As we head into summer and before we get started in earnest on the logistics of the fall 22 season I thought it made sense to both circulate a fall timeline (see attached) and to get some input on this year's season.

It is pretty straightforward and not much has changed from last year.  Let me know if you have any questions and note that DSL Registration opens July 1, closes August 1, and that our kickoff meeting is August 11th at 7:30pm (zoom link to follow closer to the date).

On the plus side for this year, I noted that our league has gained quite a bit in the way of parity amongst the teams in each bracket.  For those that like data, I've attached a few charts that note league wins, goal differential for the each game throughout the season, and goal differential for each game during the playoffs at the JV/Varsity level; and while there are always exceptions here and there, overall the league parity is as close as I can recall it ever being, which goes a long way in keeping the sport exciting for all involved.

On the negative side for this year, I have seen a trend that started in the fall of 2020 where some schools have had issues fielding 11 on the field for games.  At the time, this trend was largely attributed to COVID issues.  This trend was further felt this spring when DSL soccer had to largely compress our season into the month of May due to weather issues, and then it was even more pronounced when the other spring sports had to do the same.  Weather-wise, this spring was definitely an anomaly, but it did get me thinking a bit outside of the box and wonder whether it made sense to restructure our league a bit.  So here is what I am asking for your input on–(1) should we leave the league as is and have all JV/V matches be 11v11, or (2) should we try to create two divisions to our league – one 11v11 and one 7v7?  

There are some details that we'd need to work out before we definitively committed to doing two separate leagues, but I can tell you that if we did this, we'd let schools opt into what league that they prefer and then make our skill level brackets up from there.  11v11 teams would play each other and 7v7 teams would play each other; there would be no crossovers.  Also, due to current scheduling limitations, both your JV and Varsity teams would have to opt into the same league, we can't have one JV team be 11v11 and the corresponding varsity team be 7v7 (or vice versa).  If that scheduling limitation ends up going away, I'll let you know, but for now there is no way around that.  

Finally, I wanted to note that the goal still is and should remain to field 11v11 teams.  The 7v7 option is being considered for school's whose soccer enrollment would make that otherwise impossible and their only recourse is to not roster a team, or continually forfeit games throughout the season. If you attempt to enter two teams in the same age group into 7v7 that will not be permitted. Instead we'd reserve the discretion to either bump you up to 11v11 or eliminate one of the 7v7 squads.  I don't want to encourage teams to forum shop brackets in the 7v7 league to seemingly increase their odds of winning a trophy, this is an option only to be used when enrollment dictates it and I'd ask you to utilize it only for that purpose.

I'm curious as to your thoughts on this and am soliciting your opinions in the attached survey link.  I can tell you on the plus side I think it might allow more schools to compete and get more players on the field, which is always one of our top priorities.  On the down side I foresee more administrative work making this all work (not ideal, but doable), some opportunities for schools to manipulate numbers to try to get into lower brackets (which we hope won't happen but we will try to build in some safeguards to prevent), and the other big negative I foresee is the potential backwards step in league parity– doing two leagues will result in fewer teams in each league so when I make the competitive brackets there could be less competitive matchups than what we might otherwise have seen.  That is speculative though.  

The other item that came up towards the end of our season was tie breaker rules.  At the JV/V level section standings and playoff qualifications are determined by standing points (3 for win, 1 for a tie, and 0 for a loss, -2 for a forfeit loss, 2 for a forfeit win and 0 for an unplayed game).  At the end of the season those numbers are calculated.  In the event of a tie we then go to our tiebreakers.  The tiebreaker rules are in our rules posted online, but the first tie breaker is goal differential amongst the two tied teams in their head to head matchup(s) (capped at 4 per game) and the second one is overall goal differential for each team for their entire season (again capped at 4 per game).  Because our league has become more competitive, these tie breaker rules have become more utilized recently.  Also, our webpage does a great job at keeping everyone up to date on the game results, but the coding logic is unable to process our first tie breaker (head to head goal differential in those one or two matchups) and despite disclaimers/warnings on this discrepancy to the league, I am aware of one incident where a team didn't understand the tie breaker rules and it caused some confusion on their end.  

With that background I wanted to take the league pulse on this point and see if there was significant support to revisit our tie breaker rules.  Reasonable people can disagree on this and let's face it, any time you are looking at tiebreakers, someone is going to get the short end of the stick.  I can tell you that the rationale for using head to head performance first is that oftentimes schools schedules aren't the same and if Team A and Team B are tied and Team A played Team C twice and Team B only played Team C once and Team C happened to be the worst team that season, Team A has an advantage that wasn't foreseen at the time schedules were made.  By using the head to head tiebreaker though you focus on those two teams' performance against one another.  The down side though is that rather than focus on a season's worth of performance to break the tie, you are focussing on just one or two games.  I don't think any answer is wrong, but for what it's worth, I do think that our current method is the most correct.  I'd be curious as to your opinions though so please let me know in the below survey link:

That is all I have for now.  In the off time before Fall registration opens up on July 1 though, feel free to read through our rules and let me know if anything else strikes you as needing revisited.  If it's as simple as a clean up or typo we can correct that easily.  If it's more substantive than that though we can discuss.  Otherwise I look forward to working with you all again soon and enjoy your summer.

Rob Glentzer

DSL Commissioner