you know, come out of a crowd or or stand out. It's, it's the old line at tryouts. You can stand out at tryouts by wearing like some flamboyantly colored outfit or just by being the best player you know. And at the end of the day, I think, if kids worry about their performance and getting better all the time, that this it generally works out for you and people shouldn't be concerned about whether they're tweeting enough or whether they're on enough ranking sites or what their star level is. If your performance speaks loudly enough, the rest doesn't really matter. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 5:I would say the overriding message that I would have and it's just what you said you should be working on your performance more than any of these other things. It doesn't mean you can't do these other things, but your performance should be the priority. It doesn't mean you can't do these other things, but your performance should be the priority. And if you're focusing on your performance, as you said, you're going to land where you should land and and wherever you land is great. Like I always say that to to our kids here. It's like I'm not more excited that ashley went to you know North Carolina than I am. Susie went to you know Cincinnati state. Like I don't care. The thing is get where you're. You get in the place where you can be successful, have a great experience, and to do that, your performance has to be your priority. You had asked about all conference as well, so that's another thing that we hear a lot. Right is how is that?
Speaker 3:ECNL all-conference awards are purely based by your own coach and club recommending to somebody at ECNL and then ECNL rubber stamping and saying, yep, that's what it is, and therefore, if you don't get an all-conference honor, it's because your club or your coach didn't recommend you, doesn't like you, whatever it may be. And I think, well, we will be the first to say, yes, does a club recommendation? Is that part of the process? Absolutely it is. But there's a lot more to that and we can say very, very confidently and clearly that there are a lot of players that are recommended by clubs that do not get all conference awards or all American awards. And you know, it is becoming unfortunately common for players or families to be very upset at their club if they've not gotten an all conference or an all American award, which is pretty much the exact wrong place to put focus in that process. So I mean, doug, if you want to talk a little bit about the process and then we can see if there's anything to add to it before we move on.
Speaker 5:It's a combined effort of a bunch of things. It's the club recommendations, it's conversations with directors in those areas, those conferences that aren't the coaches and directors of those kids conferences that aren't the coaches and directors of those kids. It's the scouting and how we look at NSGs, our national selection games at the events. It's conference cup stuff, it's playoffs and team performance based. There's a lot that goes into it.
Speaker 5:And the other thing that I want to make a huge point about and we've done this very purposely but we want to celebrate the players in our league and the players who have great seasons, and it's not to diminish the seasons that anybody else has had, which is why we first and foremost celebrate our teams. And so, if you see how we put things out, we put things out surrounding team performance based on the playoffs and finals. That is our celebration. You know, front and center, first and foremost, and then the All-Conference All-American comes after that. So I think they can both coexist. But we want to celebrate team performance first and foremost, but we also want to celebrate our players that have had great seasons.
Speaker 3:I'll add to that there's a distinction between somebody who had the best season versus somebody who may be the best player. Those two things do not always correlate, because you can have a player who did have an unbelievable season that generally a lot of others may say did have an unbelievable season that generally a lot of others may say well, the other player on the team is a is a quote, unquote more talented player, but they didn't have the impact this season that this other player may have had, and so there's a debate about that process as well. In terms of when an award is provided and when players are looked at. It doesn't necessarily mean always these are the absolute best players. You know it goes back to. You can look at something like the heisman or something in another sport. Does winning the heisman mean you were the best player in college football I'm going to be the number one nfl draft pick or does it mean that you had the most impact of any player in college football on your team's success?
Speaker 5:well, you could. I mean I mean these, these things are always subjective in nature at some level, at any level, and any discussion about whatever level who wins the Heisman, who's an All-American at the college level, who's the NBA MVP, whatever there's always subjectivity disagreement. You could argue things or not. We think it's important to celebrate the performances of our players, just like it's important to celebrate the performance of our teams and our clubs. A lot of work goes into it, a lot. I mean Christian, you would agree with me. The man hours that goes into this is massive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, like you said, there's recommendations. There's discussions that our director and our selection directors and our staff has with directors all over the country about players. There's watching players and NSGs comparing various lists of players based on performance over the past years. There's all sorts of things that go into it. There's also the performance of your team. I'll go back.
