Anonymous wrote:If you're interested, you can contact me at
soccershot12@gmail.com. Admins please let me know if this is ok, if not, remove this post, I will try find another avenue for interested parties to contact me.
Thank you! I am not in your age range but I created a random email address to start to build my tribe here on DCUM. That was going to be my suggestion.
I feel for you as I have been there but managed to carve out my niche while staying in the rat race (club soccer). Once your kid is good enough, most stuff is free and you dictate terms which make it not a race at all. You are on the right track.
Hint: your tribe will not come from DCUM. Search Youth Soccer Playbook from Kyle Wilson on YouTube. He is fairly obnoxious on social media but that playlist gives the blueprint on how to develop a high level player. He grew up in NOVA and he rails against the system while promoting his own $30k a year residency program subject to the “elite” Florida educational standards. Annoying but nothing in this world is perfect and his free content is really money (pun intended). Read the Croatian Curriculum which is the base of his playbook. You really don’t need $150/hour private training when you have these blueprints and are active parent as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously. The way to know is to watch how your player react to a mistake on the pitch. If they are looking for you, you are moving in the wrong direction and need to ease up a bit. My kid and I have a blast but I don’t take myself nearly as seriously as most of these parents although his training curriculum is serious.
Your best bet is to get talk to parents of kids in your club and other clubs in the spring. I literally walk across the pitch get the contact info for ballers that I saw in those days. These group exists all over but they just aren’t publicized. Most parents are really sick of the club system as the training models are poor and don’t focus on individual ball mastery which is the most important thing you can learn by age 14. You will get shouted down publicly by all of the parents who will be complaining about not getting recruited in a decade so it is best to move in silence and build a tribe behind the scenes. A few folks think the same way you do but it is not the masses. Enjoy the ride!