Anonymous wrote:We have been with Valor 3 years now and have had a positive experience. Some moving of coaches and some communications issues, but our daughter loves her team and teammates and for us it fits. Each child is different and each family has different goals for their child. If at some point it doesnt work, we will look other places, but most times the grass isnt much greener.

Anonymous wrote:There have been several positive mentions of Burke soccer in this thread, no negatives.

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Anonymous wrote:Not a huge fan of Valor but since it's only been around 3 years, I'll cut some slack for now that they are still trying to figure out who they are. But honestly, all this talk about how they jsut want to fill the teams with paying customers, it takes two to tango here. Year after year parents keep coming back and writing the check. I am not sure why we are blaming them for being in business - if it's not a good one, the marekt will take care of that, no? Otherwise, if people keep lining up and paying, I don't see how the blame and horror is about how Valor isn't any good at what they do.

I agree to a certain extent. Yes, their younger teams have a lot of kids because parents didnt know any better. We did rec league with SYA and we weren't even considering a travel team. They pitched the idea and my kid loved it . First year was great. We had nothing to compare it to. Second year we kinda started mingling with other parents in and out of our club and found out that other teams do things differently. We started noticing the lack of coaching, training, development and third year we bounced bc of it.

So yes while some are writing checks the majority is in the very young age group. Are there families who stay after the 2-3rd year? Absolutely, some love valor but i think the main reason why is because they have never experienced other teams and coaches. I also think a lot of parents want it to get better and they have high hopes it will but there is only so long you can stay with them if your kid is serious. Also once you factor in all the external programs we paid for to make up for the lack of coaching it is cheaper to move clubs and find a great coach than it is staying will valor.

What other programs in the western Fairfax area would people recommend? SYC? BRYC? GFR? Burke? Looking for something that has a GA or ECNL pathway.

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Anonymous wrote:Not a huge fan of Valor but since it's only been around 3 years, I'll cut some slack for now that they are still trying to figure out who they are. But honestly, all this talk about how they jsut want to fill the teams with paying customers, it takes two to tango here. Year after year parents keep coming back and writing the check. I am not sure why we are blaming them for being in business - if it's not a good one, the marekt will take care of that, no? Otherwise, if people keep lining up and paying, I don't see how the blame and horror is about how Valor isn't any good at what they do.

I agree to a certain extent. Yes, their younger teams have a lot of kids because parents didnt know any better. We did rec league with SYA and we weren't even considering a travel team. They pitched the idea and my kid loved it . First year was great. We had nothing to compare it to. Second year we kinda started mingling with other parents in and out of our club and found out that other teams do things differently. We started noticing the lack of coaching, training, development and third year we bounced bc of it.

So yes while some are writing checks the majority is in the very young age group. Are there families who stay after the 2-3rd year? Absolutely, some love valor but i think the main reason why is because they have never experienced other teams and coaches. I also think a lot of parents want it to get better and they have high hopes it will but there is only so long you can stay with them if your kid is serious. Also once you factor in all the external programs we paid for to make up for the lack of coaching it is cheaper to move clubs and find a great coach than it is staying will valor.

Anonymous wrote:Not a huge fan of Valor but since it's only been around 3 years, I'll cut some slack for now that they are still trying to figure out who they are. But honestly, all this talk about how they jsut want to fill the teams with paying customers, it takes two to tango here. Year after year parents keep coming back and writing the check. I am not sure why we are blaming them for being in business - if it's not a good one, the marekt will take care of that, no? Otherwise, if people keep lining up and paying, I don't see how the blame and horror is about how Valor isn't any good at what they do.

Anonymous wrote:Not a huge fan of Valor but since it's only been around 3 years, I'll cut some slack for now that they are still trying to figure out who they are. But honestly, all this talk about how they jsut want to fill the teams with paying customers, it takes two to tango here. Year after year parents keep coming back and writing the check. I am not sure why we are blaming them for being in business - if it's not a good one, the marekt will take care of that, no? Otherwise, if people keep lining up and paying, I don't see how the blame and horror is about how Valor isn't any good at what they do.

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Anonymous wrote:If my kids played for Valor, I would be thrilled about this thread. A lot less competition for their spots at tryouts with people reading this thread and taking a hard pass.

What club is your kid at if not Valor? Any recommendations?

"Definitely Loudoun. They care deeply about all their players and are really heavy of team development not just fast and aggressive kids running through people with the ball whole the ready of the team watches. Really great success rates for professional careers!"

Lol all clubs are similar. Very untrue of loudoun soccer. Nepotism is a staple there. And very much like valor its about money. If you aren't on NVA or RL forget about it.

OP here. That was 100% sarcasm posting. Loudoun does the exact opposite of what I listed lol. They are bleeding players, officially younger and lower team players right now because of it.

Nepotism is 100% true. If you have a kid already in the travel program a younger sibling can to walk straight onto at least a lower team whether they've ever played soccer before or not.

True. If you look at families there it's very interesting to see 3 or 4 siblings all playing on travel teams. I get it's convenient to have your kids all in one place but you can watch the kids and sue some are good other kids wouldn't even make a bottom team at other clubs.

I get most of you are just hate posting but I don't feel like this is as big a problem at Valor and why they'll catch up to Loudoun in the future if loudoun just keeps Fielding subpar siblings on travel teams.

What are you taking about? Valor does the same thing! 😂 they also take all the loudoun kids that couldn't even make a bottom team or live in southern loudoun and that's it. They'll be gone in the next 5 years. They'll merge with someone bigger, Loudoun if they are feeling nice, and that'll be that.

I don't think that's likely. The handful of guys running Valor are making money hand over fist--especially the one who also owns soccer academy-- and do almost nothing. Its a soccer factory that just churns through players but since they have two large rec leagues "feeders"-they have a neverending supply of suckers. They don't even have to worry about qualifying for field permits because they just use the rec leagues permits.

This is true however the one thing they do need to worry about is player retention. Yea you are going to have new kids coming in and be able to have 5 teams at the younger age groups but kids serious about soccer will leave leaving the older teams high and dry.