Searching for a Good U9 Travel Program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sadly, most of the advice you'll get on here is biased and unreliable. None of the area clubs have consistent coaching across the club. You really have no choice but to do your own research. Make a list of local clubs within range and go watch them yourself to see what the coach and environment is like in your son's age group and make your selection based on that. Winning and competition level are nowhere near as important at that age as the environment the coach creates. My daughter who plays D1 now was with parent coaches until U11.

Totally false. How on earth would you know about the consistency of every clubs younger teams on both boy and girls side? Some clubs have had the same coaching progression in place at these ages for the past five years and teach the same principles.

I can know about the consistency of the local clubs because I am a referee who has spent countless hours out on the field with these teams every weekend. You may not have noticed the discussion was not of principles of play but of the atmosphere created for the children. I can assure you I have seen terrible, screaming, abusive, idiot coaches at all the local clubs, and there are good ones too. Some clubs that have the same coaching progression still have terrible coaches mixed in for some of the age groups who think verbal abuse is a motivational strategy to use with children or just plain clueless coaches who think 8 year-olds should be silent while they are at soccer practice. Knowing a lot about soccer does not make them know a lot about working with children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8 year olds are already traveling? Shouldn’t this age be focused on general skills development and fun. We are in a different sport and y8 is the youngest category for any tournaments, but kids don’t start traveling out of state until 12 at the very least.

And they don't at U9 in travel soccer either. Stop clutching your pearls.

Wow hit a nerve didn’t I.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8 year olds are already traveling? Shouldn’t this age be focused on general skills development and fun. We are in a different sport and y8 is the youngest category for any tournaments, but kids don’t start traveling out of state until 12 at the very least.

They called travel teams, but at U9, they are mostly play local teams. The furthest we did is one hour drive.

That is not bad to get practice and experience through play. At what age do the kids start going out of town (2-3 hrs away).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure if there were reasons you avoided VYS initially but my son is on the U9 team with VYS and we all love it. The coach (who also teaches U10) is great and the group of kids is wonderful. They haven’t won a lot of games yet but my son is having so much fun that he doesn’t seem to care.

Is this post fr?

Most definitely for real. You can have a great coach and a great group of kids who just love to play soccer at age 8. Many of the other posts on this board scare me a bit and make me happy we went with VYS travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sadly, most of the advice you'll get on here is biased and unreliable. None of the area clubs have consistent coaching across the club. You really have no choice but to do your own research. Make a list of local clubs within range and go watch them yourself to see what the coach and environment is like in your son's age group and make your selection based on that. Winning and competition level are nowhere near as important at that age as the environment the coach creates. My daughter who plays D1 now was with parent coaches until U11.

Totally false. How on earth would you know about the consistency of every clubs younger teams on both boy and girls side? Some clubs have had the same coaching progression in place at these ages for the past five years and teach the same principles.

I can know about the consistency of the local clubs because I am a referee who has spent countless hours out on the field with these teams every weekend. You may not have noticed the discussion was not of principles of play but of the atmosphere created for the children. I can assure you I have seen terrible, screaming, abusive, idiot coaches at all the local clubs, and there are good ones too. Some clubs that have the same coaching progression still have terrible coaches mixed in for some of the age groups who think verbal abuse is a motivational strategy to use with children or just plain clueless coaches who think 8 year-olds should be silent while they are at soccer practice. Knowing a lot about soccer does not make them know a lot about working with children.

So you have an encyclopedic recall of top U9 boys teams as they progress through U12s and can see and remember how each of the players has progressed over time? Yeah, right. I can even see consistent coaching across several different clubs over time and I have a much smaller sample than a ref. The size of your sample and it’s diversity probably makes it difficult to you observe anything in systematic fashion, other than the state of play at most teams in the area is chaotic. Bravo.