Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading those Twitter feeds was like watching a car crash - awful but you really can't look away. You'd think that head's of clubs would behave better, even in the face of attacks. The reputation of some clubs around here is in the toilet because of adults' behavior like this (if you spend any time in travel soccer you know exactly which clubs they are), yet parents still sign their kids up knowing that, so I guess it really doesn't matter in the end to some parents if they are teaching kids good sportsmanship and fair play. I'd rather my player develop and love the game and be a respectful person than be a superstar with some of the awful attitudes that I saw on Twitter from club heads!

Re Kephern Fuller and Twitter spats, here's a thinly veiled attack on him from Beau Dure writing for soccerwire.com:

http://www.soccerwire.com/news/clubs/youth-boys/dure-machiavellis-guide-to-winning-youth-soccer/

He said on both Twitter and PSW that the article was a composite of various area soccer practice, and some of the things in there don't sound like anything that JOGA does.

That being said, I would love to see both Dure and Fuller do an Ask Me Anything thread here. That would be interesting!

I agree that there are some things Joga doesn't do -- such as purposely play in lower divisions to get wins, and teach headers to young kids -- but I think this column was clearly instigated by Dure's duel with Fuller and primarily targeted at him. And I don't love or understand everything Fuller does, but this was an exceptionally lame move by Dure, who used to be a journalist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading those Twitter feeds was like watching a car crash - awful but you really can't look away. You'd think that head's of clubs would behave better, even in the face of attacks. The reputation of some clubs around here is in the toilet because of adults' behavior like this (if you spend any time in travel soccer you know exactly which clubs they are), yet parents still sign their kids up knowing that, so I guess it really doesn't matter in the end to some parents if they are teaching kids good sportsmanship and fair play. I'd rather my player develop and love the game and be a respectful person than be a superstar with some of the awful attitudes that I saw on Twitter from club heads!

Re Kephern Fuller and Twitter spats, here's a thinly veiled attack on him from Beau Dure writing for soccerwire.com:

http://www.soccerwire.com/news/clubs/youth-boys/dure-machiavellis-guide-to-winning-youth-soccer/

He said on both Twitter and PSW that the article was a composite of various area soccer practice, and some of the things in there don't sound like anything that JOGA does.

That being said, I would love to see both Dure and Fuller do an Ask Me Anything thread here. That would be interesting!

Not really; both of them think they know a lot more than they actually do. Dure doesn't even know what's going on in his own club but acts like he knows what is ailing all of youth soccer (Hey look at me, I went to the Nat'l Convention). Keph overtrains some kids in a few age groups and acts like he's figured out everything wrong with US soccer (Hey look at me, somebody with a blog agrees with my approach).

[Anonymous]

What is Dure's club?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading those Twitter feeds was like watching a car crash - awful but you really can't look away. You'd think that head's of clubs would behave better, even in the face of attacks. The reputation of some clubs around here is in the toilet because of adults' behavior like this (if you spend any time in travel soccer you know exactly which clubs they are), yet parents still sign their kids up knowing that, so I guess it really doesn't matter in the end to some parents if they are teaching kids good sportsmanship and fair play. I'd rather my player develop and love the game and be a respectful person than be a superstar with some of the awful attitudes that I saw on Twitter from club heads!

Re Kephern Fuller and Twitter spats, here's a thinly veiled attack on him from Beau Dure writing for soccerwire.com:

http://www.soccerwire.com/news/clubs/youth-boys/dure-machiavellis-guide-to-winning-youth-soccer/

He said on both Twitter and PSW that the article was a composite of various area soccer practice, and some of the things in there don't sound like anything that JOGA does.

That being said, I would love to see both Dure and Fuller do an Ask Me Anything thread here. That would be interesting!

Not really; both of them think they know a lot more than they actually do. Dure doesn't even know what's going on in his own club but acts like he knows what is ailing all of youth soccer (Hey look at me, I went to the Nat'l Convention). Keph overtrains some kids in a few age groups and acts like he's figured out everything wrong with US soccer (Hey look at me, somebody with a blog agrees with my approach).

I understand what you are saying, but I generally enjoy reading both their tweets. I think Dure is a very good writer, and he comes across as a very smart guy. I loved his analysis of the Soccer culture wars on his blog and thought his discussion of the recent CBA negotiations was thoughtful and worth reading. But I get the sense he doesn't know/care so much about the best methods for training kids who want to become professional soccer players (or play well at the highest level they end up being able to).

I've said before that I find some of the Joga tweets to be annoying and way overly dramatic, but it seems likely to me that Fuller is serious about trying to offer very good training for kids who want to take soccer more seriously than the majority of kids around here do. I would be interested in seeing him (and other talented area coaches) do a Q & A covering specific training questions for interested parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is Dure's club?

