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[quote=Anonymous]There seems to be a major misalignment of expectations of what people want out of youth soccer clubs and what they actually are.

I see posts holding them to professional standards of the not-for-profit, educational and general business worlds. No-one can blame people for wanting the best for their children but this is miles away from what these clubs actually are.

With probably very few exceptions nationally, youth soccer clubs are run by people with very little or no professional education or business organizational experience. The primary source of revenue is player fees as most are not part of a pro or semi-pro club and youth soccer is not subsidized or affiliated in this country the way it is in others. So you have a very poorly run business that cannot afford quality administration and organization, which affects everyone negatively, hence the disorganization and lack of accountability and transparency. This model relies heavily on volunteerism and nepotism (heavily run by spouses of coaches/directors and parents) - like the soccer, these jobs are executed on an amateur level because of the low pay and standards.

On the coaching side, except for the top teams, these are typically men (and occasionally women) who have played amateur soccer at some point in their lives and have often coached their own kids when they were little enough to claim a few seasons of experience and call themselves a youth coach. Getting a D or grassroots coaching license is the very bottom of the barrel and it doesn't require any qualifications related to working with children and young people the way any other job would. Very few clubs do a legitimate screening and in many other fields some of these people will never qualify to work with children. Some behavior of coaching staff and parent on sidelines is the prime examples of an abusive culture that is tolerated in youth sports but has no place in any other child-centered environment. Most coaches have daytime jobs and do this on the side for various personal reasons (some more valid than others).

Now everything and everyone is not all bad. After all, some of our kids are learning and developing and enjoying the game. But if we have to be fair to them, we'd have to consider the environment that we're willingly putting them in. And simply paying fees with unsubstantiated expectations does not relieve us of our duty to demand the best for our children. It is our responsibility to ensure that our kids are in good hands and that they're having positive experiences. If you're not asking the questions and considering your coach's qualifications, the clubs organization and business practices when joining the club then you're simply punting the responsibility of protecting and nurturing your child to a group of strangers. Complaining on a blog about it doesn't do much either. If we don't start demanding higher standards, we'll never get them.[/quote]

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