Is Age Just A Number? Navigating Birth Years and Team Placements | Ep. 124

Let us know the topics of interest to you!

After a quick Labor Day pause, the Breaking the Line team returns to your airwaves. Fall is in the air, the kids are back at school and the 2025-26 soccer season is ready to kick off. 

This week, ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken discuss two topics that were submitted by Breaking the Line listeners. First up was a question about a topic that has been discussed at length on the podcast: birth year vs. school year. This episodes, the pair examine how clubs are going to navigate the shift beginning in 2026, and more importantly, the distinction that not every player will automatically stay with their birth year or their school year, and that there are a multitude of factors players, parents and coaches need to examine when determining which team these players born from Aug. 1 - Dec. 31 will play on. 

The second segment of the show follows a similar through process, which is how, as a parent, do you know when your player has outgrown his current team environment? Once again, it's a gray area, but Lavers and Bracken go through their ideas of what development looks like at different age groups, what are good determiners of development, and more. 

It's a fantastic episode that every soccer parent will want to listen to, and the BTL crew even gives a teaser for episode 125. 

As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.