Forget college and club soccer; I'm focusing on high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched a high school game recently. Although some of those kids seems to have great skill, both teams kept on kicking high ball all the time, very disappointing.

Were you me?! Just kidding, but couple of kids with skills and coaches who are clueless what to do even with these kids. Parents at the games I watched, sitting around like bunch of grandmas knitting or like it is a funeral. And then you got to HS football games, and realize that people are perfectly capable of cheering on their team and going nuts. Not only that, one dad was cheering passionately(yes, looked Hispanic) and he got loudly mocked by other parents from the same team! Like so he can hear it, and then his wife was all embarrassed and telling him to keep it down!

There is a lot of cheering from parents and kids at the boys' and girls' HS soccer games I've been to, mostly at Whitman, WJ and Churchill. Those teams tend to have a pretty high percentage of kids playing in college as well, at both D1 and D3 schools. The level of play is good for high school most years, though still a lot more physical than is ideal.

School I watched was Sherwood. If I understand they are second overall in MCPS? Compared to their football cheering this was like zombie land. If Sherwood Varsity is beating the schools you mentioned, and I think Sherwood is bad, how bad is college soccer in US? What do you mean play is more physical than ideal? You mean more aggressive? Or just more psychically demanding?

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/northern-vas-top-soccer-team-has-one-college-bound-senior-and-14-more-enjoying-the-ride/2018/04/25/689886d8-4890-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html?utm_term=.2763b7fb4c77

Thoughts?

They’ve got some top notch juniors like CJ and Julio who will lead the team next year as well.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched a high school game recently. Although some of those kids seems to have great skill, both teams kept on kicking high ball all the time, very disappointing.

Were you me?! Just kidding, but couple of kids with skills and coaches who are clueless what to do even with these kids. Parents at the games I watched, sitting around like bunch of grandmas knitting or like it is a funeral. And then you got to HS football games, and realize that people are perfectly capable of cheering on their team and going nuts. Not only that, one dad was cheering passionately(yes, looked Hispanic) and he got loudly mocked by other parents from the same team! Like so he can hear it, and then his wife was all embarrassed and telling him to keep it down!

There is a lot of cheering from parents and kids at the boys' and girls' HS soccer games I've been to, mostly at Whitman, WJ and Churchill. Those teams tend to have a pretty high percentage of kids playing in college as well, at both D1 and D3 schools. The level of play is good for high school most years, though still a lot more physical than is ideal.

School I watched was Sherwood. If I understand they are second overall in MCPS? Compared to their football cheering this was like zombie land. If Sherwood Varsity is beating the schools you mentioned, and I think Sherwood is bad, how bad is college soccer in US? What do you mean play is more physical than ideal? You mean more aggressive? Or just more psychically demanding?

There's really no such thing as "second overall in MCPS." In 2017, Sherwood was a state semifinalist. They lost to the same team (Bethesda-Chevy Chase) that knocked out Whitman and Churchill in the round of 16. Those teams didn't play each other.

Sherwood was less impressive the year before.

As far as I could find, Churchill only has one player going to college soccer -- to Frostburg.
https://churchillathletics.com/college-signings/

I couldn't find signings elsewhere.

In any case, you really can't tell anything about college soccer by watching high school soccer. High schools do tend to be less possession-based than clubs for a few reasons -- limited practice time together compared with their clubs, a condensed schedule of games, narrow fields (often sharing a football field that's encircled by a track), etc.

College soccer is hit and miss. The Virginia women are fantastic to watch.

I'm not as familiar with this year's crop of players, but I know Churchill's girls' team has a player committed to Villanova, and Whitman has one committed to Princeton. Whitman has had a lot of DIII players over the last few years on both the boys' and girls teams. It is fairly rare for boys' public high schools to have many DI soccer commits these days because of the DA.

Sherwood has been a football powerhouse for a long time, and their soccer teams are not usually strong, so I'm not surprised that the soccer fan scene is relatively lackluster. The close in MoCo schools rarely have good football teams, so other sports like basketball and soccer, where the teams are typically decent to very good, get a lot of passionate fans.

[Anonymous]

Bishop O'Connell had three D1 seniors (VCU, VMI, and High Point) this year.

[Anonymous]

This thread had such a promising start and it’s turned into a bunch of blowhards talking about DAs and comparing the amount of scholarships.

[Anonymous]

Why is it that HS soccer is generally thought of as inferior to club? Is it...

