AYSO rules and guidelines are specified at a National level and all AYSO regions adopt those as the basis for how a region is run, teams are formed, and games are played. You can find these rules linked here
In the cases below, the Region 27 Board has approved these guidelines to clarify certain expectations of how teams and games should be managed. Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions.
Substitution: Everyone Plays 3 Qtrs before anyone plays a 4th
The national AYSO rule is that everyone plays 50% as part of the Everyone Plays philosophy. Our Area & Region add to that by saying "Everyone plays 3 qtrs before anyone plays 4", meaning you can't have a situation where one player plays 4 qtrs and others play 2 qtrs. This supports the AYSO focus on development over winning and ensures playing time is more even.
Blowout Rules: No games should have more than a 5-point differential. (Coaches, see link here
for how to manage
).
As a coach if
you find yourself in a lopsided situation, the best advice we can give is to set a different objective for your team, for instance making "a" goal independent of how many goals the other team makes and define success for the kids by doing that. If you are the high-scoring team, set a goal of passing to each team member before shooting and define that as success.
U10 team size: The AYSO National policy is 7v7 and we adhere to that with one exception.
Ideal team size for U10 is 9 players. and that provides 2 subs per team if every player shows up. This allows all players to play 3/4 of every game. However, we sometimes have to make teams larger than ideal. On those occasions when BOTH teams have 3 or more subs, then we will allow 8v8 as long as both coaches agree BEFORE the game begins.
Note that this only applies when BOTH teams have 3 subs ON SITE and not just on their roster. That is, we do not want one team with 10 players demanding 8v8 when the other team has only 1 or 2 subs. If both teams have 3 subs on the field for the game then let’s have both teams agree to play 8v8.