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ECNLDD wrote:DCpetunia wrote:ECNLDD wrote:"new" to the boards, but feel like we need to get this board more active again. I understand that many do not want to out themselves and being tracked by usernames allows that to potentially occur.
to the pp; if your DD was trying out for months, you should know whether or not she would have a chance at making an upper tier team v. the lowest team that club had offered.
Practicing with other clubs is great in theory; just be prepared, as for the upper level players, it's a small world and don't think for a second that it will not get back to your home club, so be prepared to have that conversation; if you choose to not have it prior to practicing.
Club shopping/hopping happens all the time, but not always greener pastures. If you're not happy with DC playing time, position, club style, culture, etc then you need to do what's best for your kid.
Glad to start contributing to the boards!
"to the pp; if your DD was trying out for months, you should know whether or not she would have a chance at making an upper tier team v. the lowest team that club had offered."
PP here. How? Would the coach have said something to her/me, so that allowing her to continue to practice should not have been read as a sign that she has a shot? She was practicing wih the middle team (3 teams total in the age group). Note that another club that she had been practicing with said specifically that she would make X team at their club, which was very helpful feedback.
Did you watch any of the sessions? Did your DD provide you with any feedback? After 1-2 sessions coach would have good idea where to place your dd. If after a week of sessions and no feedback from coach, then you should meet with them prior to or after session and you would probably get all the info you needed.
Which is exactly what I told the OP - have the conversation and force them to give you an indication. This is what I did not do, assuming that no news (and inviting her back) was good news. But your post suggested that "one can just tell" which is not what you ultimately came around to.
ECNLDD wrote:"new" to the boards, but feel like we need to get this board more active again. I understand that many do not want to out themselves and being tracked by usernames allows that to potentially occur.
to the pp; if your DD was trying out for months, you should know whether or not she would have a chance at making an upper tier team v. the lowest team that club had offered.
Practicing with other clubs is great in theory; just be prepared, as for the upper level players, it's a small world and don't think for a second that it will not get back to your home club, so be prepared to have that conversation; if you choose to not have it prior to practicing.
Club shopping/hopping happens all the time, but not always greener pastures. If you're not happy with DC playing time, position, club style, culture, etc then you need to do what's best for your kid.
Glad to start contributing to the boards!
"to the pp; if your DD was trying out for months, you should know whether or not she would have a chance at making an upper tier team v. the lowest team that club had offered."
PP here. How? Would the coach have said something to her/me, so that allowing her to continue to practice should not have been read as a sign that she has a shot? She was practicing wih the middle team (3 teams total in the age group). Note that another club that she had been practicing with said specifically that she would make X team at their club, which was very helpful feedback.
One tip, and this might be obvious (it wasn’t to me). Make sure to have a frank conversation with the coach your child is practicing with prior to the actual tryout so you know where she stands. Our DC attended practices at a club for 3 months, was never told not to come back, I had email exchanges with coach to confirm it was ok to have her keep attending, etc. then tryouts, and we didn’t hear anything. Anything. I eventually emailed the club and they said “Sorry, your DD made the lowest team and the email announcing that got stuck in our outbox.”
Maybe there were signs (like they didn’t ever say “she’ll make the team, absolutely”) but I would have thought that after all the back and forth, if she didn’t have a good shot someone would have indicated that.
So, have that conversation.
Maybe there were signs (like they didn’t ever say “she’ll make the team, absolutely”) but I would have thought that after all the back and forth, if she didn’t have a good shot someone would have indicated that.
So, have that conversation.
Now - 48, 47
Purchased - 2015, $1.6M; sold prior house and rolled $400K of profit and other savings into new house
Jobs then - Biglaw, nonprofit administrator
HHI then - Over $1M
I assume the avg HHI in UNW (east of Connecticut) is in the $350K range. The higher HHI seems to be across Western in CC MD.
Purchased - 2015, $1.6M; sold prior house and rolled $400K of profit and other savings into new house
Jobs then - Biglaw, nonprofit administrator
HHI then - Over $1M
I assume the avg HHI in UNW (east of Connecticut) is in the $350K range. The higher HHI seems to be across Western in CC MD.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Not quite the same thing, I suppose, but I went with my gut in retiring from Biglaw a decade early when I knew that I could easily bring in $1 million a year for that last decade by just going along to get along and phoning it in. To say I have no regrets is an understatement.
Must be nice! And at least you have no regrets.
Not only no regrets, but blissful happiness that I did it. I'm finding that retirement costs a lot less than folks might expect -- with college, weddings, housing, etc. out of the way, plus you're not still saving for retirement. I just didn't like the job and didn't need the money. I'm also not one who thinks I need to work forever so my kids can get a big inheritance. They're fine without one.