Speaker 3:I don't think the Heisman's ever been given to anybody on a losing team. Somebody can fact check me on that but you generally tend to be a pretty dang successful team. If you have a Heisman Trophy winner, you're not going to find a bunch of All-Americans or All-Conference players on a team that finishes 15th out of 16 in a conference. There's team performance. That goes into it all. But I think the main thing because we're hearing stories of this and seeing this is if your name is not on an all-conference list or an all-American list or going to go back to any other list of performances.
Speaker 3:There's two ways to respond. One is to point fingers out to everybody else and say it's unfair, and the other response is to say I'm going to prove people wrong by working hard, getting better and getting my name on that list in future years, or by outperforming the people who are on that list long-term, and I think it's really important that and these things may be tied together in some way you go to the social media and the self-centered sort of culture that is created through social media to some degree. And these awards I would just hope that people who get these awards are really proud of their performances, because there's no bad players on that list. Is it a universe of all the best players? No, it's not, and I would hope that if you're not on that list, your response is I'm going to work even harder. It's not to be angry at somebody else. That's not a healthy way to look at it.
Speaker 1:We're going to take another break and when we return we will talk about the concept of the multi-sport athlete. This is Breaking the Line. The ECNL podcast.
Speaker 2:From athletes just starting to turn heads to some of the best athletes to ever play their games, Gatorade shows that they are the proven fuel of the best. For the athletes who give everything, nothing beats Gatorade, the studied, tested and proven fuel of the ECNL.
Speaker 1:Back with more Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, and back with more Christian Labors.
Speaker 3:All right, now we're going to pivot to our last topic here, which is and maybe this will be something we talk about a few times, we'll see but about this concept of multi-sport athletes, what is the role of playing multiple sports in development? What is the good or bad of specialization? And we brought Dr Drew on here because he's got a paper that's going to be presented and published, based on some research and some objective findings on this topic. But I think our starting point I'll turn it over to you first, drew but our starting point is there seems to be throughout culture this sort of perspective that playing multiple sports for a really long time is the key to long-term athletic success.
Speaker 3:As anything, this isn't something that we can break down into any sort of short statement, but the answer is there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about that. There's a point at which playing different sports or doing different things or different activities is positive. There's a point at which it may not impact anything. There's a point at which it is negative. Maybe I'll turn it over to you, drew, to sort of talk through why you put this study together and give us a sense of what you found in the study, and we can then ask questions and talk off of that.
Speaker 4:Just to lay a little groundwork here. What I try and point out anytime I'm talking about specialization or multi versus single sport athletes is that first and foremost, everybody should recognize that on the whole, sports are tremendously beneficial for kids. We can sometimes get lost in the weeds about like what's the best way to do it and is there a way to do it that has negative consequences, and of course we should be working to sort of optimize the environments kids are in when they're playing sports. But just to say out loud again that, like, sports are incredibly beneficial physically and mentally for kids. So all of this is sort of about how do we even kind of improve around the edges of that? So for maybe a decade, specialization has been a hot topic, at least in the area of medicine where I work. So primary care sports medicine is sort of the folks who take care of athletes that aren't orthopedic surgeons, and sports specialization has sort of been top of mind for us for about a decade, and this isn't really a complicated topic. You can imagine that if what you're trying to do is take all of the ways that kids participate in sport and all of the behaviors they have around in sport and turn that into a tweet or turn that into a headline or turn that into a soundbite. We kind of miss the point a lot of the time. So there's a huge amount of information around about this. I'll just try and really sort of zoom in on a couple of things that I think highlight where this is around soccer, and then maybe we can see where it goes from there.
Speaker 4:So there's been a lot of data in the last like eight, 10 years that seems to suggest that specializing in a sport is associated with an increased risk of injury. But if you really dig into this, what there is a lot of is what's called cross-sectional data, which means you grab a bunch of people at a single point in time, you ask them some survey-based measure of specialization and then you ask them if they've been hurt in the last let's say, 12 months, and then you ask them if they've been hurt in the last, let's say, 12 months, and then you look at whether there are associations between them and there's some amount of evidence that the people who tend to report that they're more specialized are more likely to have had some sort of overuse injury in the last year, no matter how bad you want to and no matter how much the person interviewing you for an article wants to say it to, and no matter how much the person interviewing you for an article wants to say it, you just cannot learn anything about cause and effect from that sort of research. You just can't. They're just associations. You have no idea which direction the arrow points. You can't make causal statements about one thing causes this. So then, if you're trying to really get to the bottom of this, what you end up needing is longitudinal or prospective research where you have athletes, you determine whether or not they meet some criteria for specialization, and then you follow them through time and you see if those that report being specialized are more likely to get hurt than those who aren't.
