Move club or stay conundrum

[Anonymous]

Go try out and see what offers you get. There’s no need to make a decision until you see what other options your son has.

[Anonymous]

We left Arlington but I can tell you the secret to success there which I assume is still the case, one mom perspective take for what it is worth but I know others feel this way.

1. At that age the club prefers brute athleticism over skill. They believe they can win with rugby players. And winning is the most important thing because, well, instagram and branding.

2. You have to cultivate special, often unethical relationships with coaches and ARL personnel if you fall short of item 1. You also have to be so convinced that your DC is the best player on the team that you radiate it 24/7 (IG, constantly talking about your kid and kids soccer, etc) that the club itself starts to buy it. You can also throw in special perks if you have them (one mom in my DD’s year was offering yoga classes lol; I heard another mom or dad had some tickets to Washington spirit, another offered free arlington county school gym space the club or teams could use, you get the point). Something so the club thinks twice about relegating your DC for fear they will also lose the benefits package.

3. Capstone. My DS was on the top team but I believe part of it is because we did capstone and the ED is said to have some weird thing with Capstone. Whatever - it was good for my DS but the Capstone kids were def treated better than those that went to other gyms.

4. If you have a sibling in ARL who is on a top team, they will fear losing that sibling if they don’t do right by you, so you can drift off the sibling. Honestly can’t fault them for this one as much as the others.

In general you have to play the game on their terms. Machismo goes a long way. They don’t care much about your DC’s technical soccer skills. In the end we left for greener pastures and are happier but the ARL product is still strong in the market you just have to know how to play all the angles. For some it’s a great pathway to play at a D-1 school with terrible academics (look at their recent graduating class). It was the same politics game for getting national ID selections at the older ages. Some picks made sense and some you see right through it.

[Anonymous]

"My mama told me, you better shop around"