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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]VYS Parents unhappy with the Board. 
VYS Parents unhappy with the Directors.
VYS Parents unhappy with the Travel program.
VYS Parents unhappy with the House program.

So welcome to VYS where the drama never ends![/quote]

The being unhappy with the House program is what is the knee slapper or head scratcher. Who the F cares about the quality of the House program past 9 years old.

The whole point of house is to grow a player pool and instill enough soccer love and skills to eventually play in the travel program. And then after U9 it is simply a place for kids who did not make travel a place to keep playing fun and inexpensive soccer.

"Where in the area is a good rec soccer program for my 12 year old?" Asked no one ever.[/quote]

I get asked all the time.

Look -- there are some truly pathetic people on this board. A couple of people (and a lot of us who live in Vienna have some pretty good guesses as to who you are -- in at least two cases, we've verified) are upset about how they or someone close to them left VYS. And a few parents are convinced their DS or DD is the next Alex Morgan or Christian Pulisic, and if they can just get to Bethesda South or Braddock Road, they'll prove it.

And then there are people who are so bloody status-conscious that they have to pick on parents whose kids play House league. Or maybe they're "pro" coaches trying to convince parents to keep paying $2,500 for "travel" when, by U12 and U14, travel leagues have sorted themselves out so that a lot of them (NCSL lower divisions, much of ODSL, a lot of CCL2 -- hell, a good bit of VPL and CCL2) aren't appreciably better than the House teams.

If you coach or if your kids play U14 soccer, you've seen it 100 times by now. A kid who had been playing travel comes back to House. He thinks he's going to dominate. After a couple of games, he realizes that isn't the case. That's because there are a lot of other players in House league who used to play travel. And some in House league who never played travel for whatever reason -- generally the family's decision to prioritize its time and money elsewhere -- who could easily walk into a CCL2 or NCSL Div. 3 team and do just fine.

And frankly -- and I have to admit, this is a little scary -- there are some parents who build mini-empires in House league. Some in Vienna. Some in SFL.

So if you want to come onto this board and gossip about people in Vienna you don't even know because you left five years ago, when maybe 2-3 of the current board members were on the board and Eddie Lima and his company were running the technical side, you really have to ask yourself:

[i]What has gone so horribly wrong in my life that I need to come here and talk smack about recreational soccer players? Do I need professional help? Or some sort of activity to occupy my time?
 Why am I so hung up on making sure my kid is better than someone else's in soccer?[/i]

(Unless you're Rachel Moore's parents, in which case, good luck with the Spirit this season.)

So let's answer the question:

VYS rec seems to be OK at the moment. They've just hired a new staff member to oversee it -- an English guy with some impressive academic and licensing credentials who seems pretty responsive so far, though it's early as of yet. They have more training programs for prospective travel players now than they had even when Eddie Lima and Jane Dawber were winning an NSCAA award for their work. The U9 through U14 age groups have a lot of teams. They need to think about returning to SFL for U16 and U19, though.

And that's to be expected because Vienna is a damn nice place to live, full of people who have a good bit of civic pride. It's not just a bunch of people who think of everything from Arlington to Loudoun as one sprawling set of houses, where your self-worth is defined by the square footage of your house and your kid's placement in an "elite" soccer league.

So when you come back to House soccer because you start to realize your DS or DD either has other interests or isn't going to make the team at Madison or Marshall, you'll find a pretty good environment. And you'll save enough money to add some square footage to your home to make up for your apparent failure to yell at your kid enough to make him or her one of the top five percent of Northern Virginia soccer players.

So ... how are the travel teams shaping up for spring?

[/quote]

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