Speaker 4:So it's important also to recognize just to muddy the water even more, we have no validated measure of sports specialization. In sports medicine we have some conventional ones that get used a lot. Lots of studies use different measures. There's an incredible array of the way people try and define this, and then they all sort of get lumped together in the media. So, just to point out, we don't even have a really good way to measure what we think we want to find out about.
Speaker 4:Nonetheless, the number of studies that have been done looking prospectively at whether some measure of specialization is related to injury is, by my count, three. Right, there's like hundreds of cross-sectional studies. There's dozens probably close to like 50 reviews and opinions and policy statements. There's three prospective research studies where you could actually glean a little bit of information about these relationships out. None of them are specifically about soccer. All of them take athletes from a whole bunch of sports and kind of aggregate them and then look at the like combined effects, which makes it very difficult to tell whether any relationship is being driven by one sport or another. Study in soccer athletes, where we recruited the four oldest age groups from a soccer club, we really specifically just asked them whether they participated in soccer exclusively or whether they did soccer and other sports, because within this group you know they all played soccer like nine, 10 months of the year. So really it was just are they exclusively a soccer player or not? And then we followed them over two years, two fall seasons in a row because these were female athletes.
Speaker 3:So hold on, drew. So on that, just to make it clear yeah, you almost self-categorize them on specialization because, to your point, there's no defined agreement on what constitutes specialized versus non. But in your study, if these players, who are all 14 and above, or whatever the age cutoff was, if these players only play soccer, they self-report that as their sole sport. They are put in the specialized group. If they don't, that's because they may play basketball in the winter, they may run on track in the spring, they may do volleyball at the same time as soccer in the fall, whatever it may be that they do. So they self-categorize into multiple sports or only one sport, right?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think the idea here is what we were trying to answer. We're trying to answer this question of like if I am a, let's say, 13-year-old girl who enjoys playing soccer, is there going to be a difference in my likelihood of getting hurt if I just play soccer or if I play soccer and I do these other sports? So this kind of single versus multi-sport athlete. So we followed them out for these two fall seasons and the long and the short is we asked them about. We did some pre-season things.
Speaker 4:So we actually like objectively measured their fitness levels. We had their age, we looked at their prior soccer experience, we looked at how much physical activity they had over the course of the four weeks before the season started and then we adjusted their injury rate risk based on age, training load and then looked at whether or not being specialized or a single sports soccer player increased your risk of injury and in the end there was no difference. About 20% of both groups ended up having a time loss injury during those two seasons. There really was no relationship between specialization and injury after you adjusted for age in their training load. So that's relatively new. I mean it's out as a publicly available preprint this week it is undergoing sort of the peer review process for ultimate publication, but it's the only study that we're aware of that has looked at soccer players specifically, prospectively, while accounting for the confounding influences of training load, and in the end, in this group of 14 to 18 year olds really didn't find any difference in injury risk.
Speaker 3:The importance of this I mean by your awareness is the fourth study that's prospective, on this topic anywhere the other studies. If I understand you correctly, or translated, you can't really distinguish between causation and correlation, among other problems. But this study clearly indicated that within this group of players anyway, the difference between playing only soccer or playing multiple sports had no appreciable difference in the likelihood of any injury over the period of the study.
Speaker 4:Right and I would say so. The I mean the one study that I think really took a big swing at this. That was prospective and did some work to try and account for training load. I wasn't involved in it was done by some folks down the hall for me that are great researchers, but it was high school athletes over an academic year, all sports kind of combined together, and ultimately what it found was that highly specialized athletes had a higher risk of a chronic lower extremity injury, meaning that they were a little bit more likely to develop some sort of lower extremity overuse injury over the course of an academic year.
