Modification to LHGCL Bye Rules

by Guest 15/05/15, 10:50 am

A little forum birdie PM'd me and told me this change was coming. Looks like the LHGCL Rules on the website have been officially updated.

1) Gone is the ambiguous wording related to teams leaving to play in "non-NTSSA sanctioned leagues" (i.e. ECNL). Looks like ECNL clubs will now be allowed to keep their byes regardless, BUT, they will still need to retain at least 50% of their players if they want to be certain to keep their highest division bye.

2) In the case where teams don't keep >50% of their players (i.e. a team "blows up"), the club still retains the bye, but now the LHGCL board has the discretion on where the "new" team from the club is placed (i.e. can't just simply take a D3 team and move them up to take the D1 bye of a team that blew up). This should help competitive balance in the league.

2. General Definitions for League Playing Format and Qualifying
Tournament
a) Teams are invited back into LHGCL for the next soccer year
(“Bye”) according to the playing format below. The spirit of a bye is to
reward returning teams/players for their performance the prior year. A
“team” is generally determined by the team name and club affiliation.
There is no minimum number of players from the previous soccer year
that must be retained by a team to keep a Bye for the club for the next
soccer year. However, there are two situations where a bye would not be
extended to a club based on the team standings from the prior year.
(1) If 75 percent of the players on a team (based on the roster
as of April 1 of the previous soccer year, rounding fractions up to
the next whole number*) leave a team/club to join another
team/club, the league Bye will be awarded to that group of players
with their new team/club, except as outlined in (2.a.2) below. If
this takes place, the Age Division Commissioner must be informed
at the time the roster is submitted.
*Examples:
75% of 14 players = 10.5 = 11 players
75% of 15 players = 11.25 = 12 players
75% of 16 players = 12 players
75% of 17 players = 12.75 = 13 players
75% of 18 players = 13.5 = 14 players
(2) If 50 percent of the players on a team (based on the roster as
of April 1 of the previous soccer year, rounding fractions up to the
next whole number*) are not retained by the team applying for a bye,
the league bye will remain with the club however the Division
placement in the league will be determined by the LHGCL Executive
Board or designated board committee. Appeals to the division
placement will be heard and ruled upon by LHGCL Executive Board
or designated board committee.
*Examples:
50% of 14 players = 7 players
50% of 15 players = 7.5 = 8 players
50% of 16 players = 8 players
50% of 17 players = 8.5 = 9 players
50% of 18 players = 9 = 9 players
Note: If a dispute arises over who has the right to a Bye, the
LHGCL Executive Board will determine whether a Bye exists in
that particular situation and which team/club will receive the Bye.
There is no further appeal allowed on this decision.

by soccersounder 15/05/15, 01:20 pm

Makes good sense..

So, the the teams entering ECNL could keep the bye if 50% rounded up stay on the roster... Otherwise, let's say only 5 stay on the Roster, I'm guessing LHGCL would consider moving them from D1 to D2?

by SWGSB 52 15/05/15, 02:17 pm

Anyone hearing what the current '02 teams (soon to be ECNL) are planning?

I'm guessing FCD, Solar, Sting & Texans all hold on to their LHGCL DI Byes next season by dual rostering at least 50%. These 4 teams are currently the tops in DI so they should compete fine next season.

Not sure how Feet approach this with their DII Bye or if the rule change benefits them in any way. Feet Wombough will be promoted from DIII to DII next season already and they don't really have a 3rd team ready to step in (unless someone moves over). Does that change the thought process. The '01 team gave up their Bye. So I anticipate the '02 team giving up the Bye too.

by Mia Hamster 15/05/15, 02:51 pm

I expect to see the loads of heated complaints when a team gets moved divisions based on an Executive Committee decision. Doing that will also effect promotion & relegation of other teams at the various thresholds.

