Just chiming in to say agree with others statements on the club experience is very different depending on if your kid is on the top 2 teams or not. If they aren’t, you will likely get “the luck of the draw” on coaching and practice times. BSC has their nice new training facility and has their club infrastructure more organized than other clubs but 1) the training facility is in Gaithersburg NOT Bethesda and 2) poor coaching on the lower teams same as any club. I too was blown away by the way BSC conducted tryouts but it’s very coach dependent once you’re “in.” We moved clubs for better coaching and to learn “the Bethesda way” they tout but were sorely disappointed. Research the coach and level thoroughly before accepting. And believe me - it could still change anyway which is what happened in our case.

Also, BSC is one of the only clubs not switching their lower teams to school year and staying with birth year in 2016-2017. A big disadvantage for kids with later birth months.

Having endured two kids (two genders) in travel soccer the last 6 years across 3 clubs…. I’m a bit disillusioned. It takes a lot of trial and error and luck to find the right fit. And even then - it could all change.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter played U12 at Potomac and coach there told me that they weren't pulling her up to first team because she was small (short and really skinny) although she had better skills. We have found that a lot of coaches go for size, which has just made her have to work harder....but it starts pretty early in girls' soccer that bigger girls get noticed, esp if they are also fast...

I’ve never had this happen at any club and my dd height peaked at u12. If you have the iq and technical skills coaches don’t care.

Well, based on this thread, the Potomac coach does care

Anonymous wrote:My daughter played U12 at Potomac and coach there told me that they weren't pulling her up to first team because she was small (short and really skinny) although she had better skills. We have found that a lot of coaches go for size, which has just made her have to work harder....but it starts pretty early in girls' soccer that bigger girls get noticed, esp if they are also fast...

I’ve never had this happen at any club and my dd height peaked at u12. If you have the iq and technical skills coaches don’t care.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Potomac is like any club. They’re happy people and unhappy people. I would venture to say the unhappy people at Potomac will be unhappy anywhere. It is a well run club with good coaches and decent communication. However they did let a coach that was brought from the outside create too much turmoil and upheaval and that disrupted what should have been a natural flow of kids moving upward and their progression. However, those kids are developing and will do fine. Most everyone we know from u12 and above is happy and u9 and below seems happy.
The top teams at Potomac can beat anyone and their “issues” seem to be the same that any club has.

No doubt the top ECNL and MLSNext clubs are competive against each other. But I’m curious as to what has been asked. Why are Potomac boys and girls not being invited to USYNT events or do not appear to be scouted by academies? DCU takes kids from the other MLSNext and ECNL clubs all the time (even the ones they have cool relationships with). Haven’t seen much from Potomac. Are the coaches and club not doing enough to advocate for their players?

Is that Potomac’s business model?

1) DCU has its P2P clubs it works with. I would not expect any special relationship to Potomac.
2) BSC does not promote anything to DCU and DCU still find kids at BSC despite the clubs efforts to block them. If you are good enough, they will find you. I would not focus on the club. I would focus on your kid.
3) Potomac coaches SHOULD be recommending players to ID2. Again, if your kid can play, USYNT and MLS academies will find you through that process.
4) Potomac coaches SHOULD be recommending players for the MLS Next ID weekend on Indigenous People/Columbus weekend.
5) MLS academies recruit at the regional ID camp for ODP. I know a few Potomac players in ODP. If you are not making the regional ID camp for ODP, USMNT should not be on your radar. If you kid can ball, they will be noticed.

No horse in the race but a club does not dictate what happens to a kid. Plenty of ways to get seen if your kid can ball. Most kids can’t ball at the level of their parent’s ambition and think it is the club's fault.

This is a lot of confidence in a call to authority.

What are you on about??!!

Coaches are clearly biased for tall players that fit the look.

Kids develop at different times too.

The real issue is no movement between first and second teams. Potomac has this problem in spades - even with trackers.

Anchoring effect is real in the system - no matter how many hours your kid puts in.

It’s a coaches sport - our kids are pawns.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter played U12 at Potomac and coach there told me that they weren't pulling her up to first team because she was small (short and really skinny) although she had better skills. We have found that a lot of coaches go for size, which has just made her have to work harder....but it starts pretty early in girls' soccer that bigger girls get noticed, esp if they are also fast...