Speaker 4:Now the total time loss on average for anybody any of those specialization groups was a week. So they're not big severe longstanding injuries and it's all of these sports put together. So, if you want, what you want to know is like is there a risk for soccer players? It's very hard to come away with anything from that because most of the injuries in soccer aren't chronic overuse injuries, right, they're acute injuries which we've seen over and over in the data we've collected, and so having information specifically about soccer players to make decisions for kids who enjoy playing soccer was really the motivation to do it and so far really doesn't seem to be any associated risk of injury between specialization with specialization specifically within that population of youth soccer players. The two arguments for all about specialization with specialization specifically within that population of youth soccer players.
Speaker 3:The two arguments for about specialization in this regard is one that if you specialize you're going to have I'm talking conventional wisdom, or what popular culture says If you specialize, you're going to have a significantly higher degree of risk. Right, that's of injury. That's number one, your study seems to say, at least for this group in this sport. Right, that's of injury, that's number one, your study seems to say, at least for this group in this sport. That is not necessarily true. The second one is that there's a better performance outcome long-term by doing multiple sports, for various reasons.
Speaker 3:And I think one thing that I think is probably worth some time discussing. It is actually the underlining methodology of training and coaching and the role that that plays within this discussion. Right, because I think to your point, if you do any activity exclusively and repeatedly, you are at risk of some type of greater degree of injury, I would assume, of overuse, versus varying the types of demands and loads put upon the body. What I'm asking you to react to is the argument that it's not necessarily sports specificity that is the greater injury risk. It is poor methodology of doing the exact same physical activity and patterns of movement over and over and over, with no break or with no counterbalance.
Speaker 4:I mean, I think that's right and I think this is where the nuance is is that the kind of headlines and maybe the narrative currently is that if you choose to specialize in a sport you're at a much greater risk of injury. But if you really sort of dig into it, it's not really true that that's the case within a specific sport and the relationships between specialization and injury are probably very different from one sport to another and probably very different within a given sport. With how you just mentioned, you apply loads to players, apply loads to players. So the way I think of this is if you have a very biomechanically homogeneous and repetitive activity, like throwing a curve ball, and you just do that over and over and over, of course it stands to reason that you're ultimately going to degrade the you know, the soft tissues on the medial side of your elbow and set yourself up for an injury. If you're doing a very biomechanically heterogeneous sport with really varied movement patterns, like soccer, do you put that in layman's terms biomechanically heterogeneous?
Speaker 4:if you're doing a sport like soccer, where you move differently the entire game sometimes straightforward, sometimes side to side, jumping, landing, like it is not very repetitive in the same exact way that certain activities are, it doesn't stand to reason that you'd see the same relationship between specialization and injury.
Speaker 4:Now, that's not to say you can't overdo it within a given sport, and I think to what you were just saying. What we don't have is any evidence that if you choose to participate in a single sport because it is what you like to do and it is how you want to spend your time, that you can't be thoughtful about how you apply training loads, rest periods and recovery in order to minimize the injury risk of participants. For sure you could overdo it within any sport and certain activities are going to lend themselves to overuse injuries because they're so biomechanically repetitive. Specifically within the context of soccer, this is not a very repetitive action. It's very different in the ways that you move throughout a game and throughout a training. So, if you're mindful about recovery and you're mindful about how you apply loads, in my mind, choosing to play soccer because it's what you enjoy doing the most shouldn't put you at a significantly increased risk of injury.
Speaker 3:So you and us, we're not taking a position on this issue, specialization or not. You're just rebutting the statement that if you play one sport, that means you have a higher degree of risk and therefore you should play multiple sports. The point is that is not actually accurate, that you, if you choose to only want to play one sport, you can manage that load, especially if it's a sport that has a variety of movement patterns or movement dynamics. You can manage that such that there appears that there is no significantly increased chance of of injury.
Speaker 4:It's about methodology yeah, I I don't want to confuse my opinion with data, but my opinion about it is that you can safely participate in a single sport if it is done properly.
Speaker 4:In fact, I would say in the last few years and I think some of my partners would agree with this what I see much more clinically from young athletes are kids coming into my office hurt, that play a lot of things at the same time, and I have some concern that some of this messaging sort of swung the pendulum in the other direction, where people somehow got the message that doing multiple things is good.