My "idea": If a team doesn't retain 50%, strip their bye, promote everyone below them up one slot and put the bye up for grabs in the D3 qualifier in August.

by Triumph FC 15/05/15, 04:05 pm

Fantastic idea
Let the team earn their place and if they are that good they will get promoted

by wittymgr 15/05/15, 04:32 pm

soccersounder wrote:Makes good sense..

So, the the teams entering ECNL could keep the bye if 50% rounded up stay on the roster... Otherwise, let's say only 5 stay on the Roster, I'm guessing LHGCL would consider moving them from D1 to D2?

Or they could keep them in D1. Depends on several factors I would think. Some ECNL club "second" teams may become stronger as those from non-ECNL clubs look for options. Could be that the old D1 team may be still strong with dual roster and new talent.

Just postulating...

by KnKsDad 15/05/15, 04:34 pm

Mia Hamster wrote:I expect to see the loads of heated complaints when a team gets moved divisions based on an Executive Committee decision. Doing that will also effect promotion & relegation of other teams at the various thresholds.

My "idea": If a team doesn't retain 50%, strip their bye, promote everyone below them up one slot and put the bye up for grabs in the D3 qualifier in August.

I agree, although I think more heated complaints will come from those who feel a team should be moved divisions but wasn't...because the fat will stay fat and protect their own..

by soccerjack 15/05/15, 05:12 pm

It's funny when you read this thread, you realize how bastardized the clubs have made Lake Highlands. It's sad that this silliness seems normal. CPP, club byes...blah blah.

A team should be made up of the kids that signed up for it....If they Win a bye, it's theirs....If they break up, by by bye....If they need to win a game they play harder, not bring other kids in to win it for them. Pretty simple stuff.

I'm gonna have a beer and call Lake Highlands tonight to get this all straightened out.

by Guest 15/05/15, 08:23 pm

I'm thinking we're about to see a meteoric rise in "ghost players" haunting rosters all over NTX.

by Lefty 16/05/15, 07:27 am

SWGSB 52 wrote:
Not sure how Feet approach this with their DII Bye or if the rule change benefits them in any way. Feet Wombough will be promoted from DIII to DII next season already and they don't really have a 3rd team ready to step in (unless someone moves over). Does that change the thought process. The '01 team gave up their Bye. So I anticipate the '02 team giving up the Bye too.

Or under the rules as they are now written, does this mean that LHGCL could determine that they added enough talent to their formerly D2 team that it should now be placed in D1?

Looks like the door could be wide open for LHGCL to move them to move them up as well as down.

by DTDad03 16/05/15, 08:30 am

SWGSB 52 wrote:Anyone hearing what the current '02 teams (soon to be ECNL) are planning?

I'm guessing FCD, Solar, Sting & Texans all hold on to their LHGCL DI Byes next season by dual rostering at least 50%. These 4 teams are currently the tops in DI so they should compete fine next season.

Not sure how Feet approach this with their DII Bye or if the rule change benefits them in any way. Feet Wombough will be promoted from DIII to DII next season already and they don't really have a 3rd team ready to step in (unless someone moves over). Does that change the thought process. The '01 team gave up their Bye. So I anticipate the '02 team giving up the Bye too.

Or maybe the Feet fill the spot with an '03 team similar to what Solar did in D2 last year. I've heard other 03's are being discussed as possible teams to move into the 02 spots. I imagine that it would open the door for 04's to move up a year as well.

by soccersounder 17/05/15, 10:47 am

soccerjack wrote:It's funny when you read this thread, you realize how bastardized the clubs have made Lake Highlands. It's sad that this silliness seems normal. CPP, club byes...blah blah.

A team should be made up of the kids that signed up for it....If they Win a bye, it's theirs....If they break up, by by bye....If they need to win a game they play harder, not bring other kids in to win it for them. Pretty simple stuff.

I'm gonna have a beer and call Lake Highlands tonight to get this all straightened out.

