VYS Soccer - better or worse?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What VYS can do to keep our top players?

It's a tough question; sort of like that chicken-and-egg riddle. Good players need good teammates to really play at a high level against some of the other major clubs in the area. So every time VYS loses a good player to another club, it sets itself back and increases the likelihood that more players will leave. When you look at the geographic location of VYS, it's natural area extends well beyond the town of Vienna, and so one would think it has the potential to be just as strong as some of the other nearby clubs. I'd like to see that.

Why do some good players leave VYS? It's probably related to the desire to play on a team with other teammates that are able to play at at higher level, to play and perform against better competition. That seems obvious.

One part of it is really tough to solve -- VYS may simply not have enough "good" players right now to support their top players, so they've got to work with the players they have and develop them to their maximum potential. If that can be accomplished, fewer of the "top" players would leave for other clubs, which would strengthen the VYS teams, lead to more success, and ideally attract other top players. That's all about coaching and training, and continuing to develop that. They seem to be doing a good job from my experience, but of course, there's always room to continue improving.

The other part, however, is more about philosophy.

First, does VYS do the same thing that other clubs do, even at U-little, and play kids at the positions they're at, and allow them to specialize and improve in those roles? Or do they rotate players frequently, from offense to defense, left to right side, goalkeeper to striker, etc., under the theory that that is how to best develop players? At tournaments, I've seen other strong teams play the same players in the same position, keep the same goalkeeper all game (usually a very good one), rather than rotate them all around the field; this approach of course results in stronger team play and better performance. I understand that some trial-and-error is needed to find the "best" position for each player, but the trial-and-error can be overdone. "Top" players who everyone can see will never be a goalkeeper or a striker may look for a club with a different philosophy so that they can spend time on the ball in their "best" position rather than being asked to play a role that they are not suited for. Success attracts success.

Second, does VYS follow a similar playing-time philosophy to other clubs, i.e., the ones they're losing "top" players to? After a recent tournament game against a stronger opposing team, my U-little commented to me about two of the excellent "top" players on the other team ... he said "They never took them out of the game!" ... well, why would you, really, if you're playing to win? These couple of players were great for their age, it was a joy to watch them play even though they were on the other team. And yes, they played the entire game. VYS did the "equal playing time for all players" thing, and VYS lost (but not by much). What's the right philosophy here? Everyone will have their own opinion I suppose, but if you're a "top" player for VYS, you might start to wonder whether more time on the ball would be found at another club, and how that would be better for your player's individual development; and how that would come with stronger team play, which leads to playing at a higher level against better competition. I understand that no player should be placed on at team where they will get zero playing time, but an approach that anchors the team with some of the strongest players getting more playing time, while subbing in/out the less-developed players, might be a better way to retain "top" players. That is, after all, how sports are traditionally played. That's what I experienced playing sports as a kid -- in some sports I was a starter, in other sports, I was a little-used substitute. But I played because it was fun, I enjoyed being part of a team, and I kept trying to get better.

I don't think there's anything in the geographic location that limits VYS from being the equal to any team in NOVA. But they have to find some way to claw to near-parity with stronger clubs in the area, to retain their own top players and attract new ones.

they aren't in the leagues the top players (probably more their parents) want to end up in. McClean and Arlington are easy commutes and play in those leagues. It's just the way it is.

In short, this is an accurate statement. However, just because teams are in CCL at least in U9-12 doesn't mean they are stronger teams than VYS.

the problem is that by U13 those kids are seeking out stronger teams.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add to the above.... My son who is at BRYC started at Vienna. He was not on the top team and we felt he should have been. After a few years playing for Vienna and not being moved up we decided to look around and chose BRYC. He has really flourished at BRYC and if he wanted to could probably return to Vienna and easily make their top team but we are happy with the training he is getting. One of the positives or negatives with our VYS experience is there are almost no movement between teams from year to year. The good news is players are rarely moved down a team so if you have a kid who is having an "off" year their spot is fairly secure. The bad news if you have a strong player on a lower team it is hard to move up unless it's a roster-growing year or they have players who have quit.

My oldest played for Vienna for a few years and left for McLean with a bunch of other girls. This was back in the days where all the talented girls played for either McLean or FCV. She ended up staying there until her junior year when she wanted to focus more on school and take soccer less seriously so she ended up coming back to Vienna.

I may want to do a survey one of these days to see if any clubs actually promote from within. Seems to be a common complaint.