To the Biglaw retiree: how do you spend your time now? I am close to pulling the same trigger, and have been thinking about what to do with the free time in between traveling and visiting my children. Start a small business? Start a foundation of some tupe (we have the money to do that), etc? How do you stay sharp, and relevant?
AMBS wrote:Has any one heard about Liverpool FC international academy soccer training ? Or if you have any experience do you like it ? How is the coaching ? I’m looking for my daughter U11 . Thanks
Our DD's team played their U17s. Decent skills; their players were huge, strong girls and play very, very physically. Coach yelled at the players a lot ("How can you be in the wrong position again?" "Why are we letting them dribble through the middle?") DD's team is good but not great, and was playing a girl down, and tied them. The Liverpool team seemed to get frustrated easily and just resort to putting bodies on girls and blaming each other for mistakes.
DCunited wrote:Travel teams for A and even B teams is political. In the rare instance your kid is Elite everyone can ID that. However coming from a outside team and just practicing with A team will generally not get the desired effects a parent would hope. You have to remember those coaches have to deal with A and B kids parent who has been on club for many cases years. So my advice if kids not elite set expectations and have the kid earn there way up. Target B team and not A team. Tryouts are a farce, they are used to fill in some players on the lower teams. Most slots are locked prior to tryouts.
DD did practice and with, and tried out for, the B team. Practiced with the team all spring. Tryouts ended week of May 1. Still have not heard anything, either way. Have reached out to the coaches to see if DD should come to other practices, try out more, etc.
retiredref wrote:Yes, players that are successful at finding the right fit do not rely on tryouts to find their next team. You can start looking any time. Know you current situation and whether you need to keep it a secret or not, but as the parent you can help by starting to identify potential other teams within your driving range that might be an appropriate level. Your child can also help with this by asking around with friends at school what teams they play on and what those teams are like. When you have identified teams worth taking a look at reach out to the coach or manager if that's the contact information available and ask about attending an open practice. Very few teams will be opposed to setting this up. An open practice has two massive advantages over a tryout--usually you are the only trialist there so the coach can really get a good look at what you can do and it's a real practice so you get to see how the coach runs a practice and what the team is like. When an open practice goes well you can try to keep it going and build that relationship, go to more practices and look for opportunities to guest play with that team so you can see how you would fit in during games. Tournaments, summer leagues, and futsal or indoor in the winter are some great opportunities to guest with the team. If you can't guest make sure you and your child go and watch a game so you can see how the coach behaves on the sideline and how the team plays on the field and make sure it will be a good fit for you. If you wait for tryouts to start looking you may as well put on a blindfold and throw a dart at names on the wall to pick a new team.
When I was a ref I had a massive advantage in this process because I could research the teams out there just by choosing those age groups to work on the weekends so I could see all the teams out there and all the coaches. While you may not be out on a soccer field every weekend like that you could still go watch a few games. The more information you have the better you are able to make an informed decision.
This doesn't always work, BTW. DD did this, this year. Asked to practice with the team; did so every week or 6-7 weeks before tryout. Kept asking coach if ok to keep practicing, coach said yes, told her what to work on, said she was in the mix for a spot, come to tryouts. I didn't get too involved - didn't want to be a pushy parent. Ttryouts came, DD went to all sessions, tried out with the same team (club has 4 teams at her age group - 2007), wasn't moved down to a team lower than the one she practiced with. Tryouts ended 2 weeks ago, haven't heard a thing.
I suspect the worst. And maybe I should have forced the issue and asked for a more detailed assesment of her prior to tryouts. But also feel like the coach should have indicted if she wasn't really "in the mix" for a spot. I get that it is competitive, and they might not want to commit before the tryout in case a better player shows up. But come on, to go through all of that, not be pushy, and get no indication that she wouldn't make it, keep being invited back, then nothing at all? Unprofessional in my view. At least be clear that she would have a tough time making the team.
But let me know if I read it wrong, or handled it wrong.
Anonymous wrote:Our daughter is a rising 9th grader there and we just went through the process.
Stone Ridge no longer does standardized testing, so that's something to think about. But they do consider grades and standardized test scores from existing schools as well as teacher evaluations. They also conduct a reading/writing assessment prior to decisions. In prior years they used the SSAT.
