New to the area - BRYC or other local travel clubs

[Anonymous]

Bryc has a lot of internal drama these days. Many cliques determine player placement. If youre coming in as a new family expect the club the give you the warm welcome. Then the cold shoulder once you sign the contract. Parents also will be distant to you for the 1st season or longer. If you actually get to work with the main younger girls coach BN. Your daughter will to well developing. The other coaches are basically babysitters. The good thing is there are up to 10 travel clubs within a 15 mile radius of Fairfax to chose from. Do your homework and find the right fit for your daughter.

[Anonymous]

the biggest issue with BRYC is Bernie and I would not want him coaching my daughter. He is good with skills but is pretty awful human.

BRYC is struggling to fill teams and it is showing in their ECNL record. The player. pool concept is not working well and they favor the children of their coaches and team managers.

[Anonymous]

Every club will let you guest train at least twice. Check them all out first.

[Anonymous]

SYC is the club to go to if you want your kid to learn boom ball!

McLean is fine
Alexandria might be worth a look

[Anonymous]

Don't raise your expectations too high for any club in the area

[Anonymous]

Please do your homework before choosing a club. The parents in many of these clubs ruin the entire experience for kids. The cliques have more power than people admit. If your daughter takes one of the inner circle parents kids spot all hell breaks loose on you and your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SYC is the club to go to if you want your kid to learn boom ball!

McLean is fine
Alexandria might be worth a look

To the author of this thread, welcome to the DMV youth soccer scene.

Gets worse.

[Anonymous]

My advice is don’t pick a club, pick a coach. Pick one that will develop good skills, good understanding of the game and most of all, likes to teach. Your kid is only 9. In 3 years worry about clubs, leagues, etc. Clyde Watson at McLean is the best active coach around from the development aspect. Some of the coaches at Total Futbol (contractors that coach at multiple clubs but mostly Herndon in VA) are solid. Gus Donolo who I believe is now at Great Falls is good, when he shows up and has time to coach. I don’t know much about that age’s coaches for SYA, VYS, SYC, BRYC, or FPYC. Maybe some other posters here do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My advice is don’t pick a club, pick a coach. Pick one that will develop good skills, good understanding of the game and most of all, likes to teach. Your kid is only 9. In 3 years worry about clubs, leagues, etc. Clyde Watson at McLean is the best active coach around from the development aspect. Some of the coaches at Total Futbol (contractors that coach at multiple clubs but mostly Herndon in VA) are solid. Gus Donolo who I believe is now at Great Falls is good, when he shows up and has time to coach. I don’t know much about that age’s coaches for SYA, VYS, SYC, BRYC, or FPYC. Maybe some other posters here do.

Clyde's reputation is good, but he isn't the age group coach for 9yo's unfortunately.

[Anonymous]

Be weary of coaches that say anything to recruit you. As another poster mentioned, the warm shoulder turns cold once you’ve signed up getting 7 minutes of play time in a scrimmage.Ask friends that have played on a the team you’re interested in for at least 2 years. That’s generally enough time to see whether you have a decent coach. Observe if the coach develops everyone or just a selected few. Don’t just take their word because the answer sounds good or because they’re European and they must be good.

[Anonymous]

If the goal is to eventually play in the GA or the Ecnl, get your foot in the door and go to Bryc or another ga/ecnl club at the younger age groups

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the goal is to eventually play in the GA or the Ecnl, get your foot in the door and go to Bryc or another ga/ecnl club at the younger age groups

Question on why you think this? Logically this makes sense to me, but based on other threads, it sounds like a major complaint of those programs from parents with kids in younger ages is exactly that they recruit over all the kids in the program and get enamored with new shiny toys. As I said, logically this advice makes sense to me and theoretically those clubs should have more money/more attractive environments to hire better coaches at all ages because of that status, but it just doesn't seem to play out that way. Forgetting about the ridiculous vitriol and club fighting in other threads, there does seem to be a pattern of older kid recruitment and talk of cherry picking better development elsewhere as opposed to "get in early because the club is great at player development and half the ECNL/GA kids tend to come from their own club". Any parents out there that have stayed at a club (BRYC or other) a couple years prior to up to ECNL/GA willing to comment on the makeup of the club in year 1 or 2 of GA/ECNL relative to existing club players?

[Anonymous]

Been through this more than once and most of the ECNL teams are homegrown not cherry picked. But if the team is pretty good and the club has decent coaches, a few kids might join each year. Every once and a while another team will implode and a larger group of kids will switch teams. But some teams are exactly the same year to year. I think the fear of new kids taking your player’s playing time on these threads is a little overblown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the goal is to eventually play in the GA or the Ecnl, get your foot in the door and go to Bryc or another ga/ecnl club at the younger age groups

Question on why you think this? Logically this makes sense to me, but based on other threads, it sounds like a major complaint of those programs from parents with kids in younger ages is exactly that they recruit over all the kids in the program and get enamored with new shiny toys. As I said, logically this advice makes sense to me and theoretically those clubs should have more money/more attractive environments to hire better coaches at all ages because of that status, but it just doesn't seem to play out that way. Forgetting about the ridiculous vitriol and club fighting in other threads, there does seem to be a pattern of older kid recruitment and talk of cherry picking better development elsewhere as opposed to "get in early because the club is great at player development and half the ECNL/GA kids tend to come from their own club". Any parents out there that have stayed at a club (BRYC or other) a couple years prior to up to ECNL/GA willing to comment on the makeup of the club in year 1 or 2 of GA/ECNL relative to existing club players?

If you look at the make up of the BRYC Boys U14 ECNL team.
approximately

10 players from U10 or younger A team
1 player developed from yheir B team
8 players new to the club at the ECNL of u13 or u14

So the theory of Bryc developing talent is debunked right here. 1 actual player moved up from their B team system to reach ECNL team. 10 were either so much better all the way up from
u9 to U13 (which shows extreme lack of development by the club for the entire player pool)

The 8 new players were developed by other clubs who might not be an ECNL team for them to play on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Been through this more than once and most of the ECNL teams are homegrown not cherry picked. But if the team is pretty good and the club has decent coaches, a few kids might join each year. Every once and a while another team will implode and a larger group of kids will switch teams. But some teams are exactly the same year to year. I think the fear of new kids taking your player’s playing time on these threads is a little overblown.

Very helpful, thanks.