Good article; as he is says, we all seen or even (vicariously) suffered through a bully coach… However, I tend to wonder if connecting these medical studies back to a bullying coach is a little overdone or off the mark… These medical studies all seem to deal with “chronic verbal abuse,” which I assume has a very specific medical definition/diagnosis and I am just not sure couple of hours a week of “abuse” by a coach would raise to the level of chronic…more like sporadic…. Not defending those bully coaches; not saying don't want these coaches gone …I guess I would just rather have parents calling out bully coaches because they are bad coaches; not because they are supposedly causing neurological damage little Johnny or sally…
If your going to try bullying a player you better be prepared to back it up when you dealing with a street guy who happens to be a player. Not every player is afraid of their coach. So if your going to try an intimidate a player you better know how to read your players before you try it. Same is true for a player I tell players New to a team if you don't agree with a coach be very careful how you respond to what he tells you especially if you want to be on that team. Even a facial expression could tell that coach you think he knows nothing about the game. If the coach even thinks you might feel like that he might make a change to another player.
My daughter plays rec and "club" (although I find the term a bit silly at U9). Consistent trend is that rec parents & coaches are almost always worse than the club crowd. My younger daughter plays U5 and I legit saw coaches and parents this week yelling at children in a demeaning manner. I think something as simple as a mandatory $25 F License would go a long way. USSF should make it free, but we know that will never happen.
Curious what is silly about playing Under 9 club soccer? If they started playing at 5 yrs old. Is rec the same as club if the players has been playing from when they were 5?
I just think it is borderline ridiculous to trot out a bunch of 8 year olds, 90% of which would be more than happy playing rec, so that some adult DoC can pad his paycheck. I don't know how it is in your neck of the woods, but the entire club "culture" around here is ridiculous. Club X fighting with Club Y over a player, Club Z charging an asinine amount of money for a "kit" and "development," Club parents screaming from the sidelines at a bunch of 8 year olds, etc, etc. The club my daughter plays with is probably the most relaxed of the bunch (low fees, affordable uniforms, no cuts, sane parents) but I still get sideways looks all the time because my daughter likes to do training sessions with a coach that is affiliated with another club, like they are going to poach her away or something. She's an eight year old girl not some athletic commodity, she will play where she wants. I was legitimately told that our team couldn't play in a winter league this year based off of our club affiliation. So now, a bunch of Ulittles that just want to play soccer are traveling all over because they aren't allowed to play each other based on which club they belong to. Our metro has about 600k people...and no less than 10 clubs fighting over players, each insisting they are "premier." IMO, the root of the problem is the USYS/USCS divide evidenced by ECNL/DA/NPL/etc; they are diluting talent instead of pooling it. Not to mention, segregating players at 8 and 9 years old because their parents can only afford rec.
Yes and Yes... However in the right environment I would argue that at 8, there is no issue getting players into a dev program - providing it meets the needs of the player and the parents from a location and financial perspective. Unfortunately Rec is generally a fun activity with players who rarely learn the correct fundementals and parents - as demonstrated in this thread, who have little clue regarding the landscape of soccer. USSF needs to fix rec so that kids can learn fundementals up to u10 IMO.
I will tell you what I dislike with some clubs the new clubs. They actually think this is a money maker for themselves. The established clubs I worked for was financed by them owning a local bar or a restaurant the same way club teams were financed in Europe. Clubs were formed by people who came here as immigrants. They started with one field and sponsored one adult team. Then they started youth teams as a feeder for their adult team when they got older. We never charged a kid or parent to play. We did have fun raisers to pay for tournaments like the man of the year dinner dance. We were there to produce players and win or at the very least had a chance to win. When I started forming my own clubs. I never wanted to charge a player to play. People then in our area had very little money. But you had to charge the player something so they would not think they were accepting charity. We charged each player 60 dollars a season. A season consistened of fall/ spring and tournaments. We have them home and away uniforms. Sweat suits and equipment bags a nice deal. Plus they could pay us in payments as little as a few bucks. Did everyone pay us back some did some didn't who cares we never asked them again for the money.
