Handling Lack of Playing Time

[GuyinTakoma]

My 8 year old son was invited to join a travel team last fall. Previously he only played rec league. He didn't have to try out or anything, but he did start practicing with them before officially joining the team in the spring. They play 7 on 7 and the team has 15 players. They started the year splitting time basically evenly. As the year went on my son played less and less to where it was 1/4 of the game or less. He doesn't miss practices or show up late. He has athleticism but needs coaching to better understand his position (they only play him at striker) and he is one of the youngest players on the team. I'm super frustrated. On top of the lack of playing time and playing only one position, they are also charging $3,500 per year. The only bright spot it they are splitting the team into A and B teams in the fall, but they won't say if they will have a cap on the number of players per team. Is this all just a sign to move on to another club or do all clubs struggle with some of these things?

[DaniRojas]

Uh they're probably only allowed to roster 12 per team. So if they're having 15 pay $3500...uhhh...

And do you even have a player card? What team is he rostered with? What team are all the 15 actually rostered with?

Sounds like a cash grab to me.

[GuyinTakoma]

I don't want to say the club because it is small but they give some scholarships and charge new players more. It is $3,500 per year including spring, fall, and winter.
I checked and their league does have a max roster size of 12. But they are always showing up with more than 12. They also have 2 kids playing up.
Regardless of the team size, how disproportionate should the playing time be at that age?

[dohickey1234]

OMG! This sounds like my exact situation last year. We ended up leaving for another team mid-year. We were invited to join a team, drive about an hour away for games, with literally 5-10 minutes of playing time. It was so frustrating. You can speak to the coach, but in our situation, things didn’t change much, so we moved on.

[dmv_directkicks]

Sorry to hear about this situation. They should have limited the number of players for the team. At U8-U9, players should play at least half the game, to encourage enjoyment and camaraderie. Who cares about wins and losses at that age (I know, I know...) ? It should be 100% about player development. If a kid gets 5-10 mins of playing time, he/she isn't developing. Starting at U12-13, the playing time disparity is real but it is part of the program.

The club happily cashed your check but is not delivering on what they should be providing. Find another club that believes in youth player development and will appropriately roster their travel teams.

[Wishiwasatthebeach]

At u9 and u10, playing time "should" be equal but the truth is, it's not at most clubs. That being said, max roster for 7v7 in most leagues is 12 although many teams cap at 10-11. For 9v9, max is around 14. Therfore you have a chance at more playing time.
Average cost for that age should be around 2700-3000. $3500 is the absolute highest end. Your child will develop much slower with such little game time and the club will likely continue to over max rosters in future years. For the price and number of kids, I would change clubs asap.

[SoccerSkeptic]

$3,500 for an 8 year old? WTH? At our club, they are like drug dealers. They start the price low and get you hooked then increase it at older age groups. $3,500 is more expensive than our ECNL team. Plus at 8, each kid should be playing at least a half a game.

[Transplant_1]

Agreed, for that age group: 1) too much $$, 2) too large roster, 3) too little playing time. At that age its so important that it be fun, and good comraderie created. At that age, no kid is going to find it fun with that little playing time, and bad comraderie will be created with that much unequal playing time. At that age, kids pick up on it and can be mean to each other without the maturity when older. That's my humble opinion.

[retiredref]

at 8 that's unacceptable--time to find something else

[retiredref]

I coached a group of 16 at that age and had two teams in competing leagues with players guesting back and forth so all the kids got plenty of playing time each weekend--most weeks everyone played a whole game sometimes some got to play in both games if people were missing. No excuse for how they're managing that--sounds like a bunch of coaches who hate children.

[SocAnon]

Yes, we even had 13 kids for the fall season and we had two teams registered. It offered more development for each kid to play more games. Our fee was about $2100 for the year also.