Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

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08/07/2016 07:54

Subject: Re:Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If the kid is not as "good" as everyone else on the team at the time of tryouts based on whatever the coaches are basing it on, then they don't make the team. It's that simple. The club isn't cutting them from soccer, just those teams. They can play rec or go to another club. They will find a team somewhere that will take him. Just because the club that the parent wants him to play for won't take him doesn't make it wrong. Clubs/teams have to draw the line somewhere and someone has to be on the other side of that line. It's life.

Yes I agree this is life in American youth soccer but it is still wrong to cut kids U10. The best countries teach young kids how to play with good coaches, they train as many as possible for as long as possible. Only American coaches looks at a kid at 9 and say your not good enough, we can't win with you, go play rec. Sending a U10 to rec with a volunteer parent will not provide a good enough coach or training environment, it's that simple. That kid you send to the rec team at 9 because he is not good enough might turn out to be a great athlete with high soccer IQ at 15. I understand cutting a young kid because the parents are unbearable but that should be the only reason.

I disagree. I have seen kids who made travel teams who are so lacking in athletic ability they would not play much on a rec soccer team. Recreational soccer is perfectly fine for most kids. What's happened now in the U.S. is that people see an unathletic kid make a travel team, so they think their kid should. The clubs and coaches have wised up to this as a big moneymaker and expanded the teams accordingly. Years ago when my oldest made a travel team at 8, he was one of 24 kids picked for two travel teams. Now you've got at least 4 travel teams and even more at a lot of clubs. There may be that many kids (or parents) interested in soccer, but there certainly isn't that much talent. A lot of the clubs that don't really do cuts, don't want to lose the fees that are helping subsidize training for their A team kids. Yes, some kids who show little talent at 8, may be superstars by 15, but this will be but a minuscule portion of the mediocre "travel" players you see these days.

I have lived overseas and so have some knowledge of soccer training in other countries. Yes, the clubs do try to keep kids on longer, but the bar to even get on a club team is so much higher than in the U.S. We need to be honest about what travel has become in many cases here -- essentially paid training, where before you had volunteer coaches. I have yet to see a kid dropped from a team or club, who hasn't been able to quickly "make" another travel team. If you can pay, you can usually play.

Why should it be the "unathletic" kids who get cut? Athleticism changes a lot through puberty. I see U9 travel teams take a lot of "athletic" kids who don't love the game and don't care about learning new soccer skills. By U12, the "unathletic" kids who want to put in the work on their footskills have surpassed them.

I think Germany does it right. Before U12, games and leagues are mostly recreational, but players have access to great coaches.

In England (at least parts of it), if you're not one of the few picked for a professional club's academy, you play "rec," but it's what we would consider NCSL or ODSL (or maybe SFL). Nothing wrong with that, either.

In the USA, almost everything is "rec" through U9 (with supplemental training available), as it should be. After that, we have maybe 10% of players in "elite" travel, another 25% in other travel, and 65% in rec. Maybe it should be 5% "elite" travel, 70% NCSL/ODSL/SFL, 20% organized pickup games for those who don't want to make a commitment to two practices and a game every week.