My son's club started last year and has experienced a lot of growth over the last year. Part of the reason is that they've hired good coaches and put out a good product. Another part of the reason is some good timing. They entered the area when a lot of parents were becoming dissatisfied with some of the other local clubs for a variety of reasons and provided an alternative. This year, they'll have 2 teams at almost every age group (boys and girls) from U8-U12. They've gone with an A/B format, though they don't call it that. Once rosters were announced, the e-mails and texts started flying about who is on what team. Given the ages of the kids involved, do you think it would've been better to try to make 2 teams of relatively equal strength or is A/B a better approach? I can see the merits to both approaches, but am curious to get the perspectives of others. As an aside, The A/B teams will practice together at the same time, enter the same number of tournaments, etc. so the B team does not get shortchanged at all.
Every club my kids have been associated with have had some hierarchy of teams, at least at formation. If there are different flights in your league and in the tournaments you enter, it makes sense so that kids can play at their appropriate level. Even if they are in the same flight, it allows the weaker kids to get more playing time than they might under a balanced team approach and it helps the stronger kids get pushed by similar kids so they don't have guaranteed starting spots etc. I don't think the age of the kids matter, certainly not by U10 or U11, but some would say that is why U8 or U9 is too early for club and the kids should be in rec soccer. Having said that, the real question is what happens after the teams are formed. Will the teams be considered separate entities going forward and be allowed to compete with each other for new players and for league standing (if you are in a league with promotion/relegation, for instance) or will the A team always get first pick of the new players? Will kids on the B team be able to move up to the A team (and vice versa) and what will the process be for that (tryouts or will the club move kids each year based on a collective decision of the coaches and the technical director)? Can kids move up during the season (our league allows player movement up, but not down, for individual games)? If there is an active pipeline for movement between the teams and the coaches are coaching the players as a player pool on the same days during practice, I don't think it's harmful (except to parent egos) and it it's probably helpful to everyone's development. If, on the other hand, the teams are treated as separate entities, then the club is just providing logistical support for registration and fields. In that case, you might as well ask whether it is fair that one club gets better players than another club. It's just the free market at work. Stick with the B team because you like that team and the coach, not because it has any relationship with the A team.
In my experience, the issue with A & B teams is that too many clubs prioritize the A team. They got more training, more attention, and play in more tournaments. To make matters worse, once a player is put on the B team his or her chances to move up diminish quickly--roster spots on the A team get filled by outside recruiting, not by developing B team players and moving them up. If it's done right, it can be a good thing. And I shouldn't point all the blame at the clubs--the parents often create a self-fulfilling prophecy through gossip and whatnot.
Also, my memory on all this stuff is hazy, but often league & tournament rules factor in--players have to be rostered on a team rather than with a club in many situations, IIRC (and please correct me if I'm wrong). I can understand how such rules were intended to prevent clubs from bringing in ringers, particularly at the expense of regular players, but they can also make it harder to have the A squad vs. B squad rosters be more fluid.
This but as long as the coach is the same and the A/B teams practice together and are mixed during practice, it will allow those players on the bottom end to at least get the same coaching and exposure to training in general as the top end. From that point it's up to the player to push themselves.
It's the first year that they'll have 2 teams at every level so how they handle mobility between teams is yet to be seen. I do know that each team will have its own coach and those coaches will run the practices at the same time. They do try to run things with a "one club" approach and all of the coaches interact with all of the kids, but that was easier to do this year with 5 teams instead of the 15 they'll have next year. Once the rosters were announced, my and my wife's phones starting lighting up like Christmas trees so that's when I had the thought that it might have been easier to make 2 relatively equal teams, if only to limit parental noise. That may be a naive view, though. I'm also have a similar situation arising with flag football in a couple months since we'll have more than enough kids for 2 teams and we're debating how to separate the kids.
"As long as" is the key. And at the U8 - U12 level it's usually less about which players 'push' themselves as it is which are a little older, a little bigger, a little quicker to develop physically.
The parents need to dial it down until they see how it works in practice. The kids will pick up on that implied clique-building quickly.