The other interesting thing is SR is the only school we applied to that did not require an essay. They do have a questionnaire the student responds (5 random things) and they want to know what the applicant is doing, so lots of prompts for types of activities. But they explained that the writing assessment is the tool they use to evaluate writing ability and thoughtfulness. [b]There is a parent questionnaire, which I am told is very important to provide insight about your daughter. We spent a lot of time on that piece.[/b][b]
Having just gone through the process ourselves, I can only say that it seems they are looking for girls who are smart, motivated, and busy with a preference for girls coming out of Catholic K-8s. When we met with our school principal about HS applications last year, we were told our daughter is perfect for SR. I still am not sure exactly what that means, but I guess we will find out.
We did this as well. As for what they look for, seems to be as stated above - smart, motivated, busy. These girls are pretty busy with sports, ECs and homework, plus social lives on weekends. Our impression, based solely on what our DD tells us and what we hear from other parents, is there are 3-4 camps of girls in 9th grade: the popular mostly blonde girls (mostly lacrosse players), the super sporty girls who aren't in the first group, and everyon else (mix of sportos, smarties, arties, and whatever else). The popular girls seem to be the minority, and that seems to be the only real exclusive group; the sporty/artsy/smarty girls seem to blur the lines and do a little of everything, which is good. The only real beef I have heard is that socializaton is a bit weird - the popular girls seem to throw (or attend) parties on the weekends and have a very exclusive invite list, and that tranlates into (or reinforces) exclusionary behavior on campus during school. No idea if that is true, but the complaint is that the school has not done enough school-sponsored social events to try to bring the girls together and blur the lines, so that translates into exclusionary behavior. In our exprience, the lack of social events is totally true; only one social with Gonzaga, all year, and very few (if any) social events other than sporting events. SR can do better here.
Even with the exclusionary behavior, seems that everyone is pretty nice to each other on campus. Sports are HUGE - very, very athletic culture. But there are enough athletic options for everyone, not every girl is travel-calibre and they are encouraged to try new things (DD tried 2 new sports during the school year). Overall we are happy but for the lack of social events.
[quote=dmv_directkicks][quote=Amazon22][quote=anonimouswon]This is interesting that no numbers were used. Just don't know how they would track who a player is? Are tryouts a mandatory process for clubs to conduct and they just do it cause they have to? Maybe they already know who they want from prior ID sessions?[/quote]
Guess they sent the invites out to players who showed up for two tryouts. We were only able to do 1 and were supposed to do the second one today but couldnt due to the rain.[/quote]
Emails and texts were sent to registrants about the cancellation today because of weather. In that same communication, it stated "if you would like to attend one of the upcoming training days, reach out to the club". If your child impressed the coaches, one day of a tryout was all that was needed.
Personally, I would rather my kid attend a normal training environment than a tryout with a large number of guests.[/quote]
FWIW, my DD attented a few practices during the season, went to the first tryout, couldn't make the other two and was told by one of the coaches "don't worry, we've seen enough to make an assesment." Haven't heard back yet, but DD also said there is no way she's making the top team anyway.
The best way to make a new team is to play agaist them and impress the coach. Second best is to practice with them if you can and if they let you. Otherwise, playing 5v5 on small field, or doing rondos, only shows a few of a player's abilities. For sure, it shows who is skilled on the ball, quick decisions, etc, but it doens't show full-field tactical awareness, overall speed, ability to read offenses/defenses and react, etc. Imprefect. But that's the system most people use.
Guess they sent the invites out to players who showed up for two tryouts. We were only able to do 1 and were supposed to do the second one today but couldnt due to the rain.[/quote]
Emails and texts were sent to registrants about the cancellation today because of weather. In that same communication, it stated "if you would like to attend one of the upcoming training days, reach out to the club". If your child impressed the coaches, one day of a tryout was all that was needed.
Personally, I would rather my kid attend a normal training environment than a tryout with a large number of guests.[/quote]
FWIW, my DD attented a few practices during the season, went to the first tryout, couldn't make the other two and was told by one of the coaches "don't worry, we've seen enough to make an assesment." Haven't heard back yet, but DD also said there is no way she's making the top team anyway.
The best way to make a new team is to play agaist them and impress the coach. Second best is to practice with them if you can and if they let you. Otherwise, playing 5v5 on small field, or doing rondos, only shows a few of a player's abilities. For sure, it shows who is skilled on the ball, quick decisions, etc, but it doens't show full-field tactical awareness, overall speed, ability to read offenses/defenses and react, etc. Imprefect. But that's the system most people use.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It seems academic excellence (personal or institutional) isn’t rewarded as much as high school grads and parents think or assume it would. Luck, connections and circumstances play a huge role in every person’s professional trajectory.
Academic success matters to get to the next level of academics and/or programs that connect people with professions. No one thinks it matters aside from that.
This.