Valor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is there 117 pages dedicated to Valor?

a lot of people seem to have had a bad experience at Valor. no other club has this many bad reviews, even much larger clubs like Loudon and Alexandria.

It's because loudoun and Alexandria parents complain about their club on other threads.

Which ones?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For many families here $3k just isn't a lot of money. I've got a daughter on a lower tier team - and it's the appropriate team for her skill level. She's been on the same team 2 years now, and some of the girls were on her rec team before that. They are all friends, facetime each other, and enjoy doing team activities together like the travel tournaments, Washington Spirit games, team parties, etc.
With rec you get a new team every year, at least a couple kids who don't really want to be there and are truly awful. The coach has to play them and it just isn't fun. I'd rather play $3k for my daughter to have fun with sports and get exercise while making friends than spend all my time taking her to rec practice and games that she doesn't even like.
Maybe your kid will play in college. Mine won't. I'd prefer it that way anyway. She's a smart kid - she'll still get in somewhere good and I can afford to pay for it.

Absolutely agree! Mine loves playing the game but hates the disorganized nature of rec. Her teammates didn't take practice seriously and the coach was a volunteer dad with little experience and no license. Every saturday was a guessing game of who will or won't show up to play. At least with travel, she gets 10 months of continuous training, multiple tournaments, and teammates that are more serous about playing. She won't play professionally and almost no chance of playing in college but she's happy.

Is this the same person?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son played Valor for two years and then we switched because he also didn't make the next higher up team at Valor (seems to be a theme!). He was on the 3rd team and couldn't make the 2nd team, but then he got offered a spot on a team several divisions higher than the 2nd team he couldn't make so we switched. He didn't feel like the coaches even paid attention to him at tryouts, like he had already been slotted as a "3rd team player". (And reading this thread, I guess our family had been slotted as the suckers willing to keep paying).

The practices were not organized, especially the second year ,they were frequently combined with a younger team and then they would just scrimmage-which I did not think was fair to the boys or practices offering fair value for the cost.

This seems to be the common messaging here.

[Anonymous]

We spent one year at Valor and decided to leave due to a multitude of reasons. Coach didn’t really care honestly and the feedback what terrible. I think maybe inexperience was huge factor. He missed practice sessions and tournaments. Late to start the practice for the most part where the kids were just running around.

There are some folks on here criticizing the parents that left, but we had our kid ID’d at a few other clubs. Needless to say we made it on a number 1 team in a equal division. Go figure. If the parents are happy playing in these lower team with zero expectations than good for them. To me its not worth the money. My kids performance has significantly improved just by interacting with better performing players.

[Anonymous]

Valor sponsored Pokemon tournament? This explains a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We spent one year at Valor and decided to leave due to a multitude of reasons. Coach didn’t really care honestly and the feedback what terrible. I think maybe inexperience was huge factor. He missed practice sessions and tournaments. Late to start the practice for the most part where the kids were just running around.

There are some folks on here criticizing the parents that left, but we had our kid ID’d at a few other clubs. Needless to say we made it on a number 1 team in a equal division. Go figure. If the parents are happy playing in these lower team with zero expectations than good for them. To me it’s not worth the money. My kids performance has significantly improved just by interacting with better performing players.

Sounds like a bad coach, but just pointing out that none of Valor’s number 1 teams play in NCSL past U10 where the divisions aren’t numbered and scores are not kept. Like other clubs with ECNL-RL or ECNL, only the second and below teams play in NCSL from U11 on up. If you are in fact talking about a U9 or U10 team, I think there’s a lot of guessing and politics that go into placing kids on teams. Coaches get scared to move kids down because their parents can be a nightmare to deal with and/or they leave the club. Moving to a new club is almost necessary in order to move up in a lot of cases.

[Anonymous]

Saw a comment in the thread that made it seem like RM was let go vs. leaving. Anyone know what that's about? Any feedback regarding his coaching?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Saw a comment in the thread that made it seem like RM was let go vs. leaving. Anyone know what that's about? Any feedback regarding his coaching?

RM talks a very good game - my child and I were impressed at our Spring meeting last year b/c he seemed to offer a very solid training plan with extensive promises of what he would bring to the team. Unfortunately, it proved to be a lot of talk with very little to back it up. Video review from games? Team was told to watch the game on their own and record the number of positive and negative touches they had. Recovery sessions requiring the purchase of several items? Happened once in the fall. He made his decision on formation before ever watching the team play together and figuring out their strengths and weaknesses on the field. He NEVER changed the formation despite the fact that it didn't work. His practices were unorganized and he allowed several of the kids to run over him and tell him what they wanted to do. He fostered an environment of toxicity amongst his players by criticizing several players in front of the team and holding others on a pedestal (FWIW, my child was both on the pedestal at times and publicly humiliated at others).

Ultimately, he was asked to take a different team for the 2024-25 season for which he initially agreed. Between accepting a different assignment and the coaches' meeting to plan for next year he decided to go elsewhere. He left Valor at the end of a practice one night with a tournament and four regular season games, not to mention weeks of practices, still remaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saw a comment in the thread that made it seem like RM was let go vs. leaving. Anyone know what that's about? Any feedback regarding his coaching?