Speaker 4:So we're going to do like three sports in the fall, two or three in the winter, three in the spring, and the reality is that no individual team is paying any attention to what any other team is doing with that kid and they're doing huge amounts of load, participating in two or three activities in a single day. And the kids that are doing lots of things at once I'm seeing much more of than you know, the kid who's doing a lot of one thing. Now, that's just me sort of anecdotally thinking about what comes into my office clinically, but I do have some concern that maybe this messaging swung in the other direction, and now kids are actually participating in more things at the same time than is probably safe for them, whereas the thoughtful application of training and recovery within one sport would probably be better off than that setup.
Speaker 3:As I listen to you, it actually makes me wonder. Considering most teams train three days a week, hour and a half, play one game or two games a week on average, makes me wonder if that's even enough to constitute specialization to the exclusion of everything else. Because if you, you know, it's one thing. If you're talking about hey, I train four to five days a week and I play one game a week. So six out of seven days I am definitely playing soccer versus. You know, I train three days a week or sometimes two days a week, and I play one game, sometimes two. It seems that it could be an argument that there's enough built-in variety just by not having soccer every single day, that you might not even fit the definition of specialization, or by stretching that too far.
Speaker 4:Well, I think you're getting it at one of the things I mentioned originally, which is we sort of intuitively have had this idea of what specialization means. Right, I think stakeholders in sports, healthcare providers, like we, have this sort of idea of what a specialized kid is, but actually like defining it and then generating a way to measure that in a meaningful way is extremely difficult. We're actually sort of in the process of developing a much more robust tool, I think, to try and get at this underlying construct. That has been done in the past. But all this I mean even the most common way that anybody did this throughout the last decade was they would ask kids three questions, right, like, do you have a primary sport, have you quit other things to focus on it and do you play it more than eight months of the year? And then we use that to generate like zero to three points and the idea that you could take something as complicated and multidimensional and multifactorial as a behavior and like participation in sport patterns for groups of kids and turn it into that like three levels. I mean, clearly there's at least a loss of information there, but it really probably miscategorizes people pretty regularly Because, as you mentioned, even if you just play soccer because that's what you really like to do, you play a year round because it's what you really like to do.
Speaker 4:Within that, there are still probably safe and unsafe ways to do it. And if you're training three days a week, you have like a day or two fully off during the week. You're playing one or two games on the weekend, you have sufficient recovery between the hard low or the higher loads that you get. That to me, would be a very safe way to participate in one sport sort of irrespective of whether you fell into some specialization category. But you could also imagine going hard every day, seven days a week for three months and putting yourself at real risk. I think we need a better way to try and capture what it is that we think we're going after than what we've done in the past, and that has just made it so much harder to talk about the underlying reality of whether being a single sport athlete puts you at any sort of health risk.
Speaker 5:But Christian. You would agree that this is just one facet of the argument.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, because. So injury risk, which you know largely. I'm going to put words out here that Drew may grimace about, but we're trying to refute that argument of injury risk and specialization for all the reasons that have been said before. Even though it's very. If you ask almost any average mom or dad, they're going to just almost verbatim spout oh, sports specialization increases injury risk. I've read. That's been pounded down my throat for the last 10 years.
Speaker 3:What Drew's saying anecdotally and to some degree objectively is not so fast. That's not so true. There's too many other things.
Speaker 3:The other issue to your point, doug, is that people say, well, playing multiple sports improves outcomes athletically long term, and so you know, the exaggerated example of this is I think a few years ago there was an article in the USA Today about the Ohio State football team when they won a national championship and, like 90% of their players, played multiple sports, and it begs the causation correlation argument real quick on that. But it also ignores again the nuances of is there a value to playing different sports to at a certain stage in your career as a or at a certain age? Absolutely there is. Is there a point at which that almost everybody chooses to specialize in order to reach certain standards of performance, I would say, oh, absolutely, there is um that it's unlikely that you're going to play four sports three months a year each and go and be a high performer at age 20 in any sport, you know, unless you're one of the one in a million, you know blessed athletics.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Drew, you have a reaction on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4:well, football always kind of muddies the water here, there, historically is no like path to specialize in football right, I mean it really is consolidated into one part of the year when you're young and you just by default do other things. So football always sort of like muddies the water when it gets lumped in with these studies of collegiate athletes when they report how many of them specialize in their sport at a young age, because nobody really has ever specialized in football. But I think it also does speak to, like you were saying, like as much as everybody ends up in these sort of entrenched camps that seem miles apart. We're probably only really talking about relatively small things. Like we all, I think, at some point, athletes who are aspiring to be truly great at something are going to specialize in it at some point before they're 18. And there probably is an age where we think everybody should be sampling things to figure out what fits them best, develop kind of broad, you know, neuromuscular recruitment patterns and develop their physical education, and so it probably isn't quite as night and day as we think.