Sorry SJ, but the reality is that these are cases of LHGCL trying to self correct... The so-called ECNL rule was a LH rule. Feelings were hurt at the time that some of the Clubs were going to also play with US Club Soccer (ECNL). The result? NTX became irrelevant come Regional and National time. LH has been back tracking ever since. If LH never reacted to ECNL, most would have treated ECNL as an additional League like Premiere League and it would been on the Clubs to adjust. As for Club Player Pass, just a case of NTX/LH finally doing what almost everyone else does. Don't try to make big deal out the "bye". The LH Bye has always pretty much made sense and still does after this change and actually gives LH more say....

by InaB 17/05/15, 09:39 pm

So, if the whole team moves to ECNL (i.e., top D1 team of each club participating in ECNL) then the bye would be open. Generally from what I have seen, better than 70% of the D1 team goes to ECNL intact with additional players added during tryouts. Some players are cut while others quit.

So if that is the case then they could not maintain the bye with the players who are left and LHGL has the discretionary right to open the bye to other clubs/teams or to another team of the same club rather than automatically allowing the ECNL club to move up a team to D1.

To me that is logical. If you give up the bye because your D1 team moves to ECNL and you don't retain enough players to keep the bye intact then to me it should go on the open market.

However, that being said, that could make it more difficult for those teams looking for relegation upward as five or six ECNL teams leave the top tier for the year that ECNL starts in the age division. If a club were able to maintain a Farm club with 50% of their players (who could be dual rostered) then there will be fewer open positions in D1 at the beginning of ECNL movement in each age group. Right now, Solar has such a team that resides in D1 and provides dual-rostering for their players.

Either way, it could create a much smaller change in team movements in ensuing years.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.

by Guest 18/05/15, 10:04 am

InaB wrote:So, if the whole team moves to ECNL (i.e., top D1 team of each club participating in ECNL) then the bye would be open.

Actually Ina, as I read the new rule, that is NOT the case. Under the old rule, if the "whole" team left to join ECNL, the club would forfeit the bye (i.e. the bye would be "open" as you state). However, as the new rule is worded, the ECNL clubs still retain the LHGCL bye unless the CLUB decides they want to forfeit it. As long as the club can field a team to claim the bye, they can keep it. The difference with the wording of the new rule, is that if <50% of the roster claiming that bye are not from the previous year's roster, then the division in which that team is placed is up to the discretion of LHGCL. (i.e. it's NOT necessarily a D1 or even a D2 bye).

For example, let's say that ECNL club X has 3 teams in the U13 age group - A D1 team, a team that finishes in the bottom half of D2, and a PPL team. 100% of the D1 team leaves to become the ECNL team. That club will still have 2 LHGCL byes. However, the club will not necessarily be allowed to just move the team from the bottom of D2 into D1, and the PPL team into the D2 slot. LHGCL would have the discretion to keep the D2 team in D2, and award the PPL team a bye into D3. The spot opened up in D1 would be filled by the next team in the U13 D2 standings pecking order (i.e. the 8th place team from U13 D1 that was going to be relegated would have 1st shot, then the 9th place team from U13 D1, then the 3rd place team from U13 D2, etc.). That would then open a spot in D2 that would be filled in the same manner from the D3 standings, etc.

The new rule also leaves open the option for the ECNL clubs to do what Solar, FCD, and Texans did this past year with the '01's, where they could use dual rostering and CPP to maintain the 50% roster holdovers necessary to keep the D1 bye.

I see this as a self-preservation move by LHGCL. Right or wrong, like it or hate it, the simple fact is that teams from the 5 ECNL clubs make up exactly 50% of all of the teams in LHGCL this year. Because of that, the ECNL clubs ultimately hold the leverage. If LHGCL wants to maintain any resemblance of relevancy and a quality league, they know they need to make some capitulations to the clubs that dominate the landscape in NTX. Take a stand against those clubs and you take the chance of pushing them to the point where they essentially band together and go create their own league for their non-ECNL teams to play in, with roster rules that suit their own purpose.

