Valor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stevie Alabi is a really great coach. Disciplined and very skilled. It’s a big loss to GFR. Current GFR parent.

What age group did you have him for? What makes him such a great coach?

Why did he stay in his new position at GFR for just over a year? If he was so great why not keep him?
So many questions with these vague comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not Valor marketing, my kid plays at Great Falls. Valor is not any farther for us and Great Falls is a mess. Most of their coaches are leaving, as current players will tell you.
Looks like Valor could use a marketing person though...

Valor is a trainwreck. if you are thinking about moving clubs go consider anyone else. Well maybe not st james.

hardly a trainwreck.. just depends on what age group you are in.. like most clubs.. even certain ECNL teams have issues….

doyou see any other org on here with 67 pages of complaints? why risk it

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All clubs send tryout notices to their rec programs. Call it whatever you want, but of course they do. CYA and SYA are Valor's rec programs. They send their coaches in to assist with the rec programs, and they conduct coaching education for the rec coaches who want to go to them. I see nothing wrong with this.

My kids played SYA rec for several years before they played Valor and we never met or saw a Valor coach "assisting" with their teams. only volunteers. Didn't see any Valor people at all until tryouts. My sister coached a season and the coaching class was run by the head SYA soccer guy, not Valor. (the all star coach was a teenager and he was paid.)

I think you just don't know how to identify these folks. RO who runs SYA also works for valor. He isn't in a valor uniform but typically just a black on black adidas outfit. The all star coaches are valor kids, and the people running the tournaments are all SYA/valor mix. Rec league coaches are not affiliated with valor but the refereeing program is.

Soccer academy which is heavily promoted by valor and SYA (not sure about CYA) has an affiliation to one of the VALOR coaches.

BTW I would not recommend any Soccer academy program. Take your money to SYC if you are in need of a soccer summer camp.

This makes perfect sense, let's drive 45 mins to Springfield for summer camp and an orange shirt.

This is the Rec league mentality. You are in the correct club.

Valor is nothing more than a glorified CYA/SYA rec plus league.

It's all glorified rec/ncsl around here. Rec>NCSL>RL is there really much of a difference besides price? Maybe a few pockets of success but generally speaking the quality of soccer isn't changing significantly.

Have you seen the rec players after U10 and above? It's filled with filled with kids that are just doing it because their parents want them to have some activity or for socialization. You'll NEVER hear about some rec kid at u15 tearing it up and playing at top level. Rec is rec and that is fine. However, they are not in the same league as NCSL or ECNL RL. You are delusional. I keep hearing you rec guys compare rec players to 3rd or 4th team players. How about trying to compare them to 1st or 2nd team? Any game would likely end 100-0. The end! And at least a kid on the 3rd or 4th team will have a shot to improve and try to make a higher team if they put the work in and stay in the system. Rec players will be nothing more than kids passing time and maybe having a few laughs with friends... and there is nothing wrong with that. But don't think for a second they are in the same category as kids playing at a higher level in travel.

Having said that Valor is the bottom of the barrel for travel teams and their feeder club CYA is a bottom feeder rec league. SYA is decent and should have never merged with CYA to form this abomination.

Agree, 1st and 2nd teams are good and maybe a few kids from 3rd level. Only maybe 1-2 players from 4th and 5th level team every make it to the next age group. The rest are rec level players. Just my experience speaking based of of other practices Ive experienced with other clubs. This happens everywhere. However there are 1-2 kids in the top level teams that are just there taking space where Valor wants to please the current parents since they are committed paying customers. I doubt they would move them down. Unless its a level 1 or 2 team then I would approach with some caution. What division do you know they will perform at. A level 1 team may not be performing in there division at the top level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stevie Alabi îs FANTASTIC. Huge pick up for Valor, giant loss for GFR. He was instrumental in developing the U9-U12 program at GFR. Lucky for us he is coaching in our child's age group at Valor. Registered for their tryouts today.

