Matthew 2 By: Grace Albarez, Larkin Branch, Curtis Gremillion, and Brett Pike 6 th Hour

Hockey  All-star teams are mostly made up of players born at the beginning of the year  Hockey coaches usually start selecting the all-star team players at the age of nine or ten  People born right after the deadline get more opportunities to be coached better  Rep team coaches choose these players because they have had more months to mature. When the players chosen get to be around 14-15, they are advanced because of the benefit of their new coaching.  This causes a separation from the assumed talented and untalented  It is argued that separating the “good players” from the “bad players” gives those good players a better coaching experience and a large advantage to those players born later in the year.

European Soccer/ Education  Gladwell states that for the 2007 Czechoslovakian National Junior soccer team, the coach may as well have told the players born in late summer to “pack their bags and go home”  Only 4 of the 21 players were born after May  Education wise, kids born closely after their grades enrollment deadline tend to be more advanced than the ones born farther from it  Teachers tend to start separating the children based on the ability early in their education, and those advanced ones are often the older, more mature ones.  Parents, for these reasons, often hold their children back a grade if they were not born close to the enrollment date.  They find that I may be hard for their child to keep up with the kids born months earlier than him/her

Solutions  One thought of solution to each problem is simply to acknowledge that the cut-off date does not matter  There would be a greater diversification of age among teams  Separate school classes based on age  If schools had classes based on month born, there wouldn’t be a large difference in the maturity of the students  Give players for sports born farther from the deadline a chance to develop  This gives an advantage to those players that are talented and younger to get opportunities

QUESTIONS What is an effect of being born close after the cutoff dates of sports? a)More practice time b)Less practice time c)There is no effect How many players in England’s premier league were born between June and August? a.109 b.142 c.136 d.57 Why would parents hold their kids back a grade if she/he is born far from the enrollment deadline? a.So their child wouldn’t have a hard time keeping up with the others b.Because he/she is more advanced than the others c.Their child is not smart enough to be in school yet