There is administrative and logistic inertia that prevents the ECNL clubs from doing it today. The effort involved in the ECNL clubs creating their own separate non-ECNL league is non-trivial. So, as long as LHGCL does enough to appease the ECNL clubs, and keep it as a viable option for their #2-n teams, they'll stick around LHGCL.

Is it fair to the smaller clubs/indy's? Not really. However, IMO, the smaller clubs/indy's are better served, and more importantly, the development of their players is better served, with the current LHGCL "system", as opposed to a system where the ECNL clubs go off on their own and the smaller clubs/indy's never get to play those teams except in the occasional tournament.

Again, people might not particularly like it, but it's the reality as I see it.

by KnKsDad 18/05/15, 12:01 pm

soccerjack wrote:It's funny when you read this thread, you realize how bastardized the clubs have made Lake Highlands. It's sad that this silliness seems normal. CPP, club byes...blah blah.

A team should be made up of the kids that signed up for it....If they Win a bye, it's theirs....If they break up, by by bye....If they need to win a game they play harder, not bring other kids in to win it for them. Pretty simple stuff.

I'm gonna have a beer and call Lake Highlands tonight to get this all straightened out.

I agree with you. Did you call them after having that beer and get it all straightened out?

by KnKsDad 18/05/15, 12:26 pm

soccersounder wrote:
soccerjack wrote:It's funny when you read this thread, you realize how bastardized the clubs have made Lake Highlands. It's sad that this silliness seems normal. CPP, club byes...blah blah.

A team should be made up of the kids that signed up for it....If they Win a bye, it's theirs....If they break up, by by bye....If they need to win a game they play harder, not bring other kids in to win it for them. Pretty simple stuff.

I'm gonna have a beer and call Lake Highlands tonight to get this all straightened out.

Sorry SJ, but the reality is that these are cases of LHGCL trying to self correct... The so-called ECNL rule was a LH rule. Feelings were hurt at the time that some of the Clubs were going to also play with US Club Soccer (ECNL). The result? NTX became irrelevant come Regional and National time. LH has been back tracking ever since. If LH never reacted to ECNL, most would have treated ECNL as an additional League like Premiere League and it would been on the Clubs to adjust. As for Club Player Pass, just a case of NTX/LH finally doing what almost everyone else does. Don't try to make big deal out the "bye". The LH Bye has always pretty much made sense and still does after this change and actually gives LH more say....

Self correct or self protect? I don't know the history of the youth soccer leagues and ECNL so can't really comment on that per se, but as respects CPP, doing what everybody else does don't necessarily make it right. It is inherently unfair to allow players from a higher level team to help out a lower level team unchecked. And the bye thing is a big deal, especially if the team is in the "other 50%" and has been shafted as a result. Also, not sure that giving LH more of a say is a good thing, because with the say that they already had it wasn't, so why does one think that giving them more say will actually make things better as opposed to more, more, more of the same?

by Relegated 18/05/15, 12:56 pm

I know the focus in this thread seems to be ECNL related, but this is a new rule for all age groups - correct?

If my '03 daughter's team earns a D1 bye, but loses 50% of its players, LHGCL can deem that we have lost too much talent and move us down to D2? Are they that familiar with my daughter's team's players and the players in U12 (going to U13) that they can really make that call?

by Guest 18/05/15, 01:50 pm

Tom P. wrote:I know the focus in this thread seems to be ECNL related, but this is a new rule for all age groups - correct?

If my '03 daughter's team earns a D1 bye, but loses 50% of its players, LHGCL can deem that we have lost too much talent and move us down to D2? Are they that familiar with my daughter's team's players and the players in U12 (going to U13) that they can really make that call?

What they can do is look up the roster history for any players on your DD's team. If they find that your DD's roster lost more than half of it's players, and the players that are replacing them, all came from teams that finished in the bottom half of D3 or PPL the previous year, they've got enough history to suggest that the "new" team probably doesn't belong in D1.

