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Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss
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Anonymous
OMG, this has to rank as one of the most ignorant posts in quite a while. You do realize that Club teams have nor geographic restriction like Little League, right? That players and coaches are free to play wherever they like, and that the name on the team, especially at higher levels of play, has most times just a slight association with the town? That by U15 or U16, an elite team will drawn from 20 or 30 miles away? Or that BRYC has 4 teams in National League this year, more than either Loudoun, Bethesda, or Arlington? |
Anonymous
Yes, I realize clubs have no geographic restriction. You realize a player in Arlington is more likely to start playing in Arlington than in Vienna, Herndon, Great Falls, Alexandria or Springfield, right? And that Arlington and Loudoun are huge clubs because they represent such large areas, right? And yes, I realize BRYC has tons of National League teams. I made the danged list. You realize BRYC is unique, right? If any club could put together national contenders on a consistent basis, you'd see them from Cugini, Gunston, PAC, Barca, etc. |
Anonymous
| ^^^Again, poor poor Vienna. Located in the heart of Fairfax but no kids want play for them. |
Anonymous
Yet you quote population stats like that somehow matters. Which is it?
No - that's incorrect for elite teams. For example, the Mclean U15B team that won National Championship this summer was maybe 25% 'original' players. The rest were recruited from outside the club over an extended period time. The same is true for most other elite teams, both boys and girls. Multiple teams combined with the age group change this year. You might have a core of 4 - 5 players that have been with the team since U9, but certainly not 50% or more.
BRYC is a good club, but not unique. Loud, Mcl, Arl, Beth all put multiple teams into National League. Your list is a bunch of perennial also-rans that never even make it through State Cup, let alone into Regional or National championships. The fact that you even talk about NCSL and ODSL team counts means you've never been near an elite team. Those leagues got left behind 10 years ago. |
Anonymous
Good grief -- these parents and their overinflated egos. OK, here goes ...
It matters. Big clubs have a lot of resources. Arlington and Loudoun could have a bunch of blithering idiots as coaches, and they would still field competitive teams just because there are a lot of good players in those areas whose parents aren't going to drive all over creation.
You're shifting the definition of "huge." Arlington and Loudoun are huge clubs in terms of numbers. (They're also "huge" in the sense that they have good teams, sure. Braddock Road is huge in the latter sense but not the former.) Sure, by the time they hit U15, Arlington's top team may only be 20% Arlington. But the infrastructure of the club is a giant advantage.
All huge clubs with a bigger foundation than BRYC.
I've been near plenty of elite teams. Most parents here have experience with one or two. I talk about NCSL and ODSL here to mention that not everyone can be Braddock Road. It's as if you're making up what I'm saying so you can puff yourself up even more. And yet -- Herndon and Alexandria are probably comparable to much of the CCL clubs that aren't Loudoun, Arlington or BRYC. Those three are just on a different plane. McLean might still be close to that level, but I still sense that they're reeling from losing the DA and then turning over the boys' TD job a few times. The girls' side is in ECNL and still quite strong, though we'll have to see what happens when the DA and ECNL spend the next five years in brutal off-field competition. |
Anonymous
| ^^^ infrastructure ain't so great when 80% get cut. |
Anonymous
Well my sons OLDER CCL team handled a Herndon and alexandria team in a recent tournament and it isn't Loudon Arlington or BRYC Again stop arguing over little kids and look at older teams |
Anonymous
| Please take your VYS sad story to the Vienna soccer thread where it belongs. |
Anonymous
Why are you so obsessed with responding to an offhand comment about club sizes, Mr./Ms. Former VYS Coach or Board Member? |
Anonymous
The list of State Cup quarterfinalists above was all older teams. Quite a few from Herndon. And if you've followed the club over the last few years, that's not a surprise. But yes, your one result against two random teams is absolutely convincing that we dare not breath Herndon's name in the same sentence as the mighty Lee Mount Vernon or Roanoke Star. (I have nothing against those programs -- what I know of LMV is quite positive -- but the "CCL crushes all, so shut up!" delusionoids here are so amusing.) |
Anonymous
| I think it's all so random. Maybe not totally random, as some parents might really, really do their homework but it seems to me...that every club has good and bad trainer/coaches. All of the clubs discussed above have produced some great teams. However, why don't they ALWAYS produce great teams? It's the kids that come into the program at that time. It's the quality of that particular trainer/coach. It's the commitment of the parents of those kids. Not every season do you get a group of talented kids who work hard outside of practice, who get a great trainer/coach, and with committed parents. At any given year, that can can happen at any of these clubs regardless of the league. It could even happen at the smallest of clubs. And I think that's what this message board is all about...trying to find THAT team each year or the closest thing to it. My kid is younger and plays in the NCSL and the teams that he's been on have beaten the crap out of just about all of the teams mentioned above. Does that mean they are bad clubs? No, it just means that they don't have the group of kids, etc that we do at this time. So I think all this league and club talk is BS. The quest is to find a great trainer with a great bunch of teammates. |
Anonymous
Because there is a thread dedicated specifically to discussion pertaining to this particular club. Once the discussion stops being about overall general travel soccer and is geared more to particular issues pertaining to BYS just take it to the VYS thread. Not that hard to understand. Here is the link for your convenience: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/533272.page |
Anonymous
I'm aware of that. And so are you. So why do you keep responding here? It was one offhand comment comparing club sizes. Someone insisted on dredging up all the perceived ills of VYS. |
Anonymous
It wasn't an "offhand comment. You stated, "(And people here give Vienna -- population 16,370, maybe 40-50K total if you stretch from northern Oakton to western Tysons -- a hard time because they're not on the same level.) " Nobody mentioned Vienna until you did. The only place that Vienna gets a hard time is in its own thread by its own members. |
Anonymous
+1 The clubs that do it consistently are either huge (Arlington, Loudoun) or managed to build a tradition decades ago (Braddock Road). Most of the CCL clubs, maybe half of the VPL clubs and a handful of NCSL clubs can produce good teams. It's trickier these days to keep them together, with the DA and ECNL picking off the top players and Loudoun/Arlington/BRYC taking a few more, but some teams do pretty well for themselves all the way through the age groups. And for 80-90% of travel players, it hardly matters. There's no magic formula to tell you whether Loudoun's C team is a better place than Herndon's B team or vice versa.
Fields. Depth of coaching -- coaches can develop within the club and benefit from working together. Depth of talent -- if D.C. United takes three players, they can move up decent players from the B team. Money to pay for all this. You've seen the accusation elsewhere -- a lot of C-, D- and F- teams are just subsidizing the coaches and scholarship money for the A team. And if they have big rec programs, or if they have the resources to put on big money-making tournaments, they can pay those A-team coaches to stay and subsidize scholarships and travel. If you play at Arlington for anything other than an A team -- which applies to hundreds and hundreds of kids -- some of your money is going to make the A teams better. You can be annoyed by that, or you can take pride in it. Or you can just figure you like your coach, you like the convenience of where you play, and the costs aren't any better some place farther away. Up to you. |