Apparently the Irvine Striker coach, who is also the club DOC, decided he wasn't going to go, even though his girls were scheduled to (and did) play. Nothing like abandoning the team on a critical weekend. The poor girls had to play with the team administrator as a substitute coach. DE didn't even give the girls the courtesy of scheduling a stand in coach from his club staff. If there aren't enough qualified coaches to go around, how are the Strikers going to meet the Academy requirements?
It's not the first time. Last year's U19 boys played Nike in FL when they were U17. For the entire time (4 plus games) no coach showed up from ISC to coach them. They had to use their team manager and ended up losing most of their games. Parents were really ticked. Heard the girls this past weekend got pounded 6-0 at Nike at HDC (which is local for ISC) because they had no coach and their team manager had to coach. Heard those parents are also ticked, as they should be. Interesting too, that DE and RM were spotted that same day at the Premer Fields down in SJC coaching the older boys. As far as meeting the Academy requirements...your question is valid as they only have one U16 and one U18 team. Whereas the other local Academy clubs have multiple teams to pull the best players from. Many of their, ISC, coaches have left in the last year or so, and we have not seen substantial replacements. One wonders how the USSF will monitor the coaching requirements?