RM talks a very good game - my child and I were impressed at our Spring meeting last year b/c he seemed to offer a very solid training plan with extensive promises of what he would bring to the team. Unfortunately, it proved to be a lot of talk with very little to back it up. Video review from games? Team was told to watch the game on their own and record the number of positive and negative touches they had. Recovery sessions requiring the purchase of several items? Happened once in the fall. He made his decision on formation before ever watching the team play together and figuring out their strengths and weaknesses on the field. He NEVER changed the formation despite the fact that it didn't work. His practices were unorganized and he allowed several of the kids to run over him and tell him what they wanted to do. He fostered an environment of toxicity amongst his players by criticizing several players in front of the team and holding others on a pedestal (FWIW, my child was both on the pedestal at times and publicly humiliated at others).

Ultimately, he was asked to take a different team for the 2024-25 season for which he initially agreed. Between accepting a different assignment and the coaches' meeting to plan for next year he decided to go elsewhere. He left Valor at the end of a practice one night with a tournament and four regular season games, not to mention weeks of practices, still remaining.

Kind of sad that they would just try sticking another team with the problem instead of just getting rid of him. They seem to really struggle with hiring coaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saw a comment in the thread that made it seem like RM was let go vs. leaving. Anyone know what that's about? Any feedback regarding his coaching?

RM talks a very good game - my child and I were impressed at our Spring meeting last year b/c he seemed to offer a very solid training plan with extensive promises of what he would bring to the team. Unfortunately, it proved to be a lot of talk with very little to back it up. Video review from games? Team was told to watch the game on their own and record the number of positive and negative touches they had. Recovery sessions requiring the purchase of several items? Happened once in the fall. He made his decision on formation before ever watching the team play together and figuring out their strengths and weaknesses on the field. He NEVER changed the formation despite the fact that it didn't work. His practices were unorganized and he allowed several of the kids to run over him and tell him what they wanted to do. He fostered an environment of toxicity amongst his players by criticizing several players in front of the team and holding others on a pedestal (FWIW, my child was both on the pedestal at times and publicly humiliated at others).

Ultimately, he was asked to take a different team for the 2024-25 season for which he initially agreed. Between accepting a different assignment and the coaches' meeting to plan for next year he decided to go elsewhere. He left Valor at the end of a practice one night with a tournament and four regular season games, not to mention weeks of practices, still remaining.

Kind of sad that they would just try sticking another team with the problem instead of just getting rid of him. They seem to really struggle with hiring coaches.

I think they were hoping to develop him as a coach. He was working through his license levels and, again, talked a good talk. I believe they were hoping with an older, more developed team he could focus on the coaching aspect without having to also teach the technical skills.

I've had multiple kids in Valor. One of them has graduated and is going on to play in college. One is staying with Valor for the next year and one is moving on for a different opportunity. I think at the heart of it, they are trying to right by the kids and sometimes they can fall a bit short of that mark. Any time I've contacted anyone in the office to express concern, ask for help or get some guidance, I've been met with a positive result.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. Thank you for the insight.

[Anonymous]

Valor 2011G Gold playing in the ECNL-RL playoffs this weekend …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Valor 2011G Gold playing in the ECNL-RL playoffs this weekend …

That's the teamwhere the coach is leaving dor SYC and taking the 6-7 best players along?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We spent one year at Valor and decided to leave due to a multitude of reasons. Coach didn’t really care honestly and the feedback what terrible. I think maybe inexperience was huge factor. He missed practice sessions and tournaments. Late to start the practice for the most part where the kids were just running around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We spent one year at Valor and decided to leave due to a multitude of reasons. Coach didn’t really care honestly and the feedback what terrible. I think maybe inexperience was huge factor. He missed practice sessions and tournaments. Late to start the practice for the most part where the kids were just running around.

There are some folks on here criticizing the parents that left, but we had our kid ID’d at a few other clubs. Needless to say we made it on a number 1 team in a equal division. Go figure. If the parents are happy playing in these lower team with zero expectations than good for them. To me it’s not worth the money. My kids performance has significantly improved just by interacting with better performing players.

Sounds like a bad coach, but just pointing out that none of Valor’s number 1 teams play in NCSL past U10 where the divisions aren’t numbered and scores are not kept. Like other clubs with ECNL-RL or ECNL, only the second and below teams play in NCSL from U11 on up. If you are in fact talking about a U9 or U10 team, I think there’s a lot of guessing and politics that go into placing kids on teams. Coaches get scared to move kids down because their parents can be a nightmare to deal with and/or they leave the club. Moving to a new club is almost necessary in order to move up in a lot of cases.

Agree. It was mainly due to inexperience, lack of communication and leadership: zero encouragement; pigeon-holing players, even observed some misplaced recognition for other players and even received preferential treatment. More than half the parents left and now are on better teams. For the ones that stayed, they simply shifted everyone up, so the performance relatively stayed the same. These were the parents that really have little to no expectation which is fine and works for them. In my opinion, I do think lot of them hoped to advance and are still waiting for an opportunity. With the limited number of seats to fill a roster on the top teams that doesn't leave much opportunity. You could be waiting a 2-3 more season before getting an offer especially if it's just a rephase of the same kids/parents that they are reluctant to let go due to the politics as you mentioned. This is a disaster for institutional standards. Thanks, but no thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Valor 2011G Gold playing in the ECNL-RL playoffs this weekend …

That's the teamwhere the coach is leaving dor SYC and taking the 6-7 best players along?

]

Yes.