futbol: you will not get any disagreement from me on this issue, but it's a reality that exists. And I agree with Coach P, my kid's teacher has a lot of influence on what he thinks and does.
While minimum rules are needed for safety (lord knows there are some idiots out there), and I'm not qualified to speak about 7/8th graders playing JV -- I'll leave that to others.
But for the same reason I do not support mandatory relegation/promotion (I do not believe in a one-size fits all type of rules and dont really like people telling me what to do), I do not believe I would support a rule that says 7/8th graders shouldn't play JV soccer.
I'd rather see SCYSA go out and look for ways to encourage more participation in recreation (not a topic of this thread) and competitive soccer within the state. At this time, that job is fully on local and regional clubs through mostly organic growth. Let the market forces judge what is better, but right now it seems that SCYSA is loosing that battle based on current numbers.
I propose that we might be at that time to expand our divisions at the younger ages (U13/U14). And my next thought is for SCYSA to start stumping the YMCAs and local recreation programs that are not part of SCYSA to put together select teams from their existing rec teams that can participate within the newly created 3rd division. Somehow I would think SCYSA could find a way to register the teams for insurance purposes without the administrative hurdles of forming new clubs (BODs, bylaws, etc.) by creating a state-wide electronic club for this purpose, and make it financially appealing to these non-SCYSA affiliated programs to try it out.
