Anonymous wrote:Is changing the soccer scene in NOVA contingent to USA as a whole or can we lift from the ground up a new environment? All these partnerships, organizations, leagues, ridiculous fees feeding bloated salaries for YOUTH SOCCER and all the charade it has become this college machine scam to sell to parents?

Seriously to what true end?

Soccer is popular in the States but it isn't a cultural touchstone the way that football, basketball or baseball are and it may never become that either.

If you want to take the money out of soccer and other youth sports then it really starts with college sports. College sports is used as a pathway to pro football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer and golf.

On top of it, sports are a pathway into college. There is a tremendous incentive to use a sport to not only get into a college but to have some of that school paid for. This doesn't even take into account the prestige that is associated with playing D1 sports considering the high value we place on playing HS varsity sports. And playing sports in college is rather attainable for many athletes who put in work.

When soccer gets expensive it does so when a pathway to college soccer is an attainable goal.

Soccer that is played that is not being played as part of a pathway is generally not that expensive. (And lets just kill the idea that soccer should be free. Nothing is free, the closest you'll get is HS soccer and that still costs about as much as a youth rec league.)

There is no feasible way to extract high level soccer from the pathway to higher levels of soccer. The closed leagues work for soccer, because they are very effective at filtering players based on skill and most importantly, they are efficient and cost effective for college coaches. Soccer programs do not have the budgets that college football or basketball programs do to be able to scout literally thousands of of players at thousands of schools.

There are lots of cost effective and competitive leagues for kids to play but it is up to the player and parent to know before hand about what they are getting in to. I've seen far to many posts in the pasts complaining about the travel of this league or that league. This is all information that is easily found and you only have your own ego to blame for signing up for it.

EDP has no trouble making it work

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is changing the soccer scene in NOVA contingent to USA as a whole or can we lift from the ground up a new environment? All these partnerships, organizations, leagues, ridiculous fees feeding bloated salaries for YOUTH SOCCER and all the charade it has become this college machine scam to sell to parents?

I can only respond to your first question because the second makes no sense. NCSL (WAGS back in the day) was/is as close to a grass roots local organization as there has been, and what you see is that teams/clubs get to division 1, and then look for more competition elsewhere. It is the competitive desire that fuels this. If you can only point to one cause, it simply starts with parents looking for the best for their kids. I don't think you can ever avoid this basic parental instinct, and as a result, youth sports is in a continuous state of change. Barring youth sports becoming a govt run thing (ahem), I think you're stuck with this scenario which is fed by a mostly free market.

We already have a pretty good solution. NCSL is a large, mostly local, tiered system with pro/rel. Yes, there are warts that are common with many large not for profit youth sports orgs. But by and large, it offers what most people seem to want. And yet, teams and clubs run from it looking for better. If you are not happy with the variety of options available, it seems like it would be better to choose the one that is closest to your needs and put your energies into that.

This is spot on. If you want competitive, affordable, local soccer then support options like NCSL. Many people complain a lot about the current state of travel soccer and then continue to buy the latest travel soccer snake oil. If you do not want to spend $4K - $5K per year, do not want to travel all over Virginia for league games etc. then stop supporting it with your dollars.

big clubs don't like leagues like NCSL. On the one hand they are selling access to more elite leagues, on the other hand, those leagues are set with no possibility of relegation. The last thing they want is fluid movement because they may end up losing out

Hmm, I dunno about that. Most of the coaches I have seen are uber competitive, and like a challenge. They would love to be free from the shackles of development and left to focus on winning games. In fact, that is one main fault of pro/rel ... it tends to contribute to win at all cost mentalities. Alot of folks here think that is a bad thing.

ECNL has multiple tiers, but have any clubs made noise about wanting movement between them?

They probably don't have to. ECNL leadership probably knows that pro/rel would not work well in a national league like ECNL. ECNL schedules are built at the club level across all ages for the most part. When you start doing pro/rel at a team level, it breaks the whole travel and cost model. And pro/rel doesn't make any sense at the club level. Even in a regional league, it would be tough to implement. It works for NCSL because NCLS is not a "club" based league, it is a "team" based league that is mostly local.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is changing the soccer scene in NOVA contingent to USA as a whole or can we lift from the ground up a new environment? All these partnerships, organizations, leagues, ridiculous fees feeding bloated salaries for YOUTH SOCCER and all the charade it has become this college machine scam to sell to parents?

I can only respond to your first question because the second makes no sense. NCSL (WAGS back in the day) was/is as close to a grass roots local organization as there has been, and what you see is that teams/clubs get to division 1, and then look for more competition elsewhere. It is the competitive desire that fuels this. If you can only point to one cause, it simply starts with parents looking for the best for their kids. I don't think you can ever avoid this basic parental instinct, and as a result, youth sports is in a continuous state of change. Barring youth sports becoming a govt run thing (ahem), I think you're stuck with this scenario which is fed by a mostly free market.