Unless you are getting fields donated - there is no way to do Fall/Spring for under $500 per player. Besides field space (which is the most expensive), you have uniforms, league fees, field maintenance, ref fees. And then there are tourney fees and indoor which will expand that $500 more so. Not sure how you did it for $60? Maybe it was 1970?
I took it to mean they charged the players $60 and sponsors made up the difference. Sponsors footing most of the bill instead of parents would be a great antidote to pay to play. I just don't think that's feasible in most areas.
Yeah, but a lot of people if not the majority are perfectly fine with that. Rec soccer is seen as a fall activity where their kids can run around kicking a ball, then come springtime their kids will play baseball and stand around throwing a ball. The parents generally don't give a shit about the landscape of soccer or whether or not their kids learn fundamentals. Kids and parents who do care about that quickly move to some sort of higher level team, whether club or just the select team for a rec league.
I'm not fine with it... I think it's very simple to teach the basic fundementals of soccer while keeping it fun. Overall the numbers - in terms of youth participation are down - quite a bit. There are far more "fun" based options - in terms of activities that are available to kids - the big one now is rugby. If USSF wants to increase participation, it needs to include the REC level in this country - not just the top of the heap. Forming some sort of continuity based on a development platform is not hard. Some clubs are doing it at a minimal cost and there is no reason that it cannot be done at a much lower cost - and be extremely fun. I think the parents don't care because they don't attempt to do a small bit of research. Again as I mentioned, the Rec parents are generally the ones I see screaming the most. If they understood the reality - they'd likley demand more.
My guess is Rec soccer today is far better than it was 20 years ago,…and will be even better 20 years from now… Not to suggest “we” should do nothing (although I am not sure I want USSF to necessarily take the lead), but things will naturally improve as our current players become the next crop of parents and coaches… Nobody in baseball, football or basketball worries [too much] about those kids learning fundamentals at a young age from their “community” rec programs…and not because there is some national governing body dictating how development should be done, but mostly because those communities are filled with adults that have played those sports at high level and can pass those fundamentals down to the next generation… At some point, if soccer is truly going to be populist sport in this country, we need to flip the switch from a top down approach monopolized by the USSF to a bottom up, grass roots approach where communities take pride in developing local talent…
My clubs were either on public fields where we got permits. Or in Brooklyn the head of amature soccer had the permits for a lot of fields. I made it might business to become his new best friend. So he let me play on those fields when I needed them. Here is how you start your own club. Starting a club is a lot easier then starting a league. You can start a club here in Brooklyn with just one team to start with. Just need to join a travel league to play in our league was the Cosmopolitan junior soccer league which is the oldest youth league in the United States. It started in the 1930s. Live here in NYC there is travel soccer for 6 and up. To do a team like this you need a home field. You might have to pay for use of a field. We paid 40 dollars a game for use of their field plus, and we were the first game so we marked up the field for them. Then you need little things a lot of little things. Need a goals, net, paint to mark the fields, paint machine. Before the paint you have to mark the field so it looks like a field. If you get a lot of rain got to go and remark the field Have to pay for officialing at homegames. Things like a ladder, medical kit, big water jug a lot of etc. Need start up money to buy this stuff, league fees to get into the league, player passes, then fee per team each yr, a refundable deposit that you can get back if your oue no money to the league when you end your club. Need uniforms home and away. Practice stuff pennies, bag of practice balls, game balls, cones and what ever else you need. So that start up money that you need up front could run into thousands per team. I had it. I did it because I felt I had the knowlege to help a players game, and I liked to do it. I had also coached for a lot of clubs before I did it. I had the money and was pissing it away on some stupid things any way. So I thought I would start my own club. Did it twice and while doing it coached for my senior team with another club, and scouted for an A-league team. After i retired from serious coaching started just doing my club and there teams. Never had more then 4 teams on my club.
Most rec parents don't care because they don't care. What "more" do you want them to demand? They're not soccer fans, and they just want to cheer their kid on at something. And the ones who are more into soccer look for something better. And of course you're not fine with it: you're a soccer fan, and you'd like the overall level of the sport in this country to go up. I do too, but am having trouble seeing exactly what you expect US Soccer to do in a country this large with a population for whom soccer doesn't rank very high in their awareness. I know in my town a lot more kids have gotten into lacrosse, and then the proliferation of year round leagues in other sports (baseball and basketball most notably) have drawn people away too. But that's life in the US, we have lots of sports and there's nothing wrong with people choosing to play a different one than we're into.
