Reply to Sport travel teams -- what is the reasoning behind them, and at what age?

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Sport travel teams -- what is the reasoning behind them, and at what age?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]U.S. Youth Soccer recommends having no tryouts and no distinction between "house" and "travel' players until age 12.

Obviously, no one actually does that. NoVa goes travel at U9, with a lot of quasi-travel experiences at U8. Some states have State Cups at U9, which is utterly insane.

Good clubs are finding ways to offer professional coaching experiences to players who don't yet make the travel cut at age 8 or don't want to make the extra financial (5-10X what you pay for House) or time (2-4X what you make for House) commitments. So you don't need to feel compelled to go to travel at age 9.

Meanwhile, in baseball, everyone plays Little League with their neighbors. A handful *also* join "travel teams" that don't demand much of extra commitment. And then Madison HS has an awesome baseball team that sends a bunch of players to college baseball teams. Go figure.

House soccer can indeed be limited by a few players whose parents are essentially signing them up for an hour of babysitting and exercise. But when you have enough caring parents to volunteer (rather than just sitting in the stands at travel games and grousing about only being in NCSL Division 3 or whatever), you'll still have a good experience.

And who knows? You may have a late bloomer like Landon Donovan or Christen Press. I'm seeing kids show up for soccer for the first time at age 10, go to a couple of clinics and catch up quite rapidly to all the little darlings ordained for travel success at age 7.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics