current list of implosions, additions and Club shake ups...
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
| Any rumors about what BRYC is going to do about their coach problems on the girls side? |
Anonymous
And boys side too? |
Anonymous
Isn't the wee boy in charge of everything and he'll coach the teams that have the best chance to win? |
Anonymous
| Can someone just start a town /city based travel league where say Bethesda plays Potomac, Gaithersburg, Kensington, Chevy Chase etc.? Same for Virginia. More than one team per town/city as necessary.Then we could put a stop to this insanity. Kids could play with their friends and it would be plenty competitive. |
Anonymous
They could, just requires good coaches to step up and form new clubs, then attract players to be competitive. Also they need to secure local field space around those areas for practices. Parents might be willing to accept an unknown club for the benefit of being close by. Eventually they might convince the more established clubs to join them in a new town league. |
Anonymous
| Most of the Virginia clubs are this way so you must be talking about Maryland. |
Anonymous
It would also require coaches and league officials to drop their ego, which might be more of a battle. |
Anonymous
It’s best to start with a summer league so it won’t be directly competing against all established clubs and league except those that are involved in Super Y. There would be more available soccer fields as well. We can have a Wash Metro League, then a Baltimore Metro League and a Richmond (or other) Metro League. The first place and second place of these leagues would play in a end of summer tournament to determine who the Mid-Atlantic Champion is. Once this summer league is established and stable, then it could start thinking about the fall & spring seasons. It could be pretty cool. |
Anonymous
Most jurisdictions have a lot of rules that make it difficult to get field space, which makes it difficult to get a new 'town' club off the ground. You typically need to have a fairly significant number of kids/teams - I've seen 5 teams or more a couple of places - usually who all of nearly all reside in the county/town, the club needs to be a non-profit with an unpaid board, the club has to take kids of all abilities, etc. In order to do that, you either need to start with a rec league and add travel later -- which the good coaches aren't looking to do -- or pay for private space, which means your club isn't making a lot of money or is going be a lot more costly than existing clubs. |
Anonymous
| How about a summer pick up league? Set times. Broad age categories and mixed gender allowed. No coaching allowed. Just facilitation, supervision, and officiating by organizers. Rent field space and play round robin 20 minutes games with 3rd team rotating in. 2 hours per group. Age ranges U9-10 mixed; U11-12 mixed; U13-14Open and also girls only; U15-18 open and also girls only. 8 weeks. Mid June thru early Aug. Costs to cover fields. Bring your own ball. Volunteer organizers. Parents are allowed to watch but must be quiet. Coaches allowed to watch but must be quiet and can’t “bring” a team. Teams selected each week by random captains. Pennies with numbers provided and persistent dangerous play results in removal from days activity and or league. Registration required. Run these in eastern Fairfax / Arl. / Alex; western Fairfax/Loudoun; westDC/MoCo.; and east DC/PG. |
Anonymous
I was the PP that mentioned about a summer league but your idea might be better. Would love for this type of unofficial league to be organized for MoCo. |
Anonymous
This is how Little League is organized. There is a national Little League organization that issues franchises to local clubs, along with a franchise comes a defined territory. All players for the club have to reside within the franchise territory. At one time all coaches, umpires and board members of the club also had to reside within the territory, but I think they've relaxed that. This is a million years away from where youth soccer is in terms of regimentation. Almost everywhere, Little League has the best facilities of any youth sport. The reason for this is that the franchise system makes fields a hyper-local issue. You can't jump to another club for better facilities, you have to work within your territory (or move). Local governments are more willing to spend on facilities when they know that local residents are going to use them. (Plus baseball has that "apple pie" cred that soccer just doesn't have.) The downside is that this is not a player-friendly way of organizing. If you are a promising player who lives in a territory that happens to be poorly run you are out of luck. Also, the territory system is a vestige of the racial segregation that was the norm for much of the 20th century. When it began Little League was segregated. Even when it officially integrated the boundaries were maintained along the lines of racial segregation to keep white players from playing with non-whites. If you look at a map of Little League boundaries for DC they pretty clearly follow racial boundaries. |
Anonymous
We would need a mega club to get this started, a huge club that could have regional teams. Some areas have a mega club where they do this and setup regional teams and have a few "elite" teams that are fed from the regional teams. This area has far too many clubs that have their own interest to make something like that happen without consolidation. |
Anonymous
| Parents have ruined youth sports. The pursuit of alway trying to get one leg up on everyone is what lead to pay to play. Before, everyone played town. Same with academics now. A 4.0 used to be somebody special. Not anymore. |