Invitations to play up or down

[Anonymous]

Just throwing this out there as a parent of a newish travel kid of kid in the u12 with 2-3 teams in his year. Is there a stigma on being asked to play "down" for your club for a b to c team? Or vice versa being asked to play "up"? We are new to the club so just assuming the club is trying to find where our kid is supposed to be? He'd play for every single match and team if it was allowable.

[Anonymous]

No. It's good practice either way and hard to read the playing down because sometimes good players from higher teams get asked to help a lower team.

[Anonymous]

PT is PT

[Anonymous]

In our experience it was to help out teams when they were short players. Any playing time is good if your kid wants more. It’s a good thing either way.

[Anonymous]

DS is on the top team at our club. He has guest player for several of the other teams in his age group. They will really only let him do it if they are desperate for players last minute. A real effort is made to keep the competition levels equal, so it looks bad if they are letting a bunch of the top team players continually play on teams in lower divisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our experience it was to help out teams when they were short players. Any playing time is good if your kid wants more. It’s a good thing either way.

+1 I don't think it should be done to bring in a ringer, but we have done it when the team had no subs for a game.

[Anonymous]

No stigma. All the kids on DC's top team fight for the chance to guest play for any of the other teams. The more game experience the better.

[Anonymous]

Our club does is regularly when teams are short. Great playing experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just throwing this out there as a parent of a newish travel kid of kid in the u12 with 2-3 teams in his year. Is there a stigma on being asked to play "down" for your club for a b to c team? Or vice versa being asked to play "up"? We are new to the club so just assuming the club is trying to find where our kid is supposed to be? He'd play for every single match and team if it was allowable.

Normally playing up refers to age group. So if your kid is U12, then to play up means they would play U13.

Within the U12 age group your kid will go to either the a, b or c team based on his tryout/evaluation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just throwing this out there as a parent of a newish travel kid of kid in the u12 with 2-3 teams in his year. Is there a stigma on being asked to play "down" for your club for a b to c team? Or vice versa being asked to play "up"? We are new to the club so just assuming the club is trying to find where our kid is supposed to be? He'd play for every single match and team if it was allowable.

I don't think there's a stigma to play down in the age group. Mainly speed of play is the big difference. If anything it allows the kid to work on areas that need work in game and also allows the b/c team players see the level of play they need to attain to move up.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is on the top team and has been asked to play on the second team several times. I think she gets asked because she has the stamina to play both games (especially when the games are back to back). She likes the extra time and enjoys the girls so we let her play whenever asked. And it is more time for her and playing with different skill sets. Our second team is not much different than the top team so she never sees it s “helping” them out or anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our club does is regularly when teams are short. Great playing experience.

Same, and it goes both ways--often 2nd/3rd team players are brought up to first team for this reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No stigma. All the kids on DC's top team fight for the chance to guest play for any of the other teams. The more game experience the better.

Same here for DC's team. There are always 4-5 kids wanting to get the extra playing time.