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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up in Europe and find the youth travel soccer business here completely alien.   Why have 9 and 10 year olds sit in a car for 4 hours on a weekend to go beat some poor team 7-0 just to preserve, for proud parents, the conceit that they can’t get a competitive game locally?[/quote]
That's odd.  As far as I am aware there are no 9 and 10 year old teams who have a 4 hour drive for even a single league game per year.  A handful have one or two three hour drives a year, with most games much more local.

[quote]   Why not have them out in local park playing - surely switching those 5 hours with just an hour of playing time for a couple of hours coaching and a couple of hours of scrimmages/pick-up games would do far more for their development (not to mention a more fun childhood)? [/quote]
Well the vast majority of their playing is done locally so you should be happy.

[quote] This strict focus on playing age-groups together is also weird to me - I learnt the most soccer from trying to keep up with the older kids from the neighborhood.[/quote]
As many kids do here.  It's only the organized club practices and games which are strict about age groups - just as they are in Europe.  If your kid has not found a group of friends to play pickup with then maybe you could help him do that?  This is not uncommon - especially in areas with hispanic populations.  Many fields around me have groups of kids and/or adults on them when they are not otherwise in use.

[quote]The non-travel teams apparently often have crap/parent coaches though. [/quote]
Easy to fix - why don't you volunteer to coach?  I imagine you would be welcome.

[quote]Is there a third option?  High quality regular (2-3x/wk) coaching with games against the best of neighborhood/city teams and maybe travel to a tournament once a season?   [/quote]
There are lots of options.

[/quote]

A 4-hour drive for a game at 12/13/14 is still ridiculous [/quote]

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