Speaker 4:But the question is are there health risks associated with choosing to specialize in a sport at a young age and are there long-term developmental benefits to delaying that or not? And I think if you narrow in on soccer, I think the evidence around. Injury risk is not there. In fact, there may be no relationship at all, I think, over the long term. From a performance standpoint we really have no idea and to the extent that I'm trying to capitalize on Christian saying that smart people say I don't know, I'll just I don't know Like we don't have evidence one way or the other, whether specializing early in a sport like soccer leads to long-term success. What we have is a lot of research where we survey collegiate or pro athletes, ask them when they decided to specialize and then say things like well, clearly you don't have to, but that doesn't tell you anything about what any individual young athlete should or shouldn't do at the age of 13 if they had certain goals over the long run.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, my sense is that and my experience is that it's personal, and our responsibility in this is to make the people that we're dealing with understand, from our perspective, what the consequences are, and I don't mean consequences negatively or positively.
Speaker 4:I mean they're both outcomes and positive consequences.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so, and that's our role. And then I think our also our role is to support the players in their endeavors rather than, you know again, provided certain things right Again, if I'm, you know, number 18, to my point earlier, you know, maybe I can't afford to miss, you know, practice once a week to go do something else because I just can't keep up at that level else, because I just can't keep up at that level. I think it's important for us to give guidance in that way, but I think it's also our responsibility to support the players in their, like I said, in their endeavors. And it's a hard thing to do sometimes. I I do see there's a lot of hard lines drawn out there, um, which I think does a disservice to to the players. I'll put a bow on this by saying the more you work on your craft, the better you're going to be at it, whether it's being a doctor, a lawyer, a coach, a player, whatever. So I mean can put you can put that as the bow on every statement that you make.
Speaker 3:But let's, let's speak anecdotally then, because I think the first, the first question is specializations. If we're talking about this, long-term performance first hinges on aspiration, right? Because if there's not a high level aspiration, there's probably no reason to specialize, and you do whatever you do that you enjoy, but once they're become well, that's what I'm getting at aspiration right.
Speaker 3:So you know, at some point somebody says I have ambition and aspiration to play at a certain level of this sport, whether it's collegiately, professionally, internationally, wherever and I think there is some data out there that says that those sort of interest levels or kids dreaming of that, happens probably a little earlier than you would have thought.
Speaker 3:Around 10, 11 is when kids start to have that sort of vision for themselves. Whether it's real or it's something that comes and goes, it's around that age that I think it starts. And Drew, you're nodding on that. But I look and say anecdotally now that I think it's in the ages of 13, 14, maybe early 15, that the need probably to specialize or spend more time in the soccer world becomes really important and that if you don't, if you're not to your example, Doug, if, if you're splitting your time in a lot of different areas at 14, 15, 16, 17, odds are you're not going to be playing at the highest level of soccer, whether that's collegiately or anything else. But that I look at it anecdotally and say I call 13, 14 kind of the sorting out years as players decide, hey, what is my aspiration level? And then what am I prepared to do in order to achieve that goal or aspiration. But that's anecdotal for me.
Speaker 5:I would be curious what you guys because you all have coached so Drew, doug, ashley whether you agree with those age ranges, whether you see it as a little bit different it can depend and it can vary a little bit according to players, but I think generally I agree with that, I think you do, you will get to that point, and that those teenage years, those early teenage years, seem to be that point where it's time to you know if you, if you have these aspirations, then we need to talk and put you on the path to try to achieve those aspirations and support you in that.
Speaker 5:So I generally agree, but I you know you can also create some unnecessary stress in a player by putting that on them at that time and so you know I've seen it happen a little bit later and players are still still can be successful. That's why I think this is really individual, can be really individually based, based on maturity and physical development and all kinds of stuff. Right, but I do agree 100 that if you have some aspiration, then more than likely you need to spend the majority of your time trying to achieve.
