Has it been for players or more for easing of administration procedures? Not sure if its been because of birthyear but small clubs often seek partners for smaller groups to make viable teams. I've seen the Rush's, GPS's move into areas and take over existing clubs. In addition, I've seen the establishment of larger 'super clubs' around NYC such as Cedar Stars (actually like what I see out of their teams that I've refereed, unlike GPS). due to an inflow of cash. Don't know if they took over others, but they became a by location large club. There are a few others that I've heard of as well.
We’ve seen lots of mergers/acquisitions on the west coast. I don’t think it’s necessarily because of birth year. It seems that DA and ECNL have made clubs come together to have the status of these leagues.
In my area the birth year change definitely was the triggering event of mergers. For years/decades, the club entities were pretty stable. We don't have a DA in my city and I think Club X and Club Y are vying to become those?
This year cost me around $3,000-$3,500 in the end, including the $165 new kit roll out. Son has finally figured out he has no interest in playing in college (smart call, he'll need the time to do his work and acclimate to college life - not the social part that is). For his senior year, going back to his local club team where I've been with all these years.
Yeah, all inclusive my theoretical bill is around ~$3000 (travel, tuition, unis, gear, etc). The kid's tuition gets comped.
Disclaimer: I speak from the Community side of the house. My club's district has really felt the impact of Club X, Club V and Club U spinning up "East" branches and academies. It hasn't affected my club, we send a ton of kids to Club U anyway and a couple of Club X and Club V smaller rivals, one of which used to be CLub V North the last time they tried this expansion thing, before they contracted around 2015. Players which equals money. The state relaxed the rules to coincide with the birth year change, the Classic teams can now have more than 2 teams per age group. There's also the usual arms race thing. Club U was backfill to the ECNL when the Girls DA started, so Club X and Club V jumped into just below ECNL US Club leagues, to go along with their existing USYS regional teams, and Club M and Club N also have regional teams. Everybody and their middle school coach also has an academy at u6-9. So I now have kids in my rec league throwing off the balance because theyre getting 2 or 3 nights a week of paid coach training. Club U's path to the pros got longer by the distance from here to Austin late last year Club X signed on with the nearest MLS team in the other direction. I'm expecting the local open and o-30 leagues to be much better in about 8 to 10 years as a result of all this
Tryouts went well. We had 21 kids show up. We offered 20 and 17 accepted so far. We started out with 12 last fall but were down to 8 by spring playing 7v7. We'll have to form two teams which is a good thing.
I never could figure out why people thought having only one U-Little team per age level would develop sufficient club players for future older teams. Not to mention it is an "anti-expansion" attitude for a sport that wants to grow or a club that wants to promote youth sports.
If the club has the resouces, space/coaches, it's short-sighted not to keep more than one team (if there's interest from players). We believe in our training program and we've seen players jump from third team to first team in one year. Other than that, once you expand from 7v7 to 9v9 to 11v11—you need more players and you want players indoctrinated and developed in your club culture.
My 8YO still has trouble striking a ball. Over the past year, her footskills, dribbling, ball control have vastly improved—I feel that's because we've worked on it A LOT over the past ten months. So I'm just hoping spending the summer focusing on propelling the ball forward will help.
Has she had an eye exam yet? First touch performance also depends on good eyesight so that skill is an indicator. (My nearsightedness didn't become apparent until I started catching fly balls.)
worth checking out at her next doctor appt. But she doesn't have problem tracking or receiving balls. But I am near sighted with astigmatism (and my wife is far sighted) so she didn't win the vision lottery. But neither of ours presented early. I think it's coordinating all the movement into one smooth motion and doing it explosively. My 5YO can strike the ball pretty well already because she has a "don't-give-a-****" mentality to her. My older one is more cerebral and methodical. Doyou have any tips on putting the movement all together. I have her practicing kicking against a rebounder net and also passing against a concrete wall to try and smooth out her technique.
You watch to spot what the problem is. I start with a ball in the air. I use walking to bring out that natural bio rhythm (plant kick land). So I start teaching with players walking and carrying the ball in 2 hands and then drop kicking it into a nearby goal. Not trying to teach drop kick per se. Just establishing a rhythm. (The purpose of the goal is to stop any mishits so its easier to collect the balls.) On goal kicks I will start by helping the player find their natural approach. Often it is 4 steps. Then I help them determine where to start from and teach a routine for how to find that spot. So many keepers have unnatural approaches. Just a bad habit. If the problem is overthinking, I use a penalty shot drill. I line up 5 balls parallel to the goal at the penalty spot. About 1 step apart. The drill is to rapidly shoot all 5 balls from left to right and then right to left. (Use the right foot moving to the right and the left foot moving to the left.) The coaching objective is to trick the player into establishing a rhythm (plant, strike, back, over, and then plant, etc. again). The drill should entice the player to establish a rhythm sooner or later. This (plant strike) is especially good for striking during the run of play. The penalty shot drill also teaches players that some power comes from striking technique. Finishing is where new players usually hesitate and overthink. I use 1 touch finishing drills to banish the fear of missing. It helps with striking in general too, not just finishing. All of these remedial drills should be followed immediately by using the skill in game like conditions so the learning can be transferred to the game and retained long term.
