BRYC Girls Practice Fields

[Anonymous]

We are new to travel soccer and signed up our oldest daughter for BRYC. The girls are practicing in the dark on the grass fields!!
They have some lights they bought at Home Depot (?) all around but I asked my daughter after practice and she says that it's hard to see the balls.
Is this normal? Again, we have no experience with travel soccer so I'm not sure if it's the norm? My husband wants to move her to another club in the spring.
Please give us some advice!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are new to travel soccer and signed up our oldest daughter for BRYC. The girls are practicing in the dark on the grass fields!!
They have some lights they bought at Home Depot (?) all around but I asked my daughter after practice and she says that it's hard to see the balls.
Is this normal? Again, we have no experience with travel soccer so I'm not sure if it's the norm? My husband wants to move her to another club in the spring.
Please give us some advice!

Not normal at all . Who is the coach?

[Anonymous]

Night vision training. I like it. Give BRYC props for developing innovative training protocols.

[Anonymous]

Not normal. There are fields with lights that they should be training on. If the club either didn't secure permits or is putting other teams on the fields it does have, you have a good reason to leave. If they are practicing after sunset at a county park, I'd request they move it to a lit field. If they refuse, you can call the police and report them- most unlit fields close at sunset.

[Anonymous]

Bridge or Elite?

[Anonymous]

How do they power lights?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bridge or Elite?

U-little elite. They practice at 5:30 Robinson on the unlit grass field next to the lighted turf field, which has 2-3 older teams practicing on it at 5:30, and then oldest age groups at 7:30. Stadium field is being used by high school athletics.

[Anonymous]

At a neighboring club. Also on grass fields for U-littles. Moving soon to a lighted field though for remainder of season. Ask the coach. They should be making arrangements to move to a lit field.

[Anonymous]

The individual coaches in elite don't have much recourse. Elite itself was granted the field space it was granted and chooses to dole it out as they see fit. I can see why the older age groups are given priority for fully lighted fields. Alternatives might be to carry fewer teams at the younger age levels and/or to limit training options for those younger teams to 1-2 fewer training sessions a week.

Bridge (and rec) coaches might have other options, working with the field coordinator who also manages assignments for the rec program, but the alternative to getting a lit field or a field with a goal sometimes comes with you being one of 3-5 other teams for one field.

All that said, I did notice a couple times at Pine Ridge on Tuesday evenings one half of one of the fields is going unused like after 6:30pm. Don't know if that tmeans BRYC is permitted for that field at that time, or if the coach given the space simply isn't using up all of their allocated time, or if it's an actual open slot.

On the flip side, the head elite coaches at the younger age groups are managing about 7 teams across two age groups and have to stack those age group practices back to back--they can't practice until dark at Robinson and then expect to make it to a lit field across town to start another session with the next age group in five minutes.

Keep in mind, for the Spring season this will be a non-issue.

Welcome to northern virginia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The individual coaches in elite don't have much recourse. Elite itself was granted the field space it was granted and chooses to dole it out as they see fit. I can see why the older age groups are given priority for fully lighted fields. Alternatives might be to carry fewer teams at the younger age levels and/or to limit training options for those younger teams to 1-2 fewer training sessions a week.

Bridge (and rec) coaches might have other options, working with the field coordinator who also manages assignments for the rec program, but the alternative to getting a lit field or a field with a goal sometimes comes with you being one of 3-5 other teams for one field.

All that said, I did notice a couple times at Pine Ridge on Tuesday evenings one half of one of the fields is going unused like after 6:30pm. Don't know if that tmeans BRYC is permitted for that field at that time, or if the coach given the space simply isn't using up all of their allocated time, or if it's an actual open slot.

On the flip side, the head elite coaches at the younger age groups are managing about 7 teams across two age groups and have to stack those age group practices back to back--they can't practice until dark at Robinson and then expect to make it to a lit field across town to start another session with the next age group in five minutes.

Keep in mind, for the Spring season this will be a non-issue.

Welcome to northern virginia.

Welcome to a terrible club. It sounds like overstretched staff and not enough permits. My kid not getting the number of practices specified in the contract would be enough for me to leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bridge or Elite?

U-little elite. They practice at 5:30 Robinson on the unlit grass field next to the lighted turf field, which has 2-3 older teams practicing on it at 5:30, and then oldest age groups at 7:30. Stadium field is being used by high school athletics.

Oh BN really? I can see going later in evening at another field would be an inconvenience for him. So instead just turn on the cars headlights.

[Anonymous]

We were told BRYC had far more kids sign up for rec soccer than anticipated this season (given that it had dropped off b/c of the pandemic) thus ended up with very limited field space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bridge or Elite?

U-little elite. They practice at 5:30 Robinson on the unlit grass field next to the lighted turf field, which has 2-3 older teams practicing on it at 5:30, and then oldest age groups at 7:30. Stadium field is being used by high school athletics.

Oh BN really? I can see going later in evening at another field would be an inconvenience for him. So instead just turn on the cars headlights.

Years back, BN moved his assigned boy teams' training to the same unlit grass field from assigned Woodson turf field, only to fit his schedule (with his daughter training at Robinson turf).
Now probably a different reason but the same BN.

[Anonymous]

How is the younger (U9/10) Elite program this year? Teams seemed to be all over the place this weekend in terms of ability.

[Anonymous]

They got rid of the bridge program so everyone has to be on elite now. Hence al over the place.