Speaker 3:Around those ages. Yeah, ashley, what do you say?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I agree with Doug. I think it's very individual but as a blanket statement, like across the board, I would agree. I think when it comes down to the individual player, some can be a multi-sport for a longer period of time, but eventually, to everyone's point, if you want to be high achieving, highly successful in whatever sport you choose, you do eventually have to kind of go to it, specialize in I read a article about a english primarily player, you know 15, 20 years ago to your point, and it's it's described that he had the one quality that allows everything else to catch up later, and that was speed.
Speaker 3:and I think there's probably some degree of truth to that that the more athletically blessed you are, probably the bigger window of time you have before you have to spend more time on it compared to the population, because you're a step ahead I mean figuratively Drew.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean I think, even taking a bigger step back, like broadly speaking, there's a lot of value in kids to sample sports when they're young, meaning like elementary school. I think if we could better fund physical education to the point where it actually became like an opportunity for kids to really sample a lot of different sports and learn different movement patterns. We expand in recess time so kids have more opportunity to move and free play, like those things I think are extraordinarily beneficial to build the base from which kids grow but also gives them an opportunity to find the sport that they connect with, or sports and then pursue those based on their own inclinations. And I agree, middle school is probably about the time that they, I think, start to evolve into having goals and start to have more kind of a concept of what they would like to be doing and where they would like to be spending their time, rather than being sort of directed around and with that as sort of the guiding force, I think it makes sense that around those times like middle school, early high school, particularly for a sport like soccer where there is such a fine motor movement component, it probably is going to be necessary for aspirational players to spend a lot of time manipulating soccer ball with their feet. I mean, there aren't stories of people who pick up soccer at 16 or 17 and become world-class, and I think it's because the technical demands are so different. You don't use your feet like that in any other way through the rest of your life. If you're not doing it playing soccer it isn't just going to sort of happen. So you do have to spend time building out those movement patterns.
Speaker 4:But for me that, like the kind of branch there where kids either do or don't choose to pursue soccer exclusively really should be their goals.
Speaker 4:I think kids run into trouble over the long term when they choose to do something exclusively in service of someone else's goals. I think that is when we run into real issues with burnout, real issues with attrition and sadly sometimes those kids don't get left with a fallback plan because they fall out of love with the one thing that they've been doing because somebody else really wanted them to. I think if they're choosing to participate in something at a relatively young age because they love it, then you just support them and you facilitate them being able to do that and it tends to benefit itself because they spend time doing what they enjoy. All the sampling at a young age maybe can just be in service of helping them find out what they like the most and then letting them drive the ship, so to speak, to pursue what they want to pursue. And if it's three things, great, I've got one of those. And if it's one thing, I'm fine with that too. As long as it's their desire to do so, I've got one of those as well.
Speaker 3:Well said so, Drew, this paper being published, being peer-reviewed now. Well said so, Drew, this paper being published, being peer-reviewed now, as we've talked about, we're going to find a way to get this information out more easily accessible to people who want to read these things, both in the layman's term, in the simplified version, and the Drew Watson version that has all the statistical language in it and multi-syllabic words to tie us back to the beginning. But we'll get this out at some point here in the next couple of months in a way that we can share, Cause you're doing a lot of really, really cool research, and then I'm sure there's other people that you can share their work as well. That would be interesting for parents and coaches and players. So awesome job on that. On that note, I think it's time to turn over the Bracken's brain busters and wrap this thing up.
Speaker 1:And and wrap this thing up. And that's exactly what we'll do We'll bring you Doug Bracken's Bracken Brain Buster. After. One final message from an ECNL sponsor. The ECNL is pleased to announce Quick Goal as the official goal provider and partner for ECNL girls and ECNL boys. A new partnership created to support the growth and development of the country's top players, clubs and coaches at all national events, including national playoffs and national finals. The Quick Goal Coaches Corner will provide hospitality and social space for ECNL girls, ecnl boys and collegiate coaches. Quick Goal will also be the presenting sponsor of the national championship-winning ECNL girls and ECNL boys coaches of the year and the ECNL girls and ECNL boys goals of the year. Quick Goal looks forward to helping the ECNL continue to elevate the standards of youth soccer and provide more opportunities to players on and off the field in the coming years. The final segment of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, that means Bracken's Brain Buster. Take it away, doug.
Speaker 5:Today is going to be a very soccer-related question for everybody, and Drew is our guest. Get the first stab at it. If you could change one thing about youth soccer because you've seen it, you've been around it what would it be?