How long ago was this?

My daughter played U12 at Potomac and coach there told me that they weren't pulling her up to first team because she was small (short and really skinny) although she had better skills. We have found that a lot of coaches go for size, which has just made her have to work harder....but it starts pretty early in girls' soccer that bigger girls get noticed, esp if they are also fast...

Anonymous wrote:Is he short? Maybe its a napoleon complex thing.

Nope, average/taller and is a well regarded coach. I'm sure a high quality player that is taller will generally be a better fit (at least at this age), but they barely gave the shorter kids a chance. Speed and footwork, not to mention game IQ can beat a good tall player.

Is he short? Maybe its a napoleon complex thing.

Anonymous wrote:Weird to have such a fixation on height for little girls soccer, does it really matter that much?

No idea, maybe it's their U12 1st team coach, he more/less gets whatever he wants. I don't think it was as bad on the U11 side.

Weird to have such a fixation on height for little girls soccer, does it really matter that much?

I was there too, saw a bunch of Bethesda kids trying out. Seemed like 2 coaches per age group was not enough to assess properly. Also, saw the taller girls moved to one specific field and no cross-field movement. Was pretty clear the second field was not being evaluated for the 1st team at all. There was no way they could have figured out the skills by the earlier activities prior to the scrimmages. I guess they had enough kids trying out that they decided to only evaluate the taller kids for the better team.

Watched the U11 and U12 girls tryouts yesterday. Only 2 coaches per age group were evaluating. The U12s had around 35 kids. First a brief 1v1 gaggle and then some 2v2 or 3v3. They let the kids make their own teams so the current 1 team girls ended up in their own mini teams. Then two 8v8 scrimmage fields. It was clear that Alex (1 team coach) just picked the tallest girls for his side and mixed them up with the rest of his 1 team. There was no movement from one scrimmage field to the other… actually in the last few minutes he swapped 2 girls, but they barely had any time before the session ended. Realistically, if the kid was shorter, they had almost zero chance to even show their skills in the 1 team field. The smaller girls’ scrimmage was a mix of decent players and mediocre ones and spacing was an issue even for good players as the mediocre ones crowded and got on top of one another preventing good passing.

Bethesda has not started their tryouts for this age group yet, but at the younger ages they at least moved the kids from group to group to see who can handle playing with the stronger girls, so everyone had a chance to show their skills no matter their size.

With respect, this is the same old sad violin of complaints. Potomac is a great club and the 2016-2015-214 cohort had some growing pains Related with integrating a new club and doing it poorly but I haven’t heard of anything else. Our particular coach is awesome and club has been solid!!! You don’t like it, go elsewhere. The families we know in older teams are happy and trust the clubs development.

With respect, as the OP this thread took a typical turn into a place it wasn’t meant to go. It wasn’t about pathway to pro, or BSC vs Potomac. It was very targeted towards how the specific age group parents I mentioned felt about the club. Appreciate those that tried to answer the question rather than pontificating about other topics.

Anonymous wrote:I know of several kids at U-13 and up that were in the DCU ID process (they would train occassionally with DCU) and at least one other that made the jump (U-16 I think). I've also seen DCU coaches/scouts at Potomac games. If the kid is good, he'll get chances.

Exactly. the latest, is a 2011 who has trialed w DC. if you’re actually in the club, ask one of the TD’s, Potomac is in thepathway 2 pro like most ECNL clubs in the area. Now wether you want to send your kid to DC is another long thread

I was trying to let this thread die, thinking it must be from younger families who are learning what the top level looks like or maybe those 2015’s who left for project 90.

Since it didn’t…. The measure of local youth community clubs is not putting your kid to the USYNT and Pro academy.

The vast majority of kids on any of the local club’s TOP teams (ECNL AND Mlsnext HG (non affiliated)) are NOT going pro.

After you play Orlando city, Philly, RedBull, Miami teams you see the actual level of players on a pro path and enjoy the ride hopefully to high school and academic D3. Even that pathway requires hard work and talent.

The handful that might make it,
stand out: the work rate, the athleticism, the extra work, the game vision. And most of the won’t make it after puberty and distractions of the teenage years.

Enjoy watching your kids play and seeing them learn about the hard work it takes and stop worrying about pro pathways.