Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Our club focuses on labeling a kid A-D. If a 'D' drops down an age group he automatically is placed on the 'A' team of the lower age group--even if the younger kids are more talented. I could see them just sticking with labels when they've proven so inadequate. Our A team continually gets clobbered while our lower teams blowout all of the competition. Our lower teams don't even get to scrimmage with the A and B teams. It's quite ridiculous.

You're in the wrong club....

Ha!! I know, I know--but I don't want to start driving elsewhere just yet. I am trying to hang in there until kids are a little older. I also love my kids' current coach this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about the senior year issue for fall birthdays going forward? Is it true they won't have a team? That seems like a terrible side effect if true. Thanks for explaining.

I think for rec teams it won't be a problem. If you are still playing rec your senior year, it's probably because you are on a team that has been together for years. I think for those teams the school-year based team will just stay together, because the Jan-July members will be happy to play up. They won't be inclined to play at the lower age group for which they are newly eligible just to be competitive. That might not be the case for some ambitious Jan-July kids on travel teams, or some clubs that might want to field the most competitive teams possible. In big clubs, probably they can double-roster enough players to make sure the Fall seniors can play. If that's not an option, it seems like people will need to do some leg work quickly to figure out what other area teams will have Fall birthday seniors looking to join forces. In those cases, at least it's only a one-season problem, since club teams generally sit out the Fall season (Spring in VA) for HS ball anyway.

This all assumes that every league adds a U19 group, which I expect they will.

[Anonymous]

Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

And that is what irks me about this. It has been very poorly communicated. They rollout a massive change with little justification and no real "FAQ" to ease concerns by showing that there is a plan and that they did actually think through the ramifications (other than making it easier to ID national team players and make sure Jan-mar kids get their RAE from the beginning of organized soccer).

If they want to really emulate the way the system works abroad, how about they bring hundreds of professional clubs that provide top quality coaching for little/no cost? removing the 40k+ Barrier to entry and lack of quality consistent training would likely do more for the players than making sure kids can't play with their schoolmates (without convincing their school mates to play up against kids up to 20 months older).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

I'm curious to hear from people with recent knowledge of D3 recruiting to know how big an issue this is. We started talking about it earlier in the thread but didn't reach any conclusions.

My main question boils down to this: under the current system, roughly what percentage of kids who are not committed by the end of their junior year end up committing during their senior year as a result of a coach watching them at a tournament or other showcase event? From what I've heard and read, if you are not playing ECNL or DA, or on the sort of team that is playing top brackets at Dallas, Disney, Bethesda, etc., you will need to market yourself directly to the coach and get on his or her radar by attending ID camps or clinics where the coach will be and then staying in communication. Others end up getting a college coach's attention because their club coach has a good relationship with the college program and pushes them as a prospect sophomore or junior year.

If your chances of getting spotted though league or tournament play as senior are tiny under the current system, then it wouldn't seem that having to play on a cobbled-together team your senior year under the new rules would make much of a difference for recruiting, however frustrating it may be for other reasons. If there are a lot of college coaches recruiting directly from lower brackets of the U18 showcases, it would be an issue if you can't find a decent team to play with.

Or maybe leagues and tournaments will have a new grouping that has U19 as the only option above U17? That would seem to help with the problem. The DA system has two year bands so that you are either U14, U16, or U18 and college coaches haven't had any difficulties recruiting under that scenario.

Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

And that is what irks me about this. It has been very poorly communicated. They rollout a massive change with little justification and no real "FAQ" to ease concerns by showing that there is a plan and that they did actually think through the ramifications (other than making it easier to ID national team players and make sure Jan-mar kids get their RAE from the beginning of organized soccer).

If they want to really emulate the way the system works abroad, how about they bring hundreds of professional clubs that provide top quality coaching for little/no cost? removing the 40k+ Barrier to entry and lack of quality consistent training would likely do more for the players than making sure kids can't play with their schoolmates (without convincing their school mates to play up against kids up to 20 months older).