Speaker 4:Oh, man, that's tough. I was so nervous about the brain buster like all week. It's so hard.
Speaker 3:One thing about all of you.
Speaker 4:I know I'm going to give an answer and then, like in an hour, I think of a way better answer. I don't know if this is the one thing. I do think the change back to academic year is potentially hugely impactful. Just to circle back to what we talked about in the beginning not being dismissive of the tumultuous transition, I think most people, if you ask them where would you want soccer to be in five years or 10 years, or maybe when it wouldn't affect your kid at all, I think we would probably mostly agree that we want to be back on that academic registration.
Speaker 4:I think that creates a lot of opportunities for kids to enter into the sport. So I mean, maybe the one thing that I would point at to try and just broadly talk about what I'd like to see is I would like to see more kids getting into and staying in soccer and, to the extent that academic year registration facilitates more kids entering at U5, u6, u7 with their classmates and continuing to play through that kind of attrition threshold we see around seventh or eighth grade, because they get to keep continuing to participate with their classmates. That for me, is maybe one of the biggest ways that we could improve not just the health and participation and physical fitness and all those things through soccer, but even the overall level of soccer in the country when we have more kids playing it actually that's a tough answer to follow actually sorry, don't worry, I'll just you know go between the two people, if you're gonna run with the big dogs, I mean I'm not gonna have nearly as good as in deep of an answer.
Speaker 6:No, I'm going on a more humorous note, because that's what I bring to this podcast, I think parents, in order to express an opinion to a coach, we're going to take this like Pat McAfee style you have to beat your coach in one-on-one or hit the crossbar with the ball before you can state your opinion.
Speaker 5:Love it, love that, out of the box thinking Thank you. That's what we're talking about. Okay, lavers.
Speaker 3:Now it sucks to go next, doesn't it yeah?
Speaker 5:no, I mean it's You're really smart and really creative, and now it's your turn.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I went back and forth on a few things and I guess what I would say is I think everybody is, and because I'm on those sidelines now with my oldest and I think people just need to take a deep breath. And I think people just need to take a deep breath. Some of the emotional outbursts and that doesn't mean they're all negative either, some of them are but some of the stuff that's said is just crazy. I would say everybody just taking a breath and just watching your kids enjoy it and not being concerned about what the score is of your six-year-old's game or whether the ball's in the middle of the field or not in the middle of the field or near your goal or near the other person's goal when they're six and seven.
Speaker 5:probably if you just eliminated comments on that, everybody would enjoy the experience a lot more yeah, I mean that you kind of stole my thunder, because my answer was going to be silent sidelines where there's just no talking or no cheering, because we can't be trusted to your point to not say something crazy and ridiculous. I would definitely change that parent interaction or involvement to keep it focused on the kids and them having fun and doing what they're doing. That would be my answer. And now, lastly, we'll have to turn it over to Dean for his answer. That will probably include his wife being able to go with him to all soccer events.
Speaker 1:I like that little dig because my answer actually doesn't involve my wife but it does involve my kids and it kind of ties into your entire discussion, which I found fascinating, particularly when you talked about the multi-sport part. Both my kids were pretty big-time basketball players. My oldest kid was heavily recruited. My youngest kid made spending the last two years with the UNC women's basketball team very special. But when I asked them about some of their greatest memories during their youth days and high school days, they both kind of say playing soccer, albeit kind of bit roles, but both of them being athletic, they got involved and got something done with it. Both of them did play youth soccer and in hindsight I kind of wish that I would have kept them more involved with youth soccer to enhance what they're doing on the basketball court as to opposite of, perhaps, what we talked about today. So I guess what I'm saying is the value of youth soccer is bigger than finding the next player that is headed to Florida State or UCLA or Indiana. I think it is to enhance the lives of young people and shape them for even other things that they're doing Kind of deep. And yes, it is related to my family.
Speaker 1:Doug, you got me pegged. I'm a pretty easy peg, but that's my answer and with that, that is the show. I want to thank Christian Doug Ashley and Dr Drew Watson Always a pleasure when he is on For each and every one of them, as well as my producer, colin Thrash. I'm Dean Linky, saying we'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast and remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast, email us at info at the ECNL dot com.