There is no bad choice.

I am leaving a small club and we were prepared for any team to get inside of the club and battle the way up. This was the strategy given to me by a former pro who trains here now locally.

If he goes to MSI, it appears from other posters he will have better talent to go up against weekly in practice and get the best coaching MSI has available. He will have to supplement outside of team activities with small-sided play and training to match what the kids are doing on the major clubs.

If you are in Moco, some options are Next Star, Ballerz and Limitless.

If he gets into a system, Bethesda for example, he will have opportunities within the system to train with the top talent outside of standard practices days. In my experience, the clubs notice when you are putting in extra work, even if it is outside of the organization, and they will promote because they can actually see you progressing.

We were with a small club and did a supplemental training at Bethesda and my child was getting his lunch taken from him at one of the Bethesda trainings. His personality is to fight and he wanted that type of challenge and he grew into the player he is now.

You can accomplish what you want at both but you will have to do it different ways.

Very interesting questions. In my child’s age group, I know many players on the third team or lower at second-tier clubs (such as PPA and Potomac) are leaving for the top one or two teams at smaller or less well-known clubs that play in higher divisions.

Why name MSI but not the other clubs? The only other teams in MoCo with 4 teams would be Potomac and Bethesda.

MSI Gold in their top team (silver is their second team) and from what I have seen are stronger than Potomacs and Bethesda’s 3rd and 4th team.

I would pick MSI Gold.

My DS has been playing on the top team at his current club for several years. He wanted to explore other options this year and attended a few tryouts. MSI seems like an up and coming travel program, and he received an offer to play on their top team as well as a few offers to play on low level teams at more prominent clubs (3rd and 4th teams). It seems like the MSI team plays in more competitive leagues than these other teams. He has aspirations to make one of the higher level teams at the larger clubs in the future and is committed to working hard to get there.

I'm wondering if it would be better for him to accept the offer for the top MSI team and try out again at the other clubs down the line (or hope that MSI continues to go on an upward trajectory and is able to become even stronger), or if he should accept the offer for a lower team at one of the other clubs and try to work his way up from within. I've heard that can sometimes be harder to do. I don't know enough about the individual coaches to say if any would be better for his development, so trying to figure this out. Would love any thoughts from more experience parents!