Of course, a lot of kids quit as they get older, so spaces open up. And I was surprised to learn a couple of years ago that a lot of kids come back to House league in high school with the hopes of playing House in the fall and high school in the spring. Little wonder a team of House All-Stars I coached beat a travel team rather soundly.

anecdotal, but DD guested with a the top team in her club, but was given an offer on the lower team. She tried out with a bigger club and made their top team. It took forwarding the offer to her current club to get them to rethink things- they ended up moving her and one other girl up

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:Arlington population: 236,842
Reston population: 60,335 (add 15,394 for Great Falls)
McLean population: 47,075
Vienna population: 16,556

I think VYS has shown players can stick with it all the way and still go to a D1 college. (If you don't believe me, just Google it. I'm tired of looking everything up for everyone.)

The very best players may still go ECNL. Vienna is nowhere near big enough to be an ECNL club.

Why Metro United includes Stoddert and Potomac instead of the more geographically logical Vienna and Herndon is above my pay grade. VDA is just too far away.

This is a basic question, but I'm still relatively new to the area ... yes, I understand that officially, the "Town of Vienna" has 16K residents. But most of Fairfax is unincorporated, and one would think that Vienna has the potential to draw from all of the unincorporated parts of Fairfax County that surround the town of Vienna, so their potential population is larger, isn't it? I think the number shown for Vienna is small only because it's the technical population of the Town of Vienna; there are many more people surrounding the town for whom VYS would be the closest club, or equidistant to other clubs. But maybe I'm missing something.

I was disappointed to learn that Vienna limits its financial aid to kids from select schools (presumably those from Vienna proper). So it seems they've made a conscious decision to treat kids from outside of Vienna differently. It's one of the reasons -- not the only reason, but one of them -- that we'll be looking for a new club next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:Arlington population: 236,842
Reston population: 60,335 (add 15,394 for Great Falls)
McLean population: 47,075
Vienna population: 16,556

I think VYS has shown players can stick with it all the way and still go to a D1 college. (If you don't believe me, just Google it. I'm tired of looking everything up for everyone.)

The very best players may still go ECNL. Vienna is nowhere near big enough to be an ECNL club.

Why Metro United includes Stoddert and Potomac instead of the more geographically logical Vienna and Herndon is above my pay grade. VDA is just too far away.

This is a basic question, but I'm still relatively new to the area ... yes, I understand that officially, the "Town of Vienna" has 16K residents. But most of Fairfax is unincorporated, and one would think that Vienna has the potential to draw from all of the unincorporated parts of Fairfax County that surround the town of Vienna, so their potential population is larger, isn't it? I think the number shown for Vienna is small only because it's the technical population of the Town of Vienna; there are many more people surrounding the town for whom VYS would be the closest club, or equidistant to other clubs. But maybe I'm missing something.

I was disappointed to learn that Vienna limits its financial aid to kids from select schools (presumably those from Vienna proper). So it seems they've made a conscious decision to treat kids from outside of Vienna differently. It's one of the reasons -- not the only reason, but one of them -- that we'll be looking for a new club next year.

Don't forget about the other Fairfax clubs: Villarreal, FPYC, CYA, Mclean, Great falls/ Reston and BRYC. Vienna has to compete with them all.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add to the above.... My son who is at BRYC started at Vienna. He was not on the top team and we felt he should have been. After a few years playing for Vienna and not being moved up we decided to look around and chose BRYC. He has really flourished at BRYC and if he wanted to could probably return to Vienna and easily make their top team but we are happy with the training he is getting. One of the positives or negatives with our VYS experience is there are almost no movement between teams from year to year. The good news is players are rarely moved down a team so if you have a kid who is having an "off" year their spot is fairly secure. The bad news if you have a strong player on a lower team it is hard to move up unless it's a roster-growing year or they have players who have quit.

My oldest played for Vienna for a few years and left for McLean with a bunch of other girls. This was back in the days where all the talented girls played for either McLean or FCV. She ended up staying there until her junior year when she wanted to focus more on school and take soccer less seriously so she ended up coming back to Vienna.

I may want to do a survey one of these days to see if any clubs actually promote from within. Seems to be a common complaint.

Of course, a lot of kids quit as they get older, so spaces open up. And I was surprised to learn a couple of years ago that a lot of kids come back to House league in high school with the hopes of playing House in the fall and high school in the spring. Little wonder a team of House All-Stars I coached beat a travel team rather soundly.