Sure - if the coach is not making it fun and driving passion then it fails. Not sure if I agree as a whole with the rest of your statement unless it's specifically geared towards girls. u8-u12 you don't often see a majority whom are interested in pushing the envelope.
This part: u8-u12 you don't often see a majority whom are interested in pushing the envelope. But now I suspect you meant that specifically for girl players. As for my assertion--there's at least some research which suggests that kids at the older end of an age cohort get more opportunities, playing time, etc. beginning at a young age. An advantage which is cumulative over several years, so that by the time the younger kids & late bloomers close the gap developmentally, they've fallen behind in terms of opportunities to train and play in competitive environments.
Yes... Regarding the part I bolded out: I think by having all kids practice together under the guidance of one training - maybe with assistant trainers helping, helps to close that gap early on by at least offering the same training as the top players. After all (I would argue) that training at the lower ages far outweighs game play. By u13 I think it's okay to start pushing top players into more advanced leagues such as NPL. But I still think that training should encompass the entire age group. Coaches can move players around as they see fit. For example, my daughter is 6 months younger then the next player in the 2005 group. She's also a bit on the shy end of the spectrum so her and 2 others are sometimes placed in groups where they will benefit moreso - not necessarily with the top older players in any given drill. Coach needs to build passion and be positive at these ages and also recognize that if they really want to be a development club that there needs to be continuity in terms of training but also - within that, it needs to be granualar at times.
I understand the logic behind trying to give all the kids at the youngest ages access to consistent, high level training to temper some early biases but how does it work in practice? At that age you're likely to have a wide range of ability and, maybe more important, interest. Some kids will be ready for more advanced drills and concepts before others. If you cater to the lowest common denominator, they'll get bored. On the other hand, you can't push the kids who aren't ready because you don't want them getting frustrated and throwing in the towel. That's an argument for some sort of A/B system since kids will be playing closer to their level and learning at the appropriate pace at that given point in their life. The problem is that can change quite a bit over time
We've never had a problem with that. You're teaching fundementals up until u10 essentially. If kids have issues with that then they likely should take on something less challenging. U11/u12 it gets more demanding but kids can pick up easily - you would be surprised. Some do not execute as well but a good coach can pick up whether that is do to trouble learning or confidence and I would argue more often then not it's confidence. In that case there are things coaches can do to help. Not taking those players out of games when they are making mistakes - being positive to them so that they feel that mistakes are good which may mean they will not be affraid of taking chances which may mean a goal, an assist or a move that they know from training but were affriad to execute in a game out of fear. Teams can be separated for sure - but not training IMO. That typically means you have a c coach with a c team while the a team gets the a coach. Unless your are charging less for kids to play c soccer the rest of their lives then you're just ripping them off period.
When parents hear A team and B team they think A is the better team are both teams in the same division or is one team in a lower division. I started a club we put in two teams both were in the leagues best division. My partner was a good coach, but we did not have enough players to have two teams. So we had to find more players to round off both teams. I was better at finding players then he was. He kept asking me for some of the players I found. I found them so why would I want to give him players I found? So finally we agreed on doing just one team instead of two teams. We both did the team. We had a roster of 18 players. So we did not have to lose any players. This also put more pressure on the players to try harder at practices and games to become a starter. We gave game shirts out every game. Starters shirts were 2 to 11 and a keeper. It actually worked out pretty well. Finish 2 in the state cup in our first year together. We keep track of minutes played for each they all played about the same number of minutes in the course of the season.
This is very sensible. My issue--and granted, this is largely personal experience & anecdotal 'evidence' so huge grain of salt and whatnot--is that the kids on the B team get written off rather than nurtured. I've written about my son in the past--he was a late bloomer both physically and in terms of competitive drive. If his mother and I hadn't been supportive and a little stubborn, I'm pretty sure he would have been chased away from the game for good before he began to come into his own in adolescence. For every kid like him who had parents who prioritized soccer and had the time and resources to keep coming back for more even though the "system" was implicitly rejecting our kid, there are many others who take the hint and quit for good. Which is too bad for them, but it's even more wrong-headed when you look at how poor the results of our system turn out to be.
