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Jun, 2025

Commissioner's Note: Birth Year vs. School Year

Greetings, AYSO Region 14,

As we conclude spring soccer and shift into summer, I wanted to share some thoughts and observations of a long (and recently-decided) debate in youth soccer about whether to separate players into age groups by school- or birth-year. This topic will be affecting all of us during the next two years due to a recent ruling to change this policy across American youth soccer...

Background: youth soccer organizations had traditionally separated players by age, according to school-year divisions. That changed about a decade ago when industry regulator US Soccer switched everyone to birth (calendar) year age divisions. There were rationalizations... Refs/administrators could more quickly identify player age divisions on ID-cards. The birth-year system also aligned with international standards, creating more consistent player development and selection processes for youth national teams.

Ultimately though, law of unintended consequence hit and youth soccer communities discovered the switch to birth-year severely disadvantaged local soccer players with late-calendar birthdays during their final year of High School. Most of such players' long-standing club soccer teammates would have graduated the spring prior, collapsing their teams just prior to their critical senior year. It was a repeat annual complaint, understandably for those players affected each time. Imagine playing with the same competitive club team for years, and then suddenly having three quarters of your team graduate and go onto college, while you stayed behind to finish High School - all because the US youth soccer system used birth-year, rather than school-year groupings. Brutal.

After a decade of such complaints, tides shifted again last year with US Soccer reversing this rule and allowing soccer organizations to decide for themselves whether to use birth- or school-year age divisions going forward. In response, the three largest American youth soccer organizations - US Youth Soccer, US Club Soccer and AYSO - announced that they will all transition back to school-year age divisions, starting fall 2026. This coming fall will be the last year of birth-year age groups for us at AYSO and American youth soccer in general!

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Ok, so what does this mean for you?... For now, not much. This fall will operate the same as it has for the past decade, with players divided into birth-year age groupings:

Division - Birth-Year
6U - 2020+
7U - 2019
8U - 2018
9U - 2017
10U - 2016
11U - 2015
12U - 2014
13U - 2013
14U - 2012
15U - 2011
16U - 2010

But then in fall 2026, the above will be upended and age groups split into 12-mo periods from August 1 to July 31, making late-year birthday kids once again eligible to play with kids in their own grade. While it will be less convoluted in that way, figuring out which 'U' age division pertains to which 12-mo cycle will sadly remain as confusing as ever - I'll save that fun math for a future note. :)

Jamal