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Anonymous wrote:Where is Heloise when you need her?
I agree with the posters who suggested got water and elbow grease. OP may be able to scrape some up to start, but should be careful not to use anything that may damage the finish on her shelf.
Not Arlington, they are one day a week for GK training, and even that tends to get short shrift so the serious keepers have private coaches. Arlington isn’t really great with GKs generally (at least not on the boys side), it just doesn’t seem like they take the position seriously.
ECNLDD wrote:soccermom4608 wrote:For kids who are not likely to be playing at the ECNL or similar level (more like a division 1 NCSL team), does the recommendation still hold to reach out to other clubs directly rather than waiting for open tryouts, especially for a goalkeeper for whom open tryouts may not be as useful? If so, at what point during the year do people recommend starting to contact other clubs?
Always reach out to coach directly, especially for GK; GKs are like qbs, only 1 per team that will be the starter. Most big clubs have GK trainings, so best to attend one of those weekly sessions. Top teams are always looking to upgrade; what you need to do is identify the top teams in the area, in this order, ECNL, GA, and then everyone else and see if your dc can make one of the top local teams and be their starter.
That’s all fine and good, but it’s not responsive to pp’s question.
SDC wrote:This sounds like Loudoun Soccer for sure....
Could also be Arlington. Apparently they overrostered a bunch of their higher level teams to keep kids from leaving during last spring’s exodus by offering spots on higher level teams than they might otherwise be placed. Now that they have the kids all locked in, they are figuring out who they actually want on those teams and demoting the rest. Could explain why the “purple” coach thought he had a spot for OP’s kid but then had to retract it because he had someone pushed down from above into the spot.
RantingSoccerDad wrote:Arch wrote:We were surprised when at the first game there was no check-in of the players by the referees -- it did seem like you could field anyone as long as they wore the right shirt. Then, during matches, a tournament official sometimes would come ask parents to help confirm which players were there or not etc.
I am sure it's not easy running a tournament and getting enough volunteers. Maybe there was a check-in process for teams but coaches/teams didn't get the message and/or chose to ignore it. Who knows. But to any teams, coaches, families purposely trying to cheat that is indeed shameful.
We don’t do check-ins at tournaments. The managers “check in” for the tournament, and field staff keep rosters on hand in case someone raises a question.
We also check equipment on the fly, looking for shin guards and jewelry.
I think it’s just a function of fields being booked solid. No time.
Some tournaments manage to check rosters at least before a final. At the risk of semi-outing myself, our team played in a final this weekend where parents of the other team freely admitted during the first half of the game that they were cheating their roster (and how they were doing it). When it was brought to the attention of the field marshall at halftime, he literally shrugged and walked away.
mdsoccerdad wrote:Heloise wrote:We saw a lot of shenanigans at Virginian this year - kids playing without shin guards or cleats, kids playing without proper jerseys (e.g., no number), a team with two kids playing with the same number, questionable rosters (e.g., dressed 18 for one game and 18 for a different game, but had more than 4 players in the later game who didn’t play in the earlier game). I don’t remember this tournament being so poorly run in the past - was this just a fluke year?
lol. none of this things above are a huge deal. guest player with same number? the calamity!
and each game can have different rosters. what do you think happens with the teams that have 20/22/24 players? you have to play the same 18 every game? is that in the rules for this tourney?
and is wearing cleats a requirement? lol
If you have a max roster of 22 and dress 18 for each game, you can have no more than four players dress for game 2 who did not dress for game 1. If there are more than four new players for game 2, then somewhere in there are ineligible players.
We saw a lot of shenanigans at Virginian this year - kids playing without shin guards or cleats, kids playing without proper jerseys (e.g., no number), a team with two kids playing with the same number, questionable rosters (e.g., dressed 18 for one game and 18 for a different game, but had more than 4 players in the later game who didn’t play in the earlier game). I don’t remember this tournament being so poorly run in the past - was this just a fluke year?
