Reply to Travel team, 14 yr old not getting much/any playing time

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look, you can all pull the “I’m the paying customer so they owe it to talk to me”. You are doing your 14 year old no favors. Helping your kid advocate for them self has positive impacts in all areas. What if they get what they think is an unfair grade on an essay in school? Are you going to email immediately demanding a grade change? Or if they interview for their first job and don’t get it?

Come on. Almost no kids in soccer now are making it pro or even to college. There are life skills to be learned being on a sports team beyond the game and this is one of them. Help your kid become mature and advocate for themself. The coach will respect them, AND YOU, more.[/quote]

Nope.  Not the job of a teenager to find out why someone I am paying to teach my kid is not doing their job.  Only a coward would hide from having a direct conversation with the person paying the bill.  No, no I will only talk with a 14 year old?  You’re an adult.  Be the adult and have what I would expect to be a series of conversations.

But, bottom line, if you take the money then you have to play the kid.  It is very easy to avoid this problem.  Don’t put the kid on the team.  Problem solved.

Now here’s a couple other points:

1.  Good clubs avoid this issue because they don’t put the kid on the team if they are not going to play them.  This isn’t a new thing.
2.  Good teams have lots of kids on them who are going to play in college.  I recall that it was 14-15 of the 17 girls on my daughter’s u16 team who played in college.  My favorite really was the super smart girl who went to a D3 and played soccer, basketball and golf.  The 2-3 girls who didn’t play in college certainly could have played D2 or D3, but elected to go to big schools.
3.  Finally - guess what?  No one gives a flying xxxx who wins or loses.  My kids played thousands of games/competed in races/competed in  events etc.  Over all those games/activities I could count the ones where it “mattered” if the team won or loss on my fingers.  A couple high school state championship games, 3 or 4 ncaa playoff games, and maybe a few others.  No one cares.

Years ago one of the grand fathers came to most of his grandson’s baseball games when they were playing youth ball.  Over the years his grandkids were on some of my kid’s teams, and everyone got to know him.

His grandkids went to the “other” high school in our school district.  When the two schools played he was there of course, but he rooted for the kids that he knew from little league days rather than for a team.  It didn’t matter that they were playing for the “other” school.  They were “his kids”.

It’s the same with club soccer.  Play hard.  Learn.  Get better.  Have fun.  It doesn’t matter who wins/loses.  (Until pro/college ball - then there will be coaches who will be paid based, in part, on wins.)

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