Presumably because that would require massive amounts of money? Sounds lovely, but I imagine they are focusing on changes that can be made nationwide without the investment of non-existent resources.

I agree with you on the rollout. More detailed FAQs or some town-hall type sessions with transcripts would be nice right about now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Our club focuses on labeling a kid A-D. If a 'D' drops down an age group he automatically is placed on the 'A' team of the lower age group--even if the younger kids are more talented. I could see them just sticking with labels when they've proven so inadequate. Our A team continually gets clobbered while our lower teams blowout all of the competition. Our lower teams don't even get to scrimmage with the A and B teams. It's quite ridiculous.

You're in the wrong club....

Ha!! I know, I know--but I don't want to start driving elsewhere just yet. I am trying to hang in there until kids are a little older. I also love my kids' current coach this year.

In all sincerity, I hope your club takes this age-group thing and uses it as an opportunity to really evaluate the players in each birth year and make appropriate team placements. And there's no reason why your A-D players shouldn't all be training/scrimmaging academy style if they're still young.

[Anonymous]

So I'm confused, if a kid is born on February 29 do they have to request to play up several years under these new rules?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I'm confused, if a kid is born on February 29 do they have to request to play up several years under these new rules?

It means my high school kid is going to dominate the U5 league next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

I'm curious to hear from people with recent knowledge of D3 recruiting to know how big an issue this is. We started talking about it earlier in the thread but didn't reach any conclusions.

My main question boils down to this: under the current system, roughly what percentage of kids who are not committed by the end of their junior year end up committing during their senior year as a result of a coach watching them at a tournament or other showcase event? From what I've heard and read, if you are not playing ECNL or DA, or on the sort of team that is playing top brackets at Dallas, Disney, Bethesda, etc., you will need to market yourself directly to the coach and get on his or her radar by attending ID camps or clinics where the coach will be and then staying in communication. Others end up getting a college coach's attention because their club coach has a good relationship with the college program and pushes them as a prospect sophomore or junior year.

If your chances of getting spotted though league or tournament play as senior are tiny under the current system, then it wouldn't seem that having to play on a cobbled-together team your senior year under the new rules would make much of a difference for recruiting, however frustrating it may be for other reasons. If there are a lot of college coaches recruiting directly from lower brackets of the U18 showcases, it would be an issue if you can't find a decent team to play with.

Or maybe leagues and tournaments will have a new grouping that has U19 as the only option above U17? That would seem to help with the problem. The DA system has two year bands so that you are either U14, U16, or U18 and college coaches haven't had any difficulties recruiting under that scenario.

Any thoughts?

I think it's not just an issue of scouting. Let's say you're a fall birthday kid and you're trying to get on the radar of a college coach. For the kids born in the rest of the year, the coach who sees a kid at a tournament with their team sometime junior or senior year will know that the kid will be playing high level soccer the year before he or she goes to college. With the way things are set up, that's not going to be the case for the fall birthday kids. They'll end up on some cobbled-together team of fall birthdays if they're lucky. That's a year of development that will get lost before college. I'm not sure college coaches are going to want to waste their time trying to catch-up for the year that's lost when they can just pick a Jan-June kid who they know will get good playing time the year before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, that's brutal for senior fall birthdays who are good enough to play D3 college but not D1 or USMNT level. They are going to be punished by this: no team for them to get scouted with or trying to scramble a fall birthday team for one season so they get seen. I am shocked.

I'm curious to hear from people with recent knowledge of D3 recruiting to know how big an issue this is. We started talking about it earlier in the thread but didn't reach any conclusions.

My main question boils down to this: under the current system, roughly what percentage of kids who are not committed by the end of their junior year end up committing during their senior year as a result of a coach watching them at a tournament or other showcase event? From what I've heard and read, if you are not playing ECNL or DA, or on the sort of team that is playing top brackets at Dallas, Disney, Bethesda, etc., you will need to market yourself directly to the coach and get on his or her radar by attending ID camps or clinics where the coach will be and then staying in communication. Others end up getting a college coach's attention because their club coach has a good relationship with the college program and pushes them as a prospect sophomore or junior year.