RedCard wrote:RedCard wrote:S0ccerdad wrote:RedCard wrote:[
Yes, Arlington offers a middle school soccer league. I know little about this league and will investigate. From what I can gather online, the league only offers a fall season. There is no spring season. But I could be mistaken. I know nothing about the level-of-play. Hopefully it is more competitive than rec soccer.
Arlington has a very large middle school rec program with 10-12 teams per grade on both the girls and boys side. Teams have both a fall and spring season. Season is 8 games and includes at least 1 practice per week.
I'd also add the one of the unique features of Arlington is that they also have a self-contained (i.e., not part of the Suburban Friendship League) with 20+ teams on the boys side and 16 on the girls side.
Thanks for the info. How is the level-of-play? Better than rec?
I just found this article indicating that Arlington's middle school sports program could potentially be eliminated due to budget constraints:
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https://www.insidenova.com/news/arlington/budget-cuts-could-imperil-arlington-middle-school-sports/article_db250602-8714-11eb-b396-0fa81fd8b40e.html
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Hopefully this won't happen.
Two things:
1. I think the previous poster may have been confusing Arlington Soccer Association and the Arlington Public Schools middle school athletics program.
2. That article is over a year old and refers to the budget process for the current school year. Middle school athletics were not eliminated for this year, and I am not aware that eliminating them was even mentioned in the recent budget process for next school year (which passed earlier this month).
RedCard wrote:Heloise wrote:RedCard wrote:Heloise wrote:I think it’s completely unrealistic to expect ASA to stop accepting non-Arlington residents into its travel program. We get so many out of county residents because it’s a strong program, but it’s somewhat circular - ASA is a strong program in part because it draws talent from a wide geographic area, and it draws from that wide area because of the strength of its program. But ASA is a private club, not part of the county government, so it has zero obligation to prioritize county residents over the strength of its program.
That said, the lack of field space is a real problem on many levels. It would be great to expand ADP, just like it would be great if travel teams didn’t have to practice on, let alone play games on, the hellscape of Kenmore’s field. Unfortunately I don’t see field availability increasing anytime soon, and ASA certainly isn’t going to shrink the club, so we are stuck with it unless we want to go out-of-county.
If the pro coaches are indeed worth the money, surely they don't need to grab talent that has been developed outside of Arlington?
How about ASA travel figures out how to better develop the talents of its resident population, as opposed to kicking its own residents aside in favor of kids from elsewhere?
ASA is a private company, but it doesn't own Arlington's fields -- it rents them. The fields are owned by the government. Surely that gives the government some leverage?
Are there any other clubs in the region that limit themselves to only residents of a particular locality?
I doubt the county government would be interested in battling this with ASA, for a whole host of reasons. The optics of trying to force a local private business to prioritize (largely more affluent) county residents over non-residents who simply cannot afford to live in Arlington would be pretty bad on its own.
I'm not sure if there are residency requirements for other travel leagues, but keep in mind that Arlington could potentially be facing space constraints that are more severe than in neighboring counties.
While I don't have the data, it seems possible that the number of non-resident kids in Arlington's travel program might be about equal to the total number in Arlington's ADP program. This means that ADP could double in size if non-resident kids were excluded from the travel program.
At the very least, it would be useful if the ASA would share their data. Exactly how many non-resident kids are in the travel program?
I highly doubt pp’s estimate of a third of players coming from out of county holds true across all ASA travel teams. For the highest-level teams, sure, I can see it, but not for teams at the blue or black level. From what I’ve seen, those teams are almost all Arlington residents, and the ones from outside Arlington tend to come from McLean or Falls Church, not Springfield or Reston. If Arlington residents want more options, McLean and PAC are very accessible.