Went undefeated in the Spring. Outscored our opponents 54-4. Beat larger clubs in our area. Still losing players to the larger club. Youth sports can be extremely frustrating. Maybe its time to take the paid coaching offers from the larger clubs and stop volunteering at the smaller club.
what age are you coaching? undefeated and 54-4 sounds like you need to move up a division. you're always going to lose players to bigger clubs. it's the nature of the beast. i'd recommend you spend some time seriously thinking about why you coach and what your goals are before you decide to switch clubs. when i wrote out some personal goals, i had "coach at the highest level possible" at the top of my list. just under that, i had "build a self-sustaining club" for my community. i've realized those two goals are not compatible. if i want to try to turn coaching into my career, i'm going to have to walk away from the project at my current club. for various reasons (hi, hunny), i'm not ready to do that. think about why you're doing what you're doing, and go from there.
It is u10 girls. Unfortunately we play in the highest division int he local league. We are exploring the option of moving to a bigger league with better competition but it would involve 90-120 minutes of travel for games. I certainly understand the evaluating my goals and being sure before making a switch. Leaving for the bigger club has been an option for years but I have resisted the temptation because the club I now coach at is the club I grew up playing in and beyond coaching I serve as the Director of Coaching. This is my local community and I have a passion for it but it comes with many frustrations. I know we will always lose players to bigger clubs but it still sucks. this was just my place to vent. I will go out to player evaluations next week and put together a team for next season. That team will be a great group of girls and I will love coaching them.
Can you just play a year up? That sounds more palatable for U10/11 players than driving hours for a game...
is it a rec league team or a club/travel team? if it's rec, maybe you break up the team for next season and try to get more balance throughout the rest of the teams in the league. if it's travel, that's harder. i don't blame you for not wanting to drive that far if it would be EVERY game. isn't there an option to get home games so you're only driving for half of them? playing up could be an option too, but then you run into the issues with moving to a new format with respect to field size, players on the field, etc. i hear you on the local club, DOC role, etc. that's my current situation too. something that helps me when i get disillusioned is to think about where the club was before i started and where they'd be without me. we've made progress, but it's hard to recognize unless you take the step back to look for it.
@stphnsn Good points about format changes. USSF standards are the same for U11 and U12. He would be facing the change from U10 to U11 next year anyway. So it is no different in that respect playing U11 or jumping to U12. Assuming the local league follows USSF standards. This is actually a good point to make the jump. Playing against U10 travel teams are likely going to involve playing against more physically mature opponents than in the rec league. Likewise playing a year up in rec is going to also be against bigger stronger kids. There are development advantages to it.
Our state association only lets us have 4 kids per team play up between formats so that's something to be aware of. This fall our 11U team had 4 10Us on it. We had more 10Us who wanted to play, but the state wouldn't let us have more than 4. True 11U players can be listed on a 12U team with no issues. The problem arises when you have 10Us playing up to 11/12U or a 12U playing up to 13/14U. I'm trying to break that cycle for our club for the fall season. We're small enough that we don't have enough players for a team for every birth year. I want to get to the point where our players play in the proper format for their age even if that means playing up for a year. That means some players will bounce between "teams" every other year, but at least we won't be looking at the restrictions for players playing up a format.
It is a travel/club team. You are correct that half the games would be home games. I have no problem with the drive but many parents are not wanting to commit to it(other kids, other sports, etc...). We have decided at this point to get in as many tournaments as we can to hopefully find better competition. We have discussed playing up. We will be moving to 9 v. 9 anyways and a bigger field so we already have to go through the new format changes in regards to field and players on the field. My worry is will we be getting better competition in terms of soccer or just in physicality. I appreciate all the feedback. I hope to be more active on here moving forward. Just frustrated yesterday hearing from one parent that we had 3 kids leaving to go to the "bigger club" to get "better coaching" when we beat them in the spring 3-0. I know its the nature of how things work and I will coach the kids I have in front of me to the best of my ability and have a blast doing it.
No not at all and I expected a response like that. That is specifically why I said it was the frustration side of me. Because it was not an accurate assessment of the situation. With that said I know my coaching abilities and there is a reason why I was offered a coaching position at that club to coach that age group last year. So no I don't believe if they leave and spend $1500 more a season that they will get "better coaching". But that is not really the point nor is a discussion of my coaching abilities. As I said I was frustrated yesterday and expressed it here. Some of my frustration was valid(the biggest being telling us this 5 days before tryouts when they had made the decision weeks ago) and some of my frustration was invalid(taking it personal, etc..) I understand this is the nature of youth sports in today's world. All I can do is coach the kids that are in front of me to the best of my ability and that is exactly what I will do. I love the club I am a part of and though it has its frustrations it has provided with me countless wonderful moments and memories.
The quality of the training at that age is completely dependent on the coach. Club has nothing to do with it, but clubs will sell parents on the club. There are some excellent rec coaches. In fact many licensed and professional coaches have coached some rec level too. Even pros have families. I hope that the players leaving don't find that out later the hard way.
Moving forward could you do a better job selling your program, your vision? Do the parents know that you turned down Big Club to stay here ("same coaching for free")?