My guess (and I emphasize GUESS) is that they will give the benefit of the doubt in cases where close to 50% of the roster is retained. I think this rule is mostly meant for the cases where a team pretty much blows up completely (i.e. returns 0 players), and the club looks to fill the spot with a team that played two divisions lower the previous year.

by InaB 18/05/15, 02:16 pm

Thanks BW, so the bye can be preserved but not, perhaps in D1. In a way that does make sense.

bwgophers wrote:
InaB wrote:So, if the whole team moves to ECNL (i.e., top D1 team of each club participating in ECNL) then the bye would be open.

Actually Ina, as I read the new rule, that is NOT the case. Under the old rule, if the "whole" team left to join ECNL, the club would forfeit the bye (i.e. the bye would be "open" as you state). However, as the new rule is worded, the ECNL clubs still retain the LHGCL bye unless the CLUB decides they want to forfeit it. As long as the club can field a team to claim the bye, they can keep it. The difference with the wording of the new rule, is that if <50% of the roster claiming that bye are not from the previous year's roster, then the division in which that team is placed is up to the discretion of LHGCL. (i.e. it's NOT necessarily a D1 or even a D2 bye).

For example, let's say that ECNL club X has 3 teams in the U13 age group - A D1 team, a team that finishes in the bottom half of D2, and a PPL team. 100% of the D1 team leaves to become the ECNL team. That club will still have 2 LHGCL byes. However, the club will not necessarily be allowed to just move the team from the bottom of D2 into D1, and the PPL team into the D2 slot. LHGCL would have the discretion to keep the D2 team in D2, and award the PPL team a bye into D3. The spot opened up in D1 would be filled by the next team in the U13 D2 standings pecking order (i.e. the 8th place team from U13 D1 that was going to be relegated would have 1st shot, then the 9th place team from U13 D1, then the 3rd place team from U13 D2, etc.). That would then open a spot in D2 that would be filled in the same manner from the D3 standings, etc.

The new rule also leaves open the option for the ECNL clubs to do what Solar, FCD, and Texans did this past year with the '01's, where they could use dual rostering and CPP to maintain the 50% roster holdovers necessary to keep the D1 bye.

I see this as a self-preservation move by LHGCL. Right or wrong, like it or hate it, the simple fact is that teams from the 5 ECNL clubs make up exactly 50% of all of the teams in LHGCL this year. Because of that, the ECNL clubs ultimately hold the leverage. If LHGCL wants to maintain any resemblance of relevancy and a quality league, they know they need to make some capitulations to the clubs that dominate the landscape in NTX. Take a stand against those clubs and you take the chance of pushing them to the point where they essentially band together and go create their own league for their non-ECNL teams to play in, with roster rules that suit their own purpose.

There is administrative and logistic inertia that prevents the ECNL clubs from doing it today. The effort involved in the ECNL clubs creating their own separate non-ECNL league is non-trivial. So, as long as LHGCL does enough to appease the ECNL clubs, and keep it as a viable option for their #2-n teams, they'll stick around LHGCL.

Is it fair to the smaller clubs/indy's? Not really. However, IMO, the smaller clubs/indy's are better served, and more importantly, the development of their players is better served, with the current LHGCL "system", as opposed to a system where the ECNL clubs go off on their own and the smaller clubs/indy's never get to play those teams except in the occasional tournament.

Again, people might not particularly like it, but it's the reality as I see it.

by eaglemountaindad99 20/05/15, 08:07 pm

bwgophers wrote:
InaB wrote:[b]
Is it fair to the smaller clubs/indy's? Not really. However, IMO, the smaller clubs/indy's are better served, and more importantly, the development of their players is better served, with the current LHGCL "system", as opposed to a system where the ECNL clubs go off on their own and the smaller clubs/indy's never get to play those teams except in the occasional tournament.

Again, people might not particularly like it, but it's the reality as I see it.

Thanks BW for starting the topic, didn't see rule change until now. Excellent explanation, agree with points made. Very true about indy's not getting a shot at better competition if the 'big's' started another league. Is it June yet?

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Modification to LHGCL Bye Rules

Modification to LHGCL Bye Rules

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