All that aside, if ADP expanded to later years, I think there is a risk that it would effectively kill the rec program for those age groups.
retiredref wrote:I ran for Arlington board a while back and even though I didn't win I did a lot of research while running and can assure the field space issue in Arlington is very real. Since the current AD took over the travel program and they stopped shooting themselves in the foot year after year they have been attracting more and more players from outside Arlington to their travel programs and Arlington is a very small and pretty urbanized county with very limited field space. Field space is a limiter for every travel age group, the last time my son tried out there were ~120 boys trying out and they could only allocate space for 2 teams. If you have ideas for how to fix this or connections in the county to help sufficiently prioritize soccer I suggest you run for board there.
Could you share more on this? This is not an aspect of ASA I have as much knowledge about and would be very interested in your thoughts on the difference.
RedCard wrote:Heloise wrote:I think it’s completely unrealistic to expect ASA to stop accepting non-Arlington residents into its travel program. We get so many out of county residents because it’s a strong program, but it’s somewhat circular - ASA is a strong program in part because it draws talent from a wide geographic area, and it draws from that wide area because of the strength of its program. But ASA is a private club, not part of the county government, so it has zero obligation to prioritize county residents over the strength of its program.
That said, the lack of field space is a real problem on many levels. It would be great to expand ADP, just like it would be great if travel teams didn’t have to practice on, let alone play games on, the hellscape of Kenmore’s field. Unfortunately I don’t see field availability increasing anytime soon, and ASA certainly isn’t going to shrink the club, so we are stuck with it unless we want to go out-of-county.
If the pro coaches are indeed worth the money, surely they don't need to grab talent that has been developed outside of Arlington?
How about ASA travel figures out how to better develop the talents of its resident population, as opposed to kicking its own residents aside in favor of kids from elsewhere?
ASA is a private company, but it doesn't own Arlington's fields -- it rents them. The fields are owned by the government. Surely that gives the government some leverage?
Are there any other clubs in the region that limit themselves to only residents of a particular locality?
I doubt the county government would be interested in battling this with ASA, for a whole host of reasons. The optics of trying to force a local private business to prioritize (largely more affluent) county residents over non-residents who simply cannot afford to live in Arlington would be pretty bad on its own.
I think it’s completely unrealistic to expect ASA to stop accepting non-Arlington residents into its travel program. We get so many out of county residents because it’s a strong program, but it’s somewhat circular - ASA is a strong program in part because it draws talent from a wide geographic area, and it draws from that wide area because of the strength of its program. But ASA is a private club, not part of the county government, so it has zero obligation to prioritize county residents over the strength of its program.
That said, the lack of field space is a real problem on many levels. It would be great to expand ADP, just like it would be great if travel teams didn’t have to practice on, let alone play games on, the hellscape of Kenmore’s field. Unfortunately I don’t see field availability increasing anytime soon, and ASA certainly isn’t going to shrink the club, so we are stuck with it unless we want to go out-of-county.
That said, the lack of field space is a real problem on many levels. It would be great to expand ADP, just like it would be great if travel teams didn’t have to practice on, let alone play games on, the hellscape of Kenmore’s field. Unfortunately I don’t see field availability increasing anytime soon, and ASA certainly isn’t going to shrink the club, so we are stuck with it unless we want to go out-of-county.
I will believe it when I see it.
retiredref wrote:If you really want to explore your options don't wait for tryouts. See what teams are around you with coaches you might be able to work with and reach out to the coach or the manager. Most teams will let you come to a practice or two to see what it's like. If they are playing futsal or indoor you could guest play with them then or during a preseason tournament coming up soon. Tryouts may help coaches evaluate players but they don't give parents or players any insight into the coach or the team. You need to go to a couple practices and ideally have an opportunity to guest with them to really get a feel for the team and how DD would fit.
Guesting with a different club in a preseason tournament seems like a great way for your current club to find out you’re looking to leave. I have a kid who may look to change clubs after this spring, but I wouldn’t want them to do anything that might jeopardize their position with their current club going into spring season.
I hope this does not mean having to trek all the way out to Winchester for NCSL Division 3 games. Other than that, no real reaction, but as someone who lives inside the Beltway I don't think I am the intended audience for this announcement.