O.K. Here's a rant. Why do state assoc's. allow so many players to play on teams they do not belong on? Here's my example. My girls U-14 team played last season at div. III. We show up to the first game and get blown out by a team that we later learned had 6 players from their girls U-14 state cup team. These 6 were far ahead of their other team members and basically controlled the whole game despite all our girls best efforts. We are the only girls team at our club, so have no reinforcements like this to rely on, nor do the other coaches and I believe this is a fair practice and woud not do it. After that we began to play other teams more like ours, but would occasionally notice a few players here and there that we would later find out were dual rostered as well. Fortunately our girls were able to fend off these few threats and we got down to the second to last game knowing we had to come away with a win or tie to go to regionals. The team we played was very sharp, but all of there mid-fielders turned out to be state cup players and we came away with a 1-0 loss because of one of their state cup girls got one past us right toward the end of the game. You can imagine how furious this made us, but there is no recourse for this behavior. I am all for players occasionally playing up to a higher level to get more experience and see where they can improve, but to go down a level, or several levels for that matter so your club appears to have a winning record is absurd. Anybody agree?
Let's say your club has an under 14 team in the B division. Let's also say they have an under 14 team in the A division. Both teams play 11 on a side. Then they register 5 of the A teams a division type players on the B team. This means that those 5 can legally play on both teams. So in a lot of both teams games you will have those 5 A team type players. So if your a B team of another club and play that clubs so called B team you can get blowed away. Then another time you play that B team the game could be played even. It is something some clubs just do. Is this the kind of thing your talking about Surf?
Yes, but we only play teams once a season. You state it yourself, these are "so called" teams. That's exactly what they are. It is just disgusting to place girls on an "A" team on a "C" team just to pad your records. I had previously coached D-4 and never had this problem. I guess as the teams move up the ladder clubs start to get more aggresive about their results.
I agree in principal that it's unfair. But in rare cases, kids who are not getting playing time on A could go down to C for a few games a season, IF it doesn't affect playing time for kids on C. Certainly not A's best players but I could see a situation where I wanted a few kids on A to, say, try to play complete possession soccer. The speed and pressure at the top division is too fast to learn in-game, so bringing them down could serve that purpose. Yes, padding results for the clubs is a silly, petty reason to do it. Our state assoc. has issued "club passes" as opposed to "team passes" so kids are not tied to a team within the club and they can move through teams freely within their age group and older.
Our state has just gone to club passes as well, and put little restriction on their use. The hope is that everyone will "play nice" and not abuse the privilege like in Surf Coach's rant. One restriction that helps is a player is only allowed to participate in one game a day. With most league games being on Saturdays, that discourages sending half your squad to help the "B" team.
In our youth league young age groups up to under 14 play on Saturday's. Under 15 through under 19 play on Sundays.
Just curious...my son's club U9 Academy games are playing 2x40min games a game day, 6v6 incl. GK on 70x50 fields. So you have basically five players covering all of that space and by the halfway point they're all gassed and it just leads to boom ball. Anyone else have a similar setup? Our rec league has U10 7v7 on the same size fields and there is plenty of space and touches. I'm not sure why the state assoc has them playing on such large fields.
This is similar to us. Our league also doesn't allow a player to play with two different teams in the same age group even if they are different divisions. One of the things I really like about my club is that they have no interest in just padding results. I've never understood it from my days playing rec indoor. Ego trips perhaps? My current team was split up because they had a few kids who were excelling to the point where the other kids relied too heavily on them. Those kids got bumped to the U-13 team forcing some of my remaining U-12s to step it up. We are only 1-5 in division 2 but we've been competitive and close in all games but the one against the first place team. My boys have gotten better every game because of it and everyone understands that records are not the end-all-be-all.