Student soccer athletes in Alabama are being left behind by neighboring states due to eligibility rules that prevent athletes from being exposed to college scouts. Unlike other sports like football where scouts are visible at almost every high school game, college soccer programs instead rely on individual soccer clubs to narrow the field for them. This is due primarily to available funding -- coaches try to go where the highest concentration of talent is. As such, college coaches will most often attend matches of top club or state Olympic Development teams, or scout at nationally recognized college showcase events. This typically happens in the fall or winter before high school players are even allowed to touch a ball. Prospective players are subsequently invited to ID camps in the spring, then evaluated properly at the college camps.

Certain eligibility rules set by the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) effectively exclude players from playing on the most scouted club teams; prevent players from participating in the highest profile club events; limit participation in Olympic Development programs; set limits to the amount and type of outside training received; and prohibit players from attending crucial ID camps during the spring season.

This petition proposes the following:

1. Grant high school coaches the discretion to set their own outside participation rules. If a coach thinks it is appropriate to allow one of his/her players to skip a weekend of school ball to go play in a high profile showcase event that will be attended by hundreds of college scouts, it is in that player's best interest for the coach to have that discretion.

2. Allow participation in the Olympic Development Program more often than once a month. If our state ODP teams become more competitive in the region, then our players naturally become more sought after. If deemed necessary, set limits on the amount of activity players can have in a given day or weekend (e.g. if a player trains with the ODP team on a Saturday, that player must not also play in a high school match that day), but again, defer to a coach's discretion, not the sanctioning body's.

3. Allow private training in groups of up to six. The allowed 1-on-1 training is great for sports like basketball, golf and tennis, but in a sport like soccer, where tactical game play is as important as technical skill, disallowing outside group training stunts a player's overall development.

4. Eliminate the 50% rule entirely. This rule is unfairly favorable to large metropolitan areas, leaving communities with one high school and one club team very few options. Players are often forced to choose between playing for a top club team and risking their high school eligibility (if more than six players from the same high school are on that team) or forgoing a top club team in hopes of remaining high school eligible (which gains the player almost zero exposure). This rule has prompted some of the state's top players to miss the spring season altogether due to limited options after playing on a top-level club team in the fall (e.g. if the club team doesn't form in the spring due to conflicts with school ball and the high school team has already reached its 6-man limit).

5. Allow high school players to attend college ID camps during the school season. Not allowing Alabama players to attend these camps ensures that the only players the college coaches see at camps are players from out of state. Impose a limit on the amount of activity a player can have on a given day/weekend and make sure students pay for the camps themselves, but allow them to participate.