I was pretty good. But now I just go to practices and games of other coaches. But I can still help players with their skill work. I even helped my barber with his shooting. We are talking the game while he is cutting my hair. He brings out a ball and he shows me his shoot against a door. He can not shoot the ball. So I demonstrate shooting technique without taking a shot.. He wants me to do it I said in here? He has a little neighborhood store. He said shoot against the back door I did not realize it was a plywood door. Better that it was the ball went right throw the door he had a ball size hole in his door. If it was a solid door it would have rebounded back and broke his front window. nice guy but a knucklehead.
My daughter plays on the "B" team. Her team plays A/B. Is she good enough to play A ? Not at our club, she is 05 and hasn't matured yet. Does she have the drive to play soccer every single second and beat girls out for playing time? Not at this point and she might not ever. Is she still a good soccer player? Yep but soccer isn't her end all be all. She dances and is a social butterfly. We are really comfortable where she is so she can decide whether or not she wants to really pursue playing a high level. The A team is cut throat as it should be. We have time to see if she develops those type of instincts. If she doesn't, that's okay too.
I completely understand. One of the biggest reasons people are leaving one of the local clubs is that they have historically made A&B teams at U8 and it was more or less set in stone going forward. My son's club has taken the view that all the players are part of the same club and that there will be mobility between teams as the kids develop, but we'll see if that materializes. Like many idealized plans on how things "should be", implementation isn't as easy as it seems on paper. For what it's worth, I'm more aligned with your view on all this. I don't coach soccer, but I coach several other sports and the thought of cutting or sorting 1st, 2nd or 3rd graders makes me queasy. My 2 goals in coaching are to make sure they want to come back next season and that they're improving their basic skills. The rest of that stuff will take care of itself in time. But "basic skills" means one thing to the kid who asks which hand his glove goes on and another to the kid who's been playing catch in the yard with dad for 2 years. That's why I think that pool training is something that sounds great in theory but difficult to implement in practice.
My son went through the whole A/B thing and it gets tricky. Each year there was an expectation of movement from the B team players/parents and an expectation of status quo from the A team players/parents. This automatically created tension throughout the year when there were group training sessions, discussions at school, etc. In the end there were usually one or two players moved up each time the age group shifted to add more players on the field and everyone was happy until after the move to 11v11. At this point there were one or two that deserved to move up (and sometimes did) each year but that meant one or two (or more with new players coming to the club) that needed to move down. Different people handled it differently but most went one of 2 directions. Either they moved down but were disgruntled and let everyone know they were too good to be there (parents and players) or they left the club. This is where it gets tricky for the club. Adding a cancer to the lower team is not good and losing players (paychecks) is not good, so what do you do? Our club made quite possibly the worst decision (in my mind) and that was to just keep adding to the A team until the roster size was too big. I believe at that time you could roster 22 and have 18 dressed on game day. This meant 4 players did not suit up but paid the same fees. Parents were upset but not enough to agree to placement on the B team. The solution was to have those players be double rostered or guest play and play games with the B team on occasion which upset the B team when they lost minutes to those that felt they were too good to be there. It got worse when a C team was created because it just caused a trickle down effect. I don't know that there is a good answer to this issue and am just glad that we are done with it. It was easily the worst part of our experience with club soccer. The stress and drama around tryouts each year never ended because even if you "made it" you didn't know when you were going to not dress or be pushed out by a guest player.
How does she feel about dance? Is the school good in your eyes? I got interested in dance only a few years ago. The training for dance is not easy. There might be more injuries in dance then any other sport. Does she like to watch dance on tv. So you think you can dance just started their new season a few days ago. For girls and women it is sort of like our game when it is played well. It more like art disguised as a sport. If she digs it let her do it. I went to a baseball game a few years back. The team had cheer leaders dance in the aisle where we sat to watch the game. When they stopped I asked one of them does she watch that show. They all said yes.
On goal keepers it might be better to be on a younger team or on a B team. Why, because a player can play on both teams not just the older one. So you get a lot of time in a lot of games.