If your chances of getting spotted though league or tournament play as senior are tiny under the current system, then it wouldn't seem that having to play on a cobbled-together team your senior year under the new rules would make much of a difference for recruiting, however frustrating it may be for other reasons. If there are a lot of college coaches recruiting directly from lower brackets of the U18 showcases, it would be an issue if you can't find a decent team to play with.

Or maybe leagues and tournaments will have a new grouping that has U19 as the only option above U17? That would seem to help with the problem. The DA system has two year bands so that you are either U14, U16, or U18 and college coaches haven't had any difficulties recruiting under that scenario.

Any thoughts?

I think it's not just an issue of scouting. Let's say you're a fall birthday kid and you're trying to get on the radar of a college coach. For the kids born in the rest of the year, the coach who sees a kid at a tournament with their team sometime junior or senior year will know that the kid will be playing high level soccer the year before he or she goes to college. With the way things are set up, that's not going to be the case for the fall birthday kids. They'll end up on some cobbled-together team of fall birthdays if they're lucky. That's a year of development that will get lost before college. I'm not sure college coaches are going to want to waste their time trying to catch-up for the year that's lost when they can just pick a Jan-June kid who they know will get good playing time the year before.

Thanks for the response. That squares with what I've seen in the DA world, where kids who may have avoided DA as an underclassman so they could play high school ball flip and play DA instead of high school their senior year to get ready for playing in college. Those kids will typically be playing D1 in college though, so I hadn't thought about that factor for D3.

It seems like clubs will have an incentive to market themselves as the niche area provider of top teams/training for the Fall seniors who are below the DA and ECNL level but still competitive players. I may check with our club to see what their plans are in this regard. I'd be interested to hear back from others if they do the same with their kids' clubs.

I'm still curious to hear about any thoughts people may have about how likely kids are to be recruited as a result of coaches attending showcases below the DA/ECNL/top brackets of national tournament level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I'm confused, if a kid is born on February 29 do they have to request to play up several years under these new rules?

It means my high school kid is going to dominate the U5 league next year.

Hahahaha! Nice, someone else who sees all these future National Team players parents nonstop banter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I'm confused, if a kid is born on February 29 do they have to request to play up several years under these new rules?

It means my high school kid is going to dominate the U5 league next year.

Hahahaha! Nice, someone else who sees all these future National Team players parents nonstop banter.

I know you are joking, but to answer seriously, if I thought my kids were truly USNT-bound, this change wouldn't worry me. It's the fact that they're not that makes me worried. The USNT-level kids will be fine. It's the serious-but-not-USNT level kids who won't be.

[Anonymous]

Where are all the Vienna soccer insiders who post to this thread? Can you opine on what VYS plans to do to help their players through the age group transition?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I'm confused, if a kid is born on February 29 do they have to request to play up several years under these new rules?

It means my high school kid is going to dominate the U5 league next year.

Hahahaha! Nice, someone else who sees all these future National Team players parents nonstop banter.

I know you are joking, but to answer seriously, if I thought my kids were truly USNT-bound, this change wouldn't worry me. It's the fact that they're not that makes me worried. The USNT-level kids will be fine. It's the serious-but-not-USNT level kids who won't be.

Same here. Some of us have older kids who will be immediately affected by this. For the prior PP, you have a problem with people trying to figure out what it will mean?

Also, for others who are following this and have younger kids who are serious about soccer there actually are lots of boys and girls from the DC metro area who end in the youth national team player pool. There are 5 kids from VA, MD and DC at a U15 national team camp in CA right now and a bunch more at the id2 camp in NJ. Countless others from around here are playing in DA, ECNL, or top national or regional leagues. This is a great area to be from if your kid wants to play in college.