I think that's probably true for the younger ages, but for the older ages the more talented and dedicated players generally move on to club. My son and I were actually at the fields to shoot goals a few weeks ago and there were some rec games going on at about the junior high age level, so we watched them for a bit. These kids were ********ing hopeless, as gimpy as all get-out, with only a few players standing out who could actually control the ball. It reminded me of rec league when I was that age, minus the really good players who nowadays can more easily find a more appropriate level to play at. But these kids all seemed to be having fun, maybe even moreso without the huge variation of skill that I recall from when I was that age. But I think you're onto something with the coaching, I mean my kid's first coach at age 6 was a fellow parent who happened to be a former college player and whose dad had been on the Peruvian national team, so there are definitely parents out there coaching who know the game.
The club I started off began at $550 for Fall/Spring and then if players wanted to participate in tournaments and/or indoor it was extra. About $750 per year for a 10 month program with 1 tourney.
From my experience I disagree. I believe that many do care. They just do not understand the game and leave it at that. It's one reason why they are screaming (IMO) more than club parents about nonsense. - Run faster - Shoot - Kick it All day long. If we could create a better environment where coaches are provided with tools and support - and to understand the culture of dev soccer vs winning, that could translate to the parents - as it should, which could equate to a more linear soccer youth model as well as one which retains players.
Hey guys, this thread caught my eye. I am a coach up in Canada. Not a full-time coach. But, I can tell you with absolute certainty that results mean nothing in youth soccer. I coach in a small club on the outskirts of Vancouver. I've had the pleasure of helping two kids reach a pro academy and a semi-pro club. I've asked both - "when you tried out did the coach ask you about any of your results?" Can you guys guess the answer....? Same for me, when I make player selections I've never asked and have never heard anyone ask "what was the score of your last game last season?" Let alone the score of a game 2 years, 5 years earlier etc....
I don't mean they don't care about the game they're watching, far from it; I mean they don't particularly care about understanding the game at a deeper level, or the larger context within which watching their kids run around and kick a ball occurs. And that sounds like a noble goal in your last paragraph, but again...I don't think the majority of parents care enough about the development of quality soccer in this country for it to have a huge effect. Yeah, it would be great if coaches (mostly parents at that level) got better support, but it's hard to see that translating to parents who just follow soccer for the few months of the year that their kids play it.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle, try from the perspective of a coach who's trying to keep his job and has parents breathing down his neck about a team's win-loss record, or families who deliberately seek out clubs that are successful in that domain. An example: Pre-age realignment, the core of my son's team (which was then a year younger than him) won the State Cup two years running. And each time after that they got a new influx of players from other local clubs actively looking for a more successful team to play on. Another example: Also pre-age realignment, my son's team was not doing that well, having had a couple poor seasons and a very spotty record. One of the parents finally got so sick of it that he pulled his kid off the team and moved to another local club that was far less development-focused and more win-focused. Totally agree though that coaches don't particularly care when evaluating players, especially good, development-oriented coaches.
I don't think parents need to care about development soccer from a training perspective. But from a cultural one yes. Coaches need to understand the technical end of it but they are also the ones tasks to set the pace - to get the parents to focus on whether their player is having fun and getting better - willing to take risks. Sports, music and so on are designed to do more than just provide a physical/mental experience. They can be used for kids to build confidence - learn to take risks and within that, typically find more passion in that experience. That is the part we miss. It's just a fun activity - but it can be far more. That's what a good coach can help mold for his/her players/parents. Indirectly - it's also likely to maintain and even grow the sport - which is currently in decline.
So are you saying that because overall participation is down that soccer in America is somehow in decline? Because that seems like a huge assumption, as there are many ways to measure the health of the sport. Those huge participation numbers never translated to all that much success at the professional or national level so I don't put too much stock in them. Personally I'm fine with losing people who were never that into the sport in the first place in favor of the more dedicated players raising their level. And from what I've seen at the club and DA level, quality of play in this country is vastly improved over what it used to be.