Seven Colorado Rush board members have resigned amid their concerns about the financial practices of the club's (and national organization's) co-founder and president/CEO. Anyone else here old enough to remember when youth soccer was about youth and soccer? Developing.
All it is going to take is a pissed off parent with enough time and money to bring the house of cards crashing down. - Non-profits? Come on!! - Coaches being paid under the table? - Private training (paid cash) on public parks or on the permit of a non-profit? - “Fundraisers” for non-profits that don’t need the money. - Kickbacks for hotel stays. - Club directors having an interest in other entities (video company, land company, sports technology) that their club is required to use. - $300 uniforms that get the club a kickback. - Tournaments where one guy from the club gets a big cut of the gross. While the club mandates that all family members must put in volunteer hours to run the tournament. - Players getting hosed because someone else is connected to a board member. - The cost for coach licenses. And US Soccer mandating a license level to coach in the DA - Directors using club money for personal use. - Tournament “reciprocity” agreements to help “friendly” clubs make money. - Coaches that coach 4 teams and rarely attend games for each team and have a parent cover a game (who’s kid is paying full price to play) - Club coaches also coaching in HS and using that to influence who plays for their club. - College scouts getting “hooked up” with travel and entertainment for attending tournaments that cost $1,000+ for teams to enter. I’m just a lowly coach. But I’m aware of all of the above happening at most clubs around here. Call the local news. Call the IRS. Maybe even the FBI. Nobody blows the whistle because we want our kids to be athletic. And by the time we realize how bad the system is, our kids only have 3 or 4 years left- so we just roll with it until they are too old.
Indeed. I ignored my gut a LOT in my days as a youth soccer parent. I did what I could to support things--served as a treasurer, later as the "hotel coordinator," and got certified as an asst. referee so I could fill in at games if one of the ref crew didn't show up. Wrote a lot of checks, mostly. And the whole time, it just seemed like the machine chugged along with no real inclination to actually develop talent or foster a genuine soccer culture. Politics, money, and the goal of college soccer crowded out all other considerations. As noted elsewhere, my son ended up figuring it out himself. And he did it largely outside of the club system. I don't know how far he'll make it or what his ceiling might be, but he never would made it this far if he'd simply followed the club soccer path without question. Youth soccer gets bigger and bigger, and the results are...not good. Our best and most ambitious players almost have to succeed in spite of our developmental approach.