We already have a pretty good solution. NCSL is a large, mostly local, tiered system with pro/rel. Yes, there are warts that are common with many large not for profit youth sports orgs. But by and large, it offers what most people seem to want. And yet, teams and clubs run from it looking for better. If you are not happy with the variety of options available, it seems like it would be better to choose the one that is closest to your needs and put your energies into that.

This is spot on. If you want competitive, affordable, local soccer then support options like NCSL. Many people complain a lot about the current state of travel soccer and then continue to buy the latest travel soccer snake oil. If you do not want to spend $4K - $5K per year, do not want to travel all over Virginia for league games etc. then stop supporting it with your dollars.

big clubs don't like leagues like NCSL. On the one hand they are selling access to more elite leagues, on the other hand, those leagues are set with no possibility of relegation. The last thing they want is fluid movement because they may end up losing out

Hmm, I dunno about that. Most of the coaches I have seen are uber competitive, and like a challenge. They would love to be free from the shackles of development and left to focus on winning games. In fact, that is one main fault of pro/rel ... it tends to contribute to win at all cost mentalities. Alot of folks here think that is a bad thing.

ECNL has multiple tiers, but have any clubs made noise about wanting movement between them?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is changing the soccer scene in NOVA contingent to USA as a whole or can we lift from the ground up a new environment? All these partnerships, organizations, leagues, ridiculous fees feeding bloated salaries for YOUTH SOCCER and all the charade it has become this college machine scam to sell to parents?

I can only respond to your first question because the second makes no sense. NCSL (WAGS back in the day) was/is as close to a grass roots local organization as there has been, and what you see is that teams/clubs get to division 1, and then look for more competition elsewhere. It is the competitive desire that fuels this. If you can only point to one cause, it simply starts with parents looking for the best for their kids. I don't think you can ever avoid this basic parental instinct, and as a result, youth sports is in a continuous state of change. Barring youth sports becoming a govt run thing (ahem), I think you're stuck with this scenario which is fed by a mostly free market.

We already have a pretty good solution. NCSL is a large, mostly local, tiered system with pro/rel. Yes, there are warts that are common with many large not for profit youth sports orgs. But by and large, it offers what most people seem to want. And yet, teams and clubs run from it looking for better. If you are not happy with the variety of options available, it seems like it would be better to choose the one that is closest to your needs and put your energies into that.

This is spot on. If you want competitive, affordable, local soccer then support options like NCSL. Many people complain a lot about the current state of travel soccer and then continue to buy the latest travel soccer snake oil. If you do not want to spend $4K - $5K per year, do not want to travel all over Virginia for league games etc. then stop supporting it with your dollars.

big clubs don't like leagues like NCSL. On the one hand they are selling access to more elite leagues, on the other hand, those leagues are set with no possibility of relegation. The last thing they want is fluid movement because they may end up losing out

Hmm, I dunno about that. Most of the coaches I have seen are uber competitive, and like a challenge. They would love to be free from the shackles of development and left to focus on winning games. In fact, that is one main fault of pro/rel ... it tends to contribute to win at all cost mentalities. Alot of folks here think that is a bad thing.

would a club like BRYC even have a viable program without its ECNL membership?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is changing the soccer scene in NOVA contingent to USA as a whole or can we lift from the ground up a new environment? All these partnerships, organizations, leagues, ridiculous fees feeding bloated salaries for YOUTH SOCCER and all the charade it has become this college machine scam to sell to parents?

I can only respond to your first question because the second makes no sense. NCSL (WAGS back in the day) was/is as close to a grass roots local organization as there has been, and what you see is that teams/clubs get to division 1, and then look for more competition elsewhere. It is the competitive desire that fuels this. If you can only point to one cause, it simply starts with parents looking for the best for their kids. I don't think you can ever avoid this basic parental instinct, and as a result, youth sports is in a continuous state of change. Barring youth sports becoming a govt run thing (ahem), I think you're stuck with this scenario which is fed by a mostly free market.

We already have a pretty good solution. NCSL is a large, mostly local, tiered system with pro/rel. Yes, there are warts that are common with many large not for profit youth sports orgs. But by and large, it offers what most people seem to want. And yet, teams and clubs run from it looking for better. If you are not happy with the variety of options available, it seems like it would be better to choose the one that is closest to your needs and put your energies into that.

This is spot on. If you want competitive, affordable, local soccer then support options like NCSL. Many people complain a lot about the current state of travel soccer and then continue to buy the latest travel soccer snake oil. If you do not want to spend $4K - $5K per year, do not want to travel all over Virginia for league games etc. then stop supporting it with your dollars.

big clubs don't like leagues like NCSL. On the one hand they are selling access to more elite leagues, on the other hand, those leagues are set with no possibility of relegation. The last thing they want is fluid movement because they may end up losing out

Hmm, I dunno about that. Most of the coaches I have seen are uber competitive, and like a challenge. They would love to be free from the shackles of development and left to focus on winning games. In fact, that is one main fault of pro/rel ... it tends to contribute to win at all cost mentalities. Alot of folks here think that is a bad thing.

Not sure why the discussion here related to costs and salaries is revolving around coaches. I thought just about everyone on this board was well aware that the money is generally going to those at the Director-level?