Now that I'm on the board of my local rec/travel club, I wanted to do a cost comparison between local rec/travel vs the club I coach for. Club soccer: $2,000 for ten months This price includes fall and spring outdoor league fees, field usage fees, refs, 2 tournaments (not including travel), uniforms, indoor winter training 2x per week (November through March), one indoor game per week through the winter, and coaching. Travel soccer: $300* This price includes fall and spring outdoor league fees, field usage fees, refs, maybe 1 tournament, uniforms. About 5 years back I was trying to acquire indoor practice space (it was tough and expensive). Estimating 40 practices over 5 months that's: $400, two indoor leagues would be $200. Finally, add in another hypothetical tournament to make it a more even comparison: about $100 in registration fees. So approximate total cost of Travel soccer here is $1000 As I'm looking at it, The other $1000 you're paying for is for coaching and MAYBE to be in a more like-minded group of players (read: committed, motivated). This is just from my own unique situation. I know prices can go much higher for Club in big Metro Regions.
I'm sure that's true in most states. In VA where I grew up "Club" and "travel" levels were found within the same organization. You just had the really elite clubs in the top division and everybody else in the lower divisions. In my state, and admittedly it's odd and maybe even backwards, the Club and travel are in completely separate leagues. A really good travel team could not be promoted directly into the Club league as they might be in Virginia. In my neck of the woods, the difference is profound.
In upstate NY where we have several 'premier teams' (not really, but they bill themselves as such) and regular travel teams. They will compete in the same leagues, can be in the same competitions, etc. The Premier teams have recently started playing more and more in EDP regional leagues. As a referee and the parent of one of these 'premier' players, I can tell you that the only difference in some of these teams is the distance you travel to find competition. These leagues are not really any better than some local teams. Quick funny story - a few weeks ago I was ARing a U-16G match and I flag for an offside which the CR acknowledges the call and whistles for it as the defending team GK gets to the ball. Play restarts with the regular offside restart, with ball on ground. Local 'premier' coach gets on my case that this call has made it harder on his team, rather than punting, having to play it on the ground. I reply to him, "you are a PREMIER coach for a PREMIER team, surely playing the ball in this manner shouldn't be too difficult.' Yeah, sometimes I am a really bad as a ref defusing a coach's ire.
Yep. Everything you say is true. For every instance that I see that us soccer is coming out of the dark ages, there still is evidence that we are very much entrenched in the "bad" ways of doing things.
I don't see it as a US Soccer issue. This is parent driven. Status that their child plays "Premier" soccer. These clubs do serve a purpose, to pool together individuals from small clubs. Where it gets weird is when large club players leave en mass to think that they are in a better place. If the Capital District for example had one or two 'all-star' teams per age group as opposed to 7-8 we'd be serving players better. Right now its a dog chasing its tail.
But back to your original point my son switched to a 'club' team from our local club this year. There has been about $1,000+ increase when we take into account. This year he has played more indoor soccer (team registers two teams, so he gets more games). Practice works out about the same as far as # of practices. He's done (doing) 6 tournaments this year (4 with hotel overnights) as opposed to 3 last year. But mind you, our local club is one of the more expensive local clubs, mainly due to our large amount of indoor training (twice a week, on turf Mid-Nov to end of March). That's a large chunk of what you are paying for. Some other local clubs can get away with the $2-$300 base and ala carte on tournaments, indoor practices, volunteer coaches, indoor leagues etc.
I think this is what I found out too doing the analysis of total cost per year if you take out professional coaching and indoor practices. One certainly does not have to be a paid coach to be a good coach.
If we're still in the same woods, community teams can play Club/Cup/Classic. The used to have to win D4 (my club's 99/00 did). They won D3 spring of 2016, but the age group change prevented them from going to D2 - most of the Jan-APril 2000s jumped since all the other teams are aware of the Relative Age Effect . Now one can just declare for it and a committee determines if they fit/where to place them. We charge $230 for u9/15, fall/spring season, 2x week training, about 8 games per season, covers ref fees and some field rental, most of our fields are free for youth organizations. Volunteer coaches. Uniforms are $60 on top of that. We reimburse coaches for USSF & NSCAA courses if they coach 1 year. Coaches get their own space for Nov-Feb, usually free through public schools, enter wall-ball or futsal leagues a la carte. Spring only for u16-20 is $125, $60 uniforms. So far when we've had a team promote to Classic level it's been around $400, that's only happened for our spring only teams so far. If we did a u13-15 most likely it would be about $600/year. We encourage them going to the State open tourney but the parents pay for it a la carte also.
Within our club we have 3 levels: Rec--~$170 per year (really $85 per season) Developmental -- tryout based program with 1 training session with professional coach and 1 with 1 parent coach each week. Cost is $315 per season. Games are all internal Travel-- traditional travel program. Fees vary by age and intensity. Range is $1,800-$2,100 per year