One of the many differences between travel soccer and FCYBL travel basketball is you really can't just go try out for any team you want. Your zip code is assigned an organization, and that's the team or teams (some zip codes overlap) you play for. You can't go shopping around. So the McLean kids are stuck with McLean for the most part, and if there are no spots on their team b/c they have all been coopted by a shady AAU guy, well, they are just SOL. |
| Why aren't they checking addresses this year? That just rewards cheaters. They have way fewer teams than a normal year b/c they banned so many leagues from participating---the least they could do is make sure everyone left is following the rules. |
| Is it 6th grade? |
| 7th grade fcybl d1 boys |
| I’m not surprised. My son's AAU teammate (from a well known NoVA team) did not make McLean A or B team even though he’s a great shooter and ball handler, and solid player. |
| The politics of basketball are evident. I don’t know how they work but you see with girl teams too. Sham tryouts at this age is unfair for new players. This is county. People should relax and give everyone a chance. AAU players are simply more experienced by |
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There is a kid who lives in Centreville playing for Mclean A team.
Can you imagine driving from Centreville to McLean twice a week for practices? Nuts. |
Well, we know he doesn’t play for Nova94Feet! |
| Stop whining just because travel basketball is actually more selective and difficult to make. |
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Oh my gosh, this thread explains so much. This McLean team played my son's FCYBL team in the BRYC Thanksgiving tournament and it was a SLAUGHTER. Like along the lines of 70-5. I forget exactly. Our kids had never played together before in a game as a team, they just started in season practices. This team was so good (and had so many TALL athletic kids). Usually at this age you get tall, or athletic. They had many players with both. This is my third kid to go through FCYBL and I have never seen a team with so many extraordinarily tall, athletic kids. We were joking about the water in McLean.
They seemed like they had played together forever, running plays (we were like, how did they learn all these plays when we just got 2-practices-a-week gym space the week before Thanksgiving? I was a little irritated that the coach didn't put in his bench players once the score was like oh 40-2 but that may have been sour grapes. Some of their kids got very little play time. (Our games were very competitive against all the other teams, and this team blew out every other team.) |
| AAU teams can also form from county team to let them play together when county is not in season. DD's team does this. |
Nova94 Feet teams play year-round so that is not what happened here. |
| The main difference between local travel basketball and soccer is anyone who wants to play travel soccer and compete locally can find a team. The main local league for travel basketball is FCYBL and it is much, much harder to make a team. Each area gets one or two teams, and there are only ten or so spots per team. You can easily have 100 boys trying out for 10-20 spots. And they don't just make more teams to accommodate everyone who wants to play the way soccer leagues do. Also, FCYBL is only for four years whereas you can play in local travel soccer leagues for ten years. So of course Mclean parents are irate by the situation-I would be too. Usually these leagues are a little more protective of their program and the players who came up through their rec league. |
Most zip codes have multiple teams. You can try out broadly. I'd expect different tryouts to be 'shams' for different reasons. A team that has been together and is also playing AAU year round isn't going to replace half its players based on a couple of open gyms. On the other extreme a parent coached team is going to carry the coach's and assistant coach's kid. If the team is just an extension of rec, they may carry age group commissioners kids as well. At the ridiculous extreme those kids' friends are also in. |
if the other coach thinks something's up, they can ask for proof of residency. Every player is supposed to have provided it to their club |