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Team dinners, team lunches, pep rallies, spirit days, the whole thing. It’s awesome. News flash: youth sports are supposed to be fun!
It’s a privilege to put on the jersey and play for your high school and a shame some aren’t allowed to. It should only be the truly elite who don’t play in HS (USMNT or USWNT). The expansion of what is “elite” has gone too far. |
| I tend to think of kids playing for their high school teams as international club players playing for their countries. Sure, Manchester City probably has a better starting 11 than your home country, but there is something special about representing your country/school. |
| Great analogy! |
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It’s been 10 years, but at my kids high school (about 900 kids) her senior year, the football team disbanded about 3 games into the season. Not enough kids. So everything switched to soccer. Marching band, cheer team, Homecoming game/events. It all worked. Visiting Teams (and refs of course) were told in advance and everyone thought it was really fun. Later in the season visiting teams brought cheer leaders and I recall a Pep band from a visiting team as well.
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How long is the HS season? |
| Starts in April and ends in late May with playoffs in June. They play everyone in their conference (6-8 teams) twice with some non-conference games at the beginning of the season. |
| That is for Virginia. In Maryland/DC, it is a fall sport. |
| Nova teams weren't even in the class 5 boys or girls finals. |
There are only about half a dozen Class 5 schools in NOVA - some Loudoun schools. Most in NOVA are Class 6. |
Freedom South Riding from Loudoun won the Class 6 girls championship. McLean boys were Class 6 runners-up to Cosby. |
So all this romanticism and waxing poetically about HS soccer when the season only lasts 2 months? |
All this ridiculous criticism of HS soccer, when the season is only 2 months? |
The criticism is ridiculous, agreed. But at our MCPS hs it’s longer than two months. Practices/workouts all year up to 3x a week including summer and season is August - November for varsity (shorter for jv). It actually gets dicey for those doing club or another sport or wanting to work or vacation in the summer because there are so many things. But maybe that’s just our hardcore coach. |
| The only reason we even do club soccer is trying to make it on our HS teams. With almost 3000 kids at the school, it’s really hard to make even the Jv team. They took almost no freshman. |
Quantity over Quality obviously |