VYS, naturally.

[Anonymous]

I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

[Anonymous]

Maybe Beau or someone else can give us their views on these week's development in the VYS saga.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

US Youth Soccer and US Club soccer dictate how the ages are handled on the travel side, so if a switch is being made there it will be a national switch. For the recreational side, clubs can build their age groups however they want, and some clubs have switched to calendar years as opposed to seasonal years. Not sure that the groupings matter as long as they line up with other local groups (for rec - so you don't have a kiddo playing against someone who is significantly younger.older than they are) or line up with the national soccer groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

US Youth Soccer and US Club soccer dictate how the ages are handled on the travel side, so if a switch is being made there it will be a national switch. For the recreational side, clubs can build their age groups however they want, and some clubs have switched to calendar years as opposed to seasonal years. Not sure that the groupings matter as long as they line up with other local groups (for rec - so you don't have a kiddo playing against someone who is significantly younger.older than they are) or line up with the national soccer groups.

Op here, I realize it would be a national change, I've heard it's maybe happening in 2016. Just wondering if anyone had heard anything more detailed. This is for travel soccer, seems it would shake lots of things up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

US Youth Soccer and US Club soccer dictate how the ages are handled on the travel side, so if a switch is being made there it will be a national switch. For the recreational side, clubs can build their age groups however they want, and some clubs have switched to calendar years as opposed to seasonal years. Not sure that the groupings matter as long as they line up with other local groups (for rec - so you don't have a kiddo playing against someone who is significantly younger.older than they are) or line up with the national soccer groups.

Op here, I realize it would be a national change, I've heard it's maybe happening in 2016. Just wondering if anyone had heard anything more detailed. This is for travel soccer, seems it would shake lots of things up.

No it would just make it more stupid and take lots of the fun away...Even serious travel kids want to play with kids in their grade, typically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

US Youth Soccer and US Club soccer dictate how the ages are handled on the travel side, so if a switch is being made there it will be a national switch. For the recreational side, clubs can build their age groups however they want, and some clubs have switched to calendar years as opposed to seasonal years. Not sure that the groupings matter as long as they line up with other local groups (for rec - so you don't have a kiddo playing against someone who is significantly younger.older than they are) or line up with the national soccer groups.

Op here, I realize it would be a national change, I've heard it's maybe happening in 2016. Just wondering if anyone had heard anything more detailed. This is for travel soccer, seems it would shake lots of things up.

No it would just make it more stupid and take lots of the fun away...Even serious travel kids want to play with kids in their grade, typically.

Not sure what you are talking about, the teams are a split of grade levels already. This will just split them in a different way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hear that teams will be switching to birth year to determine age groups versus the July 31 cutoff. For example all born in 2003. Is this true, when would the switch happen?

It sounds like something US Soccer would like to do, but it is still unclear if it will happen and when. The closest thing I found to a clear statement on this suggests the decision has been kicked a few years down the road. Not sure how good that source is.

http://talking-soccer.com/TS4/showthread.php?t=122686&page=21

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

No it would just make it more stupid and take lots of the fun away...Even serious travel kids want to play with kids in their grade, typically.

The current cutoff does not actually align with grade unless you are in a state with a 8/1 cutoff for schools. In Virginia, we are 2 months off that to begin with. In travel, the kids on a team are from multiple schools, this is even true on many house teams. If kids are from multiple schools I don't think it matters to the kids that one kid is in 4th grade and another is 5th grade. They would all still be less than a year apart in age.

One option would be switch the travel leagues to birth year and allow house leagues to use whatever calendar they want. Let the house leagues exactly match their state's school cutoff if that's what they want.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. When AAU basketball switched from grade- to age-based rules last fall, entire AAU programs imploded overnight (they'd been heavily based on home-schooled "hold back" players who had essentially been reclassified by their parents starting in elementary school). I don't suppose anything that dramatic would happen here.

Are there a lot of ringers in NoVa travel soccer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. When AAU basketball switched from grade- to age-based rules last fall, entire AAU programs imploded overnight (they'd been heavily based on home-schooled "hold back" players who had essentially been reclassified by their parents starting in elementary school). I don't suppose anything that dramatic would happen here.

Are there a lot of ringers in NoVa travel soccer?

I don't think the discussion here is about grade based rules - it is and still would be based on birth date. The question is when does that birthdate range begin?

Example:
The current travel soccer model says a U13 travel soccer player can be born anytime 8/1/01 through 7/31/02.
The alternative/proposed model would group kids by birth year, e.g., all U13s would be players born in 2002, between 1/1/02 and 12/31/02.

Doesn't matter if your kid is in 6th, 7th or 8th grade. What matters is the date when s/he was born.