A kid who plays on my son's team was on Vienna's B team although felt he should be on A team. He said he was leaving and then Vienna decided to offer him the A team spot. he didn't take it. He and his parents are so happy they left. Pulled their daughter too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just to add to the above.... My son who is at BRYC started at Vienna. He was not on the top team and we felt he should have been. After a few years playing for Vienna and not being moved up we decided to look around and chose BRYC. He has really flourished at BRYC and if he wanted to could probably return to Vienna and easily make their top team but we are happy with the training he is getting. One of the positives or negatives with our VYS experience is there are almost no movement between teams from year to year. The good news is players are rarely moved down a team so if you have a kid who is having an "off" year their spot is fairly secure. The bad news if you have a strong player on a lower team it is hard to move up unless it's a roster-growing year or they have players who have quit.

My oldest played for Vienna for a few years and left for McLean with a bunch of other girls. This was back in the days where all the talented girls played for either McLean or FCV. She ended up staying there until her junior year when she wanted to focus more on school and take soccer less seriously so she ended up coming back to Vienna.

I may want to do a survey one of these days to see if any clubs actually promote from within. Seems to be a common complaint.

Of course, a lot of kids quit as they get older, so spaces open up. And I was surprised to learn a couple of years ago that a lot of kids come back to House league in high school with the hopes of playing House in the fall and high school in the spring. Little wonder a team of House All-Stars I coached beat a travel team rather soundly.

A kid who plays on my son's team was on Vienna's B team although felt he should be on A team. He said he was leaving and then Vienna decided to offer him the A team spot. he didn't take it. He and his parents are so happy they left. Pulled their daughter too.

Maybe it was a mistake by VYS or maybe not.
Where did this player end up and did he make the top team? Curious to see if the new club thought differently.

[Anonymous]

How common is it for players to "play up" a year after the first year? I know that sometimes the U9 teams will allow players who are one year younger, if they can compete with the older girls (or boys). But once a player is in the normal age group (i.e., they are 9 and playing for U10) how do the different clubs approach the question of whether or not a player can/will play up a year? So, e.g., a U10 player being moved up to play U11 instead? Is this a regular thing with clubs in the area? I know VYS does this.

On the one hand, I suppose it's good for the individual player (if she's ready for it) because she will have more competition and will be challenged more. On the other hand, moving your U10 "best" players up to your U11 team, and then watching your U10 team get trounced in a tournament by other clubs (who may or may not have kept their best U10 players with the U10 team), isn't exactly fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What VYS can do to keep our top players?

It can poach the top players from other clubs first. I'm serious. That's how Arlington retains the top players it chooses not to shove aside for its recruits from across Northern Virginia.

How Vienna does that preemptive poaching, I don't know, given that it doesn't enter top leagues. What would also limit that is that Vienna's brand is weak, and that goes back probably forty years. It's hard to believe, but the McLean brand, the Arlington brand, and the Bethesda brand, when it comes to travel soccer, were built in the mid-1980s (I was there, prior to becoming extremely old and lame), and nothing can be done to shift at least those three ancient impressions of how good clubs are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How common is it for players to "play up" a year after the first year? I know that sometimes the U9 teams will allow players who are one year younger, if they can compete with the older girls (or boys). But once a player is in the normal age group (i.e., they are 9 and playing for U10) how do the different clubs approach the question of whether or not a player can/will play up a year? So, e.g., a U10 player being moved up to play U11 instead? Is this a regular thing with clubs in the area? I know VYS does this.

On the one hand, I suppose it's good for the individual player (if she's ready for it) because she will have more competition and will be challenged more. On the other hand, moving your U10 "best" players up to your U11 team, and then watching your U10 team get trounced in a tournament by other clubs (who may or may not have kept their best U10 players with the U10 team), isn't exactly fun.

my daughter's U11 team, not Vienna, has a U10 girl who just stayed with the team after she played up their first year. It's not a big deal and it was the family's choice

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:I'm not sure how Vienna treats out-of-towners, but I know the mentality a few years ago when Eddie Lima was in charge was indeed that Vienna meant "Vienna." That notion fits the town rather well -- we're incorporated, and we're protective of our identity. (That identity also includes a big baseball presence -- soccer may be the No. 1 sport in Arlington and Reston, but I don't think that's the case here. I see more private trainers running around here for baseball than I do for soccer, that's for sure.)

I've been ripped for saying this before, but I think VYS punches above its weight. So many clubs in Fairfax County posit themselves as "elite" -- some with good reason, some not. Loudoun County is much simpler -- Loudoun is the gargantuan club, TSJ FC Virginia also draws from the region, and then you have smaller clubs. In Fairfax County, you have the traditional powerhouses (Braddock Road, McLean), ambitious clubs drawing from large areas (Great Falls Reston, SYC, SYA), a couple more community clubs that sometimes have terrific teams (Chantilly, Herndon, Annandale), some boutique clubs (FC Dulles, PAC), and more clubs around the periphery (Alexandria, Lee Mount Vernon, NVSC). On top of all that, D.C. United and Arlington are waiting to bring in top talent.

