Anonymous wrote:My Freshman son is a GK on a competitive travel team and gets plenty of play time. He is also 1 of 3 GK on his high school JV team.
The Varsity team has 4 GK, 2 are sophomores that the JV coach apparently chooses to play 1 of them for at least half of the JV games instead of giving playing time to his 3 JV GKs.
Fundamentally I was surprised and more than a little disappointed that the Varsity GK are getting playtime on JV. It just doesn’t seem like good sportsmanship when the coach has a full roster and should be focusing on developing his roster of players. Playing devils advocate, if my kid was on Varsity, I wouldn’t support the JV coach playing him when he has 3 JV GK that come out to practice and suit up for every game. Is this just how HS Soccer works and why so many GK… 8 total between both teams. If a Varsity player is a 3rd or 4th string GK on Varsity then chose to play down on JV so the 2nd or 3rd string GK on JV don’t make the team and don’t waste their time practicing and suiting up for JV. Curious to hear what other parents think.
Is this in MCPS? DS is a GK and has friends at multiple area HSs and we don’t know of any that take 4 GKs. His varsity team has 2 which seems to be the norm. JV has 2 but was supposed to have 3. Rumor is one of the kids turned down the spot. I can see having 3 since GKs are injury prone. But 4 is excessive. I have not heard of varsity players moving down to JV to play, only the reverse. It would make sense if the JV team was without a GK due to injury but that’s not your case. I would assume this is simply a case of the coach not having faith in the GKs who aren’t playing. However it’s also good for kids to go into HS sports with realistic expectations. As a 9th grader, our son knew that he could make the team and sit the entire season. He really wanted to make varsity in 10th and we asked him if he’d be ok if it meant sitting since he’d likely be the youngest. He still insisted it was what he wanted to do and so far it’s gone ok. But next year he might be knocked out of his spot if a better player comes along. Some coaches seem to go by seniority but my son’s goes by who is strongest.