Adding some info I found,



.Masters degree education from Plymouth state.
-bachelors of science from GMU for sport management’s.
-Assistant principle and sports director for Edlin school.
-Soccer scout SRUSA part time.

I would take a look at the Gfr Facebook oage to look at the teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not Valor marketing, my kid plays at Great Falls. Valor is not any farther for us and Great Falls is a mess. Most of their coaches are leaving, as current players will tell you.
Looks like Valor could use a marketing person though...

Valor is a trainwreck. if you are thinking about moving clubs go consider anyone else. Well maybe not st james.

hardly a trainwreck.. just depends on what age group you are in.. like most clubs.. even certain ECNL teams have issues….

doyou see any other org on here with 67 pages of complaints? why risk it

So, not every post has been a complaint, and yeah, 116 pages on FC Virginia but again, not all complaints (but certainly not there for the praises). https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1172158.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not Valor marketing, my kid plays at Great Falls. Valor is not any farther for us and Great Falls is a mess. Most of their coaches are leaving, as current players will tell you.
Looks like Valor could use a marketing person though...

Valor is a trainwreck. if you are thinking about moving clubs go consider anyone else. Well maybe not st james.

hardly a trainwreck.. just depends on what age group you are in.. like most clubs.. even certain ECNL teams have issues….

doyou see any other org on here with 67 pages of complaints? why risk it

So, not every post has been a complaint, and yeah, 116 pages on FC Virginia but again, not all complaints (but certainly not there for the praises). https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1172158.page

yeah people should avoid Valor and FC Virginia. good point.

[Anonymous]

If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

they just fillback by recruiting from their rec leagues

[Anonymous]

They definitely have a full-time marketing/social media person. Lots of graphics and videos that are time consuming to put together. Charging over 3000 per paying warm body leads to lots of extra cash for hiring staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

they just fillback by recruiting from their rec leagues

at 3k a kid i dont know if many rec kids would be willing to pay that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They definitely have a full-time marketing/social media person. Lots of graphics and videos that are time consuming to put together. Charging over 3000 per paying warm body leads to lots of extra cash for hiring staff.

This is my area of expertise and once you have your layers down which do take time to make this is not time consuming at all.

One full time marketing/social media person could probably knock out two to three local clubs if they wanted to.

Also not sure if the person that does their sm now is the one in the past but i wouldn't be surprised if they paid someone on Fiverr for the layers annually. When i had spoken to them in the past they didnt seem "SM graphic design" savvy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

they just fillback by recruiting from their rec leagues

Oh good grief! What a disaster train wreck this is. When you have to rely on the butterfly chasing rec players to fill in your travel teams so you can hold on to a few bucks. Why would anyone still join Valor knowing that it is filled with rec players?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

they just fillback by recruiting from their rec leagues

Oh good grief! What a disaster train wreck this is. When you have to rely on the butterfly chasing rec players to fill in your travel teams so you can hold on to a few bucks. Why would anyone still join Valor knowing that it is filled with rec players?

100% True. Their level 1, 2 and level 3 players are good, but they still have 10-20% floating in there that are slightly better than a rec player.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were Steve, I would stick with GFR after seeing all these issues.

And still no coaches for girls out.

I wonder if registration is low and they dont want to hire coaches if they dont have a team to give them.

they just fillback by recruiting from their rec leagues

Oh good grief! What a disaster train wreck this is. When you have to rely on the butterfly chasing rec players to fill in your travel teams so you can hold on to a few bucks. Why would anyone still join Valor knowing that it is filled with rec players?

''

Because location-wise it works. And my kid has friends on the team. And we like the parents. And my kid (top team) isn't going to play in college -- heck, maybe not even HS with the competition here. And that's ok bc the sucky coaches are still better than our last Rec Dad coach. And paying even $3k isn't going to change our lifestyle compared with a less expensive travel team.

Appreciate all the dire warnings. Sometimes though, the devil you know...