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[quote=Anonymous]Factors that affect the developmental environment for a player (not necessarily in order):

A. Quality of  Coach.
B.  Level of teammates.
C.  Quantity of Practice Time (#sessioins/week, #weeks/year, 60 v 90 min).  Access to lighted turf fields will have a significant effect on this.
D.  Level of competition.

B, C & D will almost always be better on a travel team than a rec or classic team, but there are situations in which the gap is not that large, and a significant difference in the quality of coach can more than make up for it.  Really good rec/classic coaches also tend to keep more of their better players, which also makes a difference.

I have seen some exceptional rec/classic coaches over the years, who were better than many travel coaches.  Usually (but not always) these are former players.  Many of them have gotten their licenses, and the main reason they aren't coaching travel is just because their own kids don't have the aptitude and/or appetite for it.  These types of coaches are the exception rather than the rule however.  So while I agree that it would be folly to blindly send your U9-U12 kid to a C/D level travel team, just for the sake of it being "travel", the reality is that if you are comparing the quality of rec/classic coaches to C/D travel coaches overall, in the majority of cases the travel coaches are indeed better.

If you are talking about making an elite level team at U13/14 or higher though, the chances of doing that from a rec background are extremely low.  [Andy Najar was not playing rec soccer.  He was playing in adult men's leagues as a 15 year old.]  I'll add another data point as a DA parent, exactly 1 player on my son's came from a B team at a big club.  All of the rest of them were A team players from U9 up.  The same is true with all of the other local DA teams in his age group, some may have a few more former B team players, but that's in part because of the difference in roster size from 7v7 to 11v11.

And no, RSD, the clubs don't keep data on that, so you can't access this information from a keyboard.  The reason we parents know it is because we've been seeing each other on the sidelines at multiple tournaments per year for the last 6 years - not to mention futsal, 3v3, clinics, etc....  It's a small world.  Some kids have moved from club to club, some have stayed at the same club, but it's been pretty much the same kids.  Any DA parent will tell you the same.  To dismiss that information as anecdotal evidence in the sense that it has no more value than someone saying "I knew a kid once .... " is a false equivalence.  [/quote]

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