Anonymous wrote:You put them on a no cut team.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“they love the sport, they have fun with it, it is great exercise and they like being on a team” these are the reasons kids play rec soccer. Perhaps adjust your expectations and let them play rec again.

I'm the poster who wrote the long post above, and in our experience, rec soccer just didn't scratch the itch. At the U11 level, my kid played one season of both travel and rec, and they're just totally different experiences. Travel was 9 v. 9 whereas rec was still 5 v. 5 or so, with much less specialization at positions and **much** less passing. My kid could just dribble up the field past all the defenders multiple times a game and score. (And my kid is a B team travel player.). He would try to pass, but there was no one watching and ready to receive the pass. (He is a CM who loves tiki-taka, and rec is basically the opposite of that.)

Practices were run by a really well-meaning parent coach, who has coached my kids multiple times over the years, but who just doesn't know all that many drills. Plus, the kids are **not** all there for the love of the game. Many of them are there because their parents want to get them out of the house and getting some exercise. So, during drills, they're goofing off, wrestling with each other, etc.

Also, rec just doesn't have nearly the fun team dynamic that travel has. In our neighborhood, you're playing with the same old kids you go to school and aftercare with, and there aren't any tournaments or special team lunches. Probably the number 1 reason I keep my kid in travel soccer is so that he learns teamwork dynamics, and he just wasn't getting that from eight weeks of one practice and one game per week.

Anyway, there's that other thread about whether there's a need for something between rec and travel, and I tend to agree there is (though I don't like that poster's model specifically). For the moment, I think we've found the sweet spot with a less intense travel team.

Anonymous wrote:“they love the sport, they have fun with it, it is great exercise and they like being on a team” these are the reasons kids play rec soccer. Perhaps adjust your expectations and let them play rec again.

Anonymous wrote:If you’re in the DC area, there is a team for you. Last summer, long after tryouts, my kid’s club cut his whole team (the B team for his age group)—they lost some coaches, so cut three whole teams from different age groups. That meant that there were a lot of us parents out there scrambling, so we found every team that practiced within about a 30 minute radius, and my kid tried out with three of them and I had one more tryout lined up but cancelled because we found the right club for us.

These were all clubs I hadn’t heard of until I was forced to look, mostly from clicking every link on the NCSL website. (Not helpful if you’re not in DC, but you can still figure out what league travel teams near you play in and contact all the teams near you.)

The happy ending for us is that my kid is now in a club where he fits much better, the coaching is stronger, and I like the parent community more. His team getting cut was such an unexpected blessing.