Explain USL-Y to me

[Anonymous]

DS will be a rising senior this year. He has been invited to play on a USLY team this summer (outside his club). He thinks it would be nice to have somewhere structured to play soccer this summer. Past summers have been spent doing informal trainings with HS varsity and playing in the HS league run by Bethesda which has been a mixed bag. His club takes a break for most of the summer and he misses it. My question is at the older ages is USLY reasonably competitive? Do most clubs field more than one team and are they tiered like during the regular season where you have A, B, C teams?

[Anonymous]

Do a search for Super Y and there is an entire book on USL Y (formerly Super Y).

There is a post a few days old that has a link to one of the old threads.

[Anonymous]

Thank you PP. I just looked up that thread. It seems like people were responding mostly for younger ages and girls so I’d love some input from parents of older boys.

[Anonymous]

Normally the number of teams drop off a lot in older age boys, they merge U17-U19 and maybe there are 4 or 5 teams. It's pretty weak.

There's kind of a high school gap for summer team play.
My son will train on his own with a plan the Club provides, have one session with a coach a week, have one Club practice and go to a few one day ID camps. Plenty of soccer, plus just going to the field with buddies. But he'd love some pickup games which are so hard to find around here. He's asked multiple times if I could find an adult league he could join and I'm not sure where to look. Plus I'm not sure they want a skilled but skinny 16 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Normally the number of teams drop off a lot in older age boys, they merge U17-U19 and maybe there are 4 or 5 teams. It's pretty weak.

There's kind of a high school gap for summer team play.
My son will train on his own with a plan the Club provides, have one session with a coach a week, have one Club practice and go to a few one day ID camps. Plenty of soccer, plus just going to the field with buddies. But he'd love some pickup games which are so hard to find around here. He's asked multiple times if I could find an adult league he could join and I'm not sure where to look. Plus I'm not sure they want a skilled but skinny 16 year old.

There are a bunch of pickups in various groups on FB. Playing with adults in THE PERFECT OPTION for a 16 year old. That beats USL Y or any other summer league.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Normally the number of teams drop off a lot in older age boys, they merge U17-U19 and maybe there are 4 or 5 teams. It's pretty weak.

There's kind of a high school gap for summer team play.
My son will train on his own with a plan the Club provides, have one session with a coach a week, have one Club practice and go to a few one day ID camps. Plenty of soccer, plus just going to the field with buddies. But he'd love some pickup games which are so hard to find around here. He's asked multiple times if I could find an adult league he could join and I'm not sure where to look. Plus I'm not sure they want a skilled but skinny 16 year old.

It’s nice your son’s club team practices once a week in the summer. DS’s doesn’t. He does a lot of training at the field on his own but he’s a GK so it helps to bring a few friends to shoot on him and that can be a challenge with friends working, traveling, etc. He also does private training but it gets expensive and it’s nice to have games to work on things like crosses. He’s in the midst of recruitment so he will also do several ID camps but that doesn’t feel like enough to him. That’s what led him to consider USLY. It’s pretty inexpensive so he might just give it a go to add some structure. I had hoped someone would say there’s decent competition. Just 4-5 teams doesn’t sound very promising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Normally the number of teams drop off a lot in older age boys, they merge U17-U19 and maybe there are 4 or 5 teams. It's pretty weak.

There's kind of a high school gap for summer team play.
My son will train on his own with a plan the Club provides, have one session with a coach a week, have one Club practice and go to a few one day ID camps. Plenty of soccer, plus just going to the field with buddies. But he'd love some pickup games which are so hard to find around here. He's asked multiple times if I could find an adult league he could join and I'm not sure where to look. Plus I'm not sure they want a skilled but skinny 16 year old.

There are a bunch of pickups in various groups on FB. Playing with adults in THE PERFECT OPTION for a 16 year old. That beats USL Y or any other summer league.

Can you share the names of some of the groups?

[Anonymous]

Soccer Virginia
DMV Soccer Players
Soccer Leagues (Maryland)
Pickup Soccer DC

You also have the Plei and Good Rec apps.

SoFive has pickup nightly.

Finally, look into UPSL clubs in the area. I know a lot of youngsters starting at age 14 who play in order to learn the physicality of the college and professional game. Here is a description from Arlington explaining their team: https://www.arlingtonsoccer.com/adult/men

While I am not with Arlington, the youngsters in my club play for play for the semi-pro team as well so something to look into.