As for Vienna meaning "Vienna," fair enough. But that's a conscious choice and they're keeping their "weight" low for town-identity reasons, even if they're then punching above it. And as non-Vienna based residents of Fairfax County, we'll probably look for a new club that doesn't treat us as outsiders. (I note that McClean, Arlington, and BRYC do not limit financial aid applicants to those attending only certain FCPS schools.)

Thanks for the great map, by the way! It's helpful as we try to make sense of the dizzying array of options around here (which seem designed, as you mentioned elsewhere, to intentionally obfuscate things).

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:I may want to do a survey one of these days to see if any clubs actually promote from within. Seems to be a common complaint.

Arlington is pretty good about this. Every academy team has 2-4 red team players who practice with the academy team once a week. Each year we've been there they've pulled one or two of them up for the following year. They still recruit externally as well obviously - but they definitely don't ignore the internal teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:I may want to do a survey one of these days to see if any clubs actually promote from within. Seems to be a common complaint.

Arlington is pretty good about this. Every academy team has 2-4 red team players who practice with the academy team once a week. Each year we've been there they've pulled one or two of them up for the following year. They still recruit externally as well obviously - but they definitely don't ignore the internal teams.

On the boys side, Arlington will promote, but tend to do so only beginning U12, when different coaches take on player selection. All the top clubs like trying to recruit players away from rivals. Arlington is no exception. My own feeling is that it is always better to be on a top team even at a smaller club. Perceptions lock over time even if skills evolve or physical changes occur. The kids are also pretty vicious in reminding everybody of the hierarchy, especially from up top. It is the least attractive aspect of travel soccer and not anything I saw in youth sports growing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How common is it for players to "play up" a year after the first year? I know that sometimes the U9 teams will allow players who are one year younger, if they can compete with the older girls (or boys). But once a player is in the normal age group (i.e., they are 9 and playing for U10) how do the different clubs approach the question of whether or not a player can/will play up a year? So, e.g., a U10 player being moved up to play U11 instead? Is this a regular thing with clubs in the area? I know VYS does this.

On the one hand, I suppose it's good for the individual player (if she's ready for it) because she will have more competition and will be challenged more. On the other hand, moving your U10 "best" players up to your U11 team, and then watching your U10 team get trounced in a tournament by other clubs (who may or may not have kept their best U10 players with the U10 team), isn't exactly fun.

my daughter's U11 team, not Vienna, has a U10 girl who just stayed with the team after she played up their first year. It's not a big deal and it was the family's choice

I've seen that at Vienna. It's one way to keep some of their top players and keep them from going to McLean or BRYC. Let them play up a year.

[Anonymous]

I definitely don’t think that town population is the right metric. Are there even any soccer fields in the Town of Vienna?

My kids have played at Oakton HS, Nottoway Park, Marshall HS, Quantum Field, Ken Lawrence, Luther Jackson, and Oakmarr rec center. All of those are home fields for VYS.

I don’t think anyone on my kids’ teams is driving very far. Most are from Vienna or Oakton, but there are some from West Falls Church, Fairfax, Reston, Chantilly and McLean. So that’s a 5-10 mile radius from the town.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How common is it for players to "play up" a year after the first year? I know that sometimes the U9 teams will allow players who are one year younger, if they can compete with the older girls (or boys). But once a player is in the normal age group (i.e., they are 9 and playing for U10) how do the different clubs approach the question of whether or not a player can/will play up a year? So, e.g., a U10 player being moved up to play U11 instead? Is this a regular thing with clubs in the area? I know VYS does this.

On the one hand, I suppose it's good for the individual player (if she's ready for it) because she will have more competition and will be challenged more. On the other hand, moving your U10 "best" players up to your U11 team, and then watching your U10 team get trounced in a tournament by other clubs (who may or may not have kept their best U10 players with the U10 team), isn't exactly fun.

my daughter's U11 team, not Vienna, has a U10 girl who just stayed with the team after she played up their first year. It's not a big deal and it was the family's choice

I've seen that at Vienna. It's one way to keep some of their top players and keep them from going to McLean or BRYC. Let them play up a year.

The only time a player should play up to the next age group is if they can start for the higher age group's best team.