Reply to youth soccer participation down 23.5% in key 6-12 year age group...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Travel and rec soccer are not the same thing. They are not even the same game. Rec soccer makes it’s money with the younger kids- no refs, no paid coaches, etc. Little supervision of the coaching and no fundamentals. By 2nd to 3rd grade most kids leave rec.

I don’t blame them either. I have seen many kids who showed some promise and interest in the game get stuck at fullback/defense because the coach’s kid play forward or practices where the one kid who has some dribbling skills is tackled and thrown to the ground repeatedly(at 7 years old) because that’s good defense. Till the kid gets hurts and never goes back out.

The rec system is just as big a problem as the pay for play system. [/quote]

At U4 to U11 there is no "rec system" -- there are individual clubs with largely volunteer rec soccer programs of varying quality.

At U11 and above in NoVA/DC -- there is the Suburban Friendship League. Website is http://www.sflsoccer.org    SFL does a great job coordinating inter-club games for 20-plus area club rec programs.   About 700 local rec teams participate in SFL for spring and fall soccer in ages U11-U19.  So there actually are lots of local kids still playing rec soccer beyond U9 or U10 in this area.   All SFL games have paid referees, and there are some high quality players, coaches and teams throughout the league.  [/quote]

[b]Most of those high quality players are travel players or kids who dropped out of travel[/b]. I have seen the numbers and there is a huge drop in the number of kids playing rec at around 3rd grade. In most case that is before the kids have had a really coach and a ref on the field. [/quote]

I don't dispute that there are large number of kids leave rec soccer at 3rd grade.  Some go to travel soccer, some go to other sports, some never had any interest in soccer but their parents made them do it for the exercise.
As for SFL soccer, most of the high quality players I see (and coach) in SFL never played travel soccer because (1) they are multi-sport athletes unable to commit the required amount of time to travel soccer, or (2) are lower income kids who cannot afford $2500 a year in travel fees.[/quote]

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