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Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss
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Anonymous
winter soccer training and basketball. It has proven valuable if done as a team for when the spring season starts as everyone is on the same page and likely ahead of where they left off in the Fall. Individually I have seen where those that put in the work are better off then those that took it easy. Same in summer. |
Anonymous
| When do tryouts for USDA 2006 start? |
Anonymous
| If you were in CCL you'd play into December and then have one Month break and then back at it again! |
Anonymous
It depends on your child's level of play I think and where he or she wants to be in the future. If he doesn't touch a ball for 2 months, yeah, there will be a drop off in play. |
Anonymous
? At what age? Not true for the younger kids. |
Anonymous
Players have gotten worse in all sports in the US since year round specialization began. Tennis---have t had Americans in top 10 since the Williams sisters trained by their father. Now kids are in full year-round tennis camp. Gretzky hung up his skates 4 months every year and played lacrosse. He credits that for keeping his love of hockey high, not burning out and developing skill. Soccer in the us is now constant year-round and our current IS best player did not do that. His parents only let him play on 1 team. He turned down invitations to winter tournaments and special invite tournaments. He played basketball. His parents said most of his skill was honed in the backyard. People are nutso now. I know an 8-year old that plays in both a U9 and U 10 team. He sometimes plays 6 games a weekend. Horrible for the growing body. You get less touches in a game than practicing in your yard. The $-making business of youth sports is not producing better athletes. Quite the contrary. |
Anonymous
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^^ Agree.
"In Pulisic’s case it was lots of hours of training. But not too much. Does that go against everything you’ve ever heard? Probably. At the age of 10, 11 and 12 he was getting offers from all over the place to play in three or four travel teams but his close circle of father figures steered him in the right direction. Train more and play less was the simple mantra. The Pennsylvanian Classics, a highly respected youth team Pulisic played for from the age of 10-15, agreed with these principles. "We never had him playing for two teams in the club. He would play for an older age group and we never put him down into a younger age group just to win a State Cup. He would get opportunities to go and play at the Dallas Cup with teams from other states but he would never do that. I would say he played a ton of soccer but all the extra was on his own in his backyard. He played a lot but he was not playing on two or three teams.” Gretzky did not play summer hockey, he played baseball and lacrosse in the summer. According to Gretzky’s biography he was a very skilled baseball and Lacrosse player and spring was one of his favorite times of the year! “If a sport has a high point of the year, it must be the first week of spring. When I was growing up, I used to love this time of year. It was when I put my hockey equipment away and I was absolutely ecstatic to see the end of the hockey season. One of the worst things to happen to the game, in my opinion, has been year-round hockey and, in particular, summer hockey. All it does for kids, as far as I can tell, is keep them out sports they should be doing in the warmer weather. I could hardly wait to get my lacrosse stick out and start throwing the ball against the walls and working on our moves as we played the lacrosse equivalent to road hockey. All the good hockey players seemed to play lacrosse in those days and everyone of them learned something from the game to carry over to the other – things athletes can only learn by mixing up the games they play when they are young.” — Wayne Gretzky, National Post, March 2000 NOTE: I didn't even mention the problem of overuse injuries to tendons, ligaments, and bone growth plates due to premature specialization. There’s enough research on that subject to write a book. Premature specialization is also linked to kids dropping out of sports early. |
Anonymous
| Yea--that multiple team play is for parental bragging rights. I smile politely when the parents go on and on about how many games Jimmy played in this weekend. Secretly thinking--that's dumb as f8ck. |
Anonymous
My question is: why do the clubs allow it??? Christian had the guidance of his parents and parents' close friend/coach to navigate this shitworld of youth soccer in the US. I see parents near me falling into this trap. I get why a Club will do it (allowing a kid to play for multiple teams)--they use the kid like a work horse to get their stats up. They can throw him out later and send him to the glue factory once he destroys his knees and ankles. I guess I expect better. I am tired of hearing in the young ages that winning doesn't matter and then they just take the big horses and put them on the top teams and give them extra practices and games at 8. They talk about development, but they ignore most of the other 40 or so kids in an age group (who I might add are better off not getting on that crazy treadmill so young--but then they never get a shot or are looked at again). I wish I could find a Club that just once---stood on their principles. I throw up my hands in resignation. |
Anonymous
| So where does it say that Pulisic stopped playing soccer for 2-3 months a year? Is what we are doing here picking apart the word "training"? I stated that it depends on your kid's goals. To play at a high level, you should be touching the ball everyday...because he wants to. I think free play counts as a day of "training". It doesn't have to be structured. If the kid works on juggling, footskill, and a wall on his own...that is training. If he's playing in the street with his buddies for an a few hours, that counts as "training" in the sense that the OP states...is training over the winter important. Yes, I believe to play at the highest level you can be, you need to continue. I believe that if a kid is not working a little every week in the winter, he will be behind where he was previously. I don't see how putting away his ball and playing lacrosse or basketball will prevent injuries. I think soccer is a different animal. It's not throwing a ball everyday and blowing out your shoulder. Soccer is jogging, sprinting, jumping, cutting, twisting, turning, walking, diving, sliding, falling. How do take a break from all those things? Sleep? Do you tell your kid to stop playing the piano for 4 months a year? Dancing for 4 months a year? Riding his bike 4 months a year? My tone may seem argumentative but noone has been able to explain this to me. |
Anonymous
completely agree, unstructured play/training is very important. My son luckily goes to school with 4 other teammates and almost every day is pick up with a few of the other kids. This covers him on the extra training but he still asks to go out and kick it around. He does play basketball in the winter and summer. Also does structured and unstructured soccer training during those times. He likes to be active. |
Anonymous
It's not either/or. The pp did not say that it was. The argument was the more GAMES/TOURNAMENTS/FORMAL play was not for the better---the route the US and big clubs favor. Kids touch the ball so much less per game than they would in their own backyard. The critical U9-U12 years should focus on more training, less games as the pp stated. Train more/play less. There is a big difference in wear and tear on kid's growing body kicking it around and practicing moves in his backyard from full-on hard games. But, yes, other sports (even casually so) are very important to player overall development. Even European Academies train that way---young players do play other sports. I would never allow my child to play on more than one regular season team. That's crazy. A season of rec basketball is fun! Nobody is saying not to free-play soccer at recess or with your brother in the backyard. Geesh. |
Anonymous
Check out NVSC, seriously... they have rejected for the most part the excessive training, they still do tournaments and host them as well, because as a club why wouldn't you. Most of the kids in youth soccer will stop playing once their parents stop paying for it, I think they recognize that and do a great job of producing fit players that enjoy the game. They do have a DC United affiliation, so if they see somebody they like, they'll send them over. Hans Etiene has espoused this kind of development approach. |
Anonymous
We actually dont have a break at the you ger ages. Practice continues straight thru and some indoor futsalnstuff. I am ok with it as 1. we have already paid for the year and there isnt really extra costs associated. 2) No far away games but ongoing training which I think is good! |
Anonymous
At least the high school ages.... 9-12 grades. I think because of the alternate season for soccer between MD and VA. My son plays in one of those older ages and the season starts in August and goes until June including tournaments and CCL play. There May be a months break maybe a week more between December and January |