- that no self respecting coach would work at this level?
- that the pay for coaches is poor?
- that soccer is such a team sport that is at odds with such a short season?
- that the pool of players at a given HS is too small?
- that the avbl pool of players is reduced by GDA rules?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread had such a promising start and it’s turned into a bunch of blowhards talking about DAs and comparing the amount of scholarships.

What are you talking about? Did you mean to post this on another thread?

[Anonymous]

The subject of the thread clearly states “forget college and club soccer”

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:
And what high schools in this area have "multiple Division I commits"?

South Lakes

One Northwestern, one Virginia Tech. OK, that qualifies.

Anyone else?

For someone who purports to know all about vienna, how do you not know that Madison girls has three D1 commits, and two D3 commits?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is it that HS soccer is generally thought of as inferior to club? Is it...

- that no self respecting coach would work at this level?
- that the pay for coaches is poor?
- that soccer is such a team sport that is at odds with such a short season?
- that the pool of players at a given HS is too small?
- that the avbl pool of players is reduced by GDA rules?

There are about 200 high schools in DC and the VA/MD suburbs -- so the good club soccer players in this area are spread out fairly thinly among all those private and public high schools.

Add to the generally thin pool of players at many high schools is the fact that (1) many of the best kids in the various top area clubs skip high school soccer altogether -- either by choice or because DA requires it. Then realize that 30-50% of the varsity team roster changes each year -- so there is very little team chemistry or advanced style of play that can be developed in a short pre-season and 2.5 month season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is it that HS soccer is generally thought of as inferior to club? Is it...

- that no self respecting coach would work at this level?
- that the pay for coaches is poor?
- that soccer is such a team sport that is at odds with such a short season?
- that the pool of players at a given HS is too small?
- that the avbl pool of players is reduced by GDA rules?

There are about 200 high schools in DC and the VA/MD suburbs -- so the good club soccer players in this area are spread out fairly thinly among all those private and public high schools.

Add to the generally thin pool of players at many high schools is the fact that (1) many of the best kids in the various top area clubs skip high school soccer altogether -- either by choice or because DA requires it. Then realize that 30-50% of the varsity team roster changes each year -- so there is very little team chemistry or advanced style of play that can be developed in a short pre-season and 2.5 month season.

Agree. With respect to the other questions, there are certainly a number of good club coaches who also coach high school, but the HS level would be improved if there were more. You still see plenty of HS coaches around here picking for size and agression without doing much evaluation of the players' skills or game awareness. The pay is indeed very poor for the amount of work. HS also tends to have a brutal schedule that is not consistent with good development standards. It is far from ideal to practice every day and have games on the weekends. That's part of why so many high school players get injured, plus terrible fields and the increased likelihood that players will engage in dangerous fouls (the HS refs tend to be very bad overall IME).

[Anonymous]

No story here, I've seen a lot of seniors go back and play highschool ball, especially the ones that have already committed. Loudoun had bunch of the 99s go back to HS ball and you could tell which ones came from club. Wish soccer was more popular at the HS level, club just doesn't have the same appeal from a fan standpoint.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha at my son's HS the whole team is fielded by travel players --it's sucks no one else could ever get near it. American soccer is so f*cked. I'm glad we weren't invited to the World Cup--US soccer: self-important asshole parents and coaches. You can rot for crushing the dreams of kids who have the ability and potential but don't play like Messi when they're 10 years old.

FYI: you don't get "invited", you "qualify" to the world cup.

[Anonymous]

So your soccer star kid who missed all the social aspects of being on the high school team gets a scholarship to a div 1 program that is average in academics but they are good at soccer

or

the pretty good soccer player who plays club and high school gets really good grades and goes to a higher academic school on either an academic or athletic scholarship or combination and because of their soccer and grades gets accepted and is very employable after graduating meanwhile the really good soccer player has a run of the mill degree and not many job prospects.

this is a no brainier, 99.9% of the kids playing soccer are not going to make any money ever at it. Those who do, it will be less than an entry level job because they are not going to be top players that make serious money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So your soccer star kid who missed all the social aspects of being on the high school team gets a scholarship to a div 1 program that is average in academics but they are good at soccer

or

the pretty good soccer player who plays club and high school gets really good grades and goes to a higher academic school on either an academic or athletic scholarship or combination and because of their soccer and grades gets accepted and is very employable after graduating meanwhile the really good soccer player has a run of the mill degree and not many job prospects.

this is a no brainier, 99.9% of the kids playing soccer are not going to make any money ever at it. Those who do, it will be less than an entry level job because they are not going to be top players that make serious money.

Yours is just one set of scenarios, and there are a million variations. It is not possible to generalize as you are trying to do to say that one avenue always works out best.