I'm sure at some point most of you have run across something similar and are curious about your thoughts. I recently discovered that the best rec team in my team's association was scouting and recruiting from the rec team I am coaching (U12 in case it matters). We play in the lowest division of rec, them the highest. The obvious allure being that they are the better team. Another perk is that they are sponsored. I had one player switch before I heard about the scouting/recruiting from a current player, so I'm assuming that's why I lost him to this specific team as he was my best player. They are obviously in contact with another player of mine and talked to him directly after a game. To me it would be one thing if this was competitive soccer. However it isn't. This is rec. It's supposed to be for fun, and if you want to select players and stack a team you should play competitively. Is this something you would shrug off or bring to the association board if you were in my shoes?
That would depend on if it were against your state or club rules or not. It would also depend on what I was thought was best for the player. Improving a U12 rec team by poaching players from other U12 rec teams does not indicate to me that the team coach believes in player development. Quite the opposite. At that age motivated players improve dramatically after a month of practice. Just because it is rec soccer, doesn't mean that you shouldn't be teaching the kids how to play better. When I coached U-Littles, my only objectives were to instill a love of playing soccer and player development. Winning matches was a result of the players improving (and good tactics--tactics alone gets you nowhere). I did run across stacking at the U10 level in a club house league. The club placed all the oldest, most mature girls on one team. It was how the club prepared a team for U11 travel. I don't know if it were club policy or not, because the U10 league was run by the wife of the coach of the stacked team, but I didn't inquire or complain because in the long run it doesn't matter to the kids I was coaching. What they missed by this "height and age" method was the best U10 players and athletes. I had three girls who were better players and athletes than any player on the stacked team, but they were younger and shorter. Stupid coaching strategy. I am pretty certain that those 3 players joined other travel teams the next year.
Pretty sure it's against the rules. The association doesn't allow club team reps to scout and recruit so I doubt they would let other rec teams do it. Plus I've never seen or heard of anyone recruiting until this incident. If the player's parents hadn't informed me of it, I would have never known it occurred. I'm the epitome of a volunteer coach. No kids, just doing it bc I love the game and want to give back. I know it isn't supposed to be about winning so why should I care if my best players switch teams? But it just feels wrong to have them recruited away by an "in house" team.
It is common the guy who runs a rec league and also coaches in rec will have a stacked team. Then if they play a friendly with a club team they can't believe how bad they got beat.
you can't really get away from stacked rec teams. in SAY soccer our division had a really good team head off by one of the board members. His son was really good, his assistant had twin sons, although they were small, they were pretty good. and most of his players were taller than my son, and he's pretty tall. I believe the board member had a lot to do with setting the teams in our division. the second best team also had a group of parents that knew each other, although not every player on the team was skilled, and the coaches son was the best player on the team when we played them. the coach really didn't have much to do with the team being stacked, but he had a hard time encouraging his more timid players to take up more playing time. go figure. the coach that inherited that team when his son went to select was consistently encouraging that group of parents to have their kids play select, but I guess they wanted the glory. that coach and his son too went on select and by that time I was out of the league. In our current league the best teams seem to have a bro-sis combo that are skilled, or even a dad/uncle/bro/sis/cousin combo. those teams are still hard to beat. The best player on my teams is generally my son and he really only plays well when he's in a good mood, and that's just adhd for you. So it's highly unlikely that I'm going to coach a winning team, although my teams do progress during the season if everyone gets on board and comes to practice consistently. It's just part of American youth soccer, team assimilation where they are taking your money and want to meet your requests for ride-share coach/asst coach and so on. so we focus on the things we can actually change and do well, and let go of the things we can't change.
If your team is playing in a lower skill level and the other other team is playing in a higher skill level, then its probably best for development for the couple of best players from your team to blend in with the skill level of the players on the higher team,and play against evenly skilled teams. If the other coach was poaching players and playing in a lower skill level where they crush everyone, then that is bad.
While the line between rec and travel soccer has blurred, the way I view rec leagues is that players are not allocated to teams on basis of ability (skill level), except to balance teams. Stacking a team is the antithesis of recreational play. So are tryouts. I have never known a club large enough to have a house league with divisions based on skill level. And travel soccer is not what I consider rec soccer.
When I was young I had a travel team under 9 age group with a club Gjoa. At that time everyone played 11 on a side. There was a rec team that was stack coached by a Latino that I knew I played against him in adult league play. His rec team was undefeated. The rec club was Joe torre remember him? He asked for his team to play mine in a friendly. I said ok at a local park. We start playing we are scoring against them before the half we are winning 6-0. He is getting crazy because he never thought that would happen. I am getting crazy because I thought we did not score enough against them. I thought we should score every time we had possession. Then he asks me if he could play on his team. I said ok because I thought he would be smart enough not to play over physical against my team. He wasn't so I go on the field and play very physical against him not his kids. He pulled his team off the field before the game ended. He was really mad at me. I told him why I did that to him. Then his kids were talking among them selves saying that they sucked as kids say when they lose big unexpectedly. I told them no they are good, but need to train together more and play against better competition.
