Always play up?

It depends on the situation. And it doesn't have to be "always". You can be dual rostered. So you're on one team playing up and another team in your age group. Then you have the best of both worlds.

I don't think it's great to go through an entire season when you're the best one on the team only (maybe once you get to U15+). Want to get better? Play (and practice) with kids who are at least equal to you if not better than you.

Like many things in life, this is not a black/white issue, but has many