Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

[Anonymous]

VYS is not very welcoming of parental involvement. It's more of a "mean boys" clique than a soccer organization. After the U9 travel formation there's considerable guarding of turf, and I'm not referring to the pristine Arbor Row fields that will never be trod upon by children's cleats but will exist in perpetuity and for generation after generation as an untouchable exhibition of state-of-the-art soccer field construction practices. Also: the Vienna Inn is no place to hold a team party, geez.

[Anonymous]

Arbor Row is open, bro. The Vienna Inn is still a dive bar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Second round? Damn. That's good.

Sweet 16!

Guess things evened out from the fall, when VYS had a couple of semifinalists.

The big VYS issue this season, though, is fields. And a developer and the county not doing their jobs. As if the board needed more headaches.

Frankly, it would be easier if the club didn't have so many people. Five travel teams in U9 boys, and the House league is still immense.

It's like the old Yogi Berra joke about a popular nightspot -- "No one goes there any more. It's too crowded."

The house league is not immense. VYS had trouble finding coaches and commissioners this spring and I'm sure it will get worse next year.

Lack of volunteers does not equal lack of players. I run a school organization (not soccer) that has record-high registration numbers and record-low volunteering.

U9 boys league has 14 teams. U10 also has 14. U11 has 12. U12 has 10.

For better and for worse, VYS attracts a lot of kids, and quite often, their parents aren't really involved beyond dropping them off at practice. What do you do? Kick them all out?

I think it's hard to expect parents to coach when they've had little training themselves and when just about every coach from U8 moves onto travel by at least U10. FPYC has a clinic for all of their kids once a week. Perhaps if house coaches didn't feel they were solely responsible for the team, they might volunteer more.

[Anonymous]

Also, many times parents can't just sign up to coach because they don't even know the schedule. They have jobs and perhaps they're involved in something else like town council or cub scouts. VYS travel has a set schedule whereas house does not.

[Anonymous]

I also noticed VYS keeps their registration up for a long time. If fields and coaches are scarce, I think it's ok to state there will only be X number of teams and it's first come first serve.

[Anonymous]

The VYS house commissioners (I know, this is a travel thread) have their fiefdoms and don't really want outsiders volunteering. It's more comfortable socially to have the same faces from U5 to U12.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The VYS house commissioners (I know, this is a travel thread) have their fiefdoms and don't really want outsiders volunteering. It's more comfortable socially to have the same faces from U5 to U12.

What does this even mean? What's so social about the commissioner's job? What volunteering are you talking about? VYS has a lot of training programs for adults. They just have a very large travel program, so they don't have a ton of house coaches to rely on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The VYS house commissioners (I know, this is a travel thread) have their fiefdoms and don't really want outsiders volunteering. It's more comfortable socially to have the same faces from U5 to U12.

What does this even mean? What's so social about the commissioner's job? What volunteering are you talking about? VYS has a lot of training programs for adults. They just have a very large travel program, so they don't have a ton of house coaches to rely on.

I don't know (probably nothing; it's just spreadsheet labor), but have you ever seen an adult wearing VYS travel-coach swag (the red polo) at Whole Foods? It's the biggest diss a suburban man can flex.

[Anonymous]

Arbor Row is indeed open.

Vienna Inn is indeed a little crowded for a team party.

The rest of this page so far makes no sense, though I'll point out that some House coaches also have those red polos. They're comfortable.

So I'm confused -- VYS doesn't have enough volunteers because the commissioners (themselves volunteers) would rather keep the volunteers they already have?

Does this thread even have any travel soccer parents on it any more?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The VYS house commissioners (I know, this is a travel thread) have their fiefdoms and don't really want outsiders volunteering. It's more comfortable socially to have the same faces from U5 to U12.

What does this even mean? What's so social about the commissioner's job? What volunteering are you talking about? VYS has a lot of training programs for adults. They just have a very large travel program, so they don't have a ton of house coaches to rely on.

I don't know (probably nothing; it's just spreadsheet labor), but have you ever seen an adult wearing VYS travel-coach swag (the red polo) at Whole Foods? It's the biggest diss a suburban man can flex.

I have no idea what you mean.

[Anonymous]

He or she means to insult an easy target.

The more important point from earlier in the thread is the claim that VYS tends to exclude people who would like to volunteer. I have not been excluded, and I do not believe that VYS is more like that than McLean or Arlington, etc.

[Anonymous]

I have never heard of a reasonable person being turned away from volunteering in the house program. There's always something where your help could be utilized.

There were problems on the travel side with volunteers having to swear allegiance to the TD (something that is still in VYS's official travel policies) but that is no longer the case.

[Anonymous]

Those VYS shirts are MILF magnets. Guaranteed to get some digits walking through Giant.

[Anonymous]

Too funny . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those VYS shirts are MILF magnets. Guaranteed to get some digits walking through Giant.

Nah -- it shows off my protruding gut too much.

This thread has taken a strange turn.