That was a sad situation. It sounds like that rec. coach needs to find a more appropriate level of play for his team...somewhere between his current league where he beats up every one, but below the level of your team. Its a wakeup call to many children/parents in rec. at just how high level soccer can go at the club levels. Some of the rec. programs in our area have decided to flight their U14 teams and take their top flighted team out of the local area rec. league play and entered them a low-level club league. It's a little more travel distance, a little more cost (but still way less than joining club) but they get to still play with most of the kids from their school/community and also in a more even level of play to be challenged appropriately. If they played in the highest level rec. league, they probably wouldn't be challenged enough as not all the teams in the top level of rec. are flighted. Also the one rec. program that flights their teams, has one of the best HS soccer programs in the whole state and very few of their HS players came up through a club team either. They have really good experienced volunteer rec. coaches which helps quite a lot as well. I'm sure they are quite the exception and not the norm though.
It happens in our local rec club and the funny thing is the president (and other members) of the board is probably one of the biggest culprits. He has his own kids at different age groups and he obviously sees who is coming up and so steers it that way. Worry about the things you can control. I've lost way too hours stressing about these things. Focus on the players in front of you—if it is about fun, then it will still be fun. The one time a season you have to play this team shouldn't take away from that. Yes, it's shitty. But people are shitty. The decent ones are rare and even the decent ones are forced to be shitty at times by outside factors.
I'm in a big club, we have bronze, silver and gold levels for rec plus a couple of travel teams for each age group. Officially, you can request to be on a team with one friend, and the coach and asst. coach can choose to be together, but their kids can't also choose a friend in that case so there should only be groups of two kids on each team that are chosen. I have noticed and heard that the director funnels the talented kids who really should move up to travel into teams with decent coaches, which stacks the teams but is good for the player development I think. At U12 and up it is hard to have a talented kid play with a parent coach who knows nothing about soccer. A rec coach in our club couldn't poach, but they can at the all star mini-travel level, and rec teams completely change each season. It sounds like your rec club operates like a travel club in that way.
But we're talking about rec here, Nick. It is standard for rec teams, where most if not all of the coaches are volunteers. The coach is almost always a parent of a player (or players) on the team. Whether or not it is good for the coach's child depends on the coach and the player. One way I've seen teams go about stacking teams is to have a parent offer to be "X"'s assistant coach. The league won't honor requests to have kids placed on another team, but they do allow a coach to pick his/her assistant (which means picking their kid). The most creative one I saw was when three dads said that they had work conflicts but would co-coach and had gone through the schedules to make sure that at least one, and usually two, of them would be able to attend every practice. Two of the dads had kids who were in the top 5 in the league, and the other one had twins, who were in the top 10.
To the original post, it's wrong, and it's worth asking a question about to see if they're aware and what their policies are, but the ship has sailed on this season's situation and you would only have a worse situation if the player returned. As for the different divisions, I was curious if the players are supposed to be in division "A" or "B" based on their ability or if the players are supposed to be divided across all teams and the divisions serve as a way of dealing with the inevitable imbalances that occur. If the former, it may be appropriate to identify stronger players in the lower division who should move up, BUT that should be done by the league and they should be placed by the league, not by a recruiting coach. And, what happened to the players who were there before? Are they being bumped down a division or have they quit or been run off? All of that seems somewhat contrary to what most rec programs describe as their purpose and goals. If it's the latter and the divisions are just trying to avoid blowouts, then I'd never allow any changes. But that's me. The fact of the matter is that it takes a strong league (and commissioner) not to bend to these kinds of tactics. And, a lot of times it is easier to look the other way than to tell someone who is paying to be in your league that you are not going to allow it.
Yes that is a way to get a coach for your rec team. But depending on the parent and his relationship with his kid. If he has an assistant it might be smart to have his assistant to work more with his son them himself.
I agree with Nick. Parenting and coaching roles conflict. Coaching a team is different than coaching your child privately. Human nature being what it is, coaches invarible treat their own child differently, often holding them to a higher standard than the other players. As the child gets older peer groups become more important to the child and the difficulty increases.
we're digressing from the topic of rec coach recruiting, but, yes, whether a coach will have success coaching his/her own kid is a highly unique experience and depends on a lot of things. and it works in some situations and not in others, and works in some situations at certain ages and not at other ages. in any event, the parent coach is a pretty standard reality of most rec teams and figuring out how to make it work for everyone is one of the challenges. ps - a certain captain of the USA national team was coached at the highest level by his own dad.... both coach and player took some abuse along the way as a result of their father-son relationship, but it seems to have worked out well in the long run.
I always "stack" my rec teams, but not by poaching from other teams. I go find athletic kids from good families who my kids like and put them on our team. I often find that kids from other rec teams ask to join my team and I will pick them up in the off-seasonif I need players, they are athletic and seem coachable and their family seems nice. I've never sought out a player from another rec team and agree that it seems wrong to do that. I will say that if a rec team is building for a move up to advanced or travel, then it seems more legit than if their sole goal is to dominate their rec league.
League Divisions are created to limit blowouts. I've decided not to say anything about it especially considering I think I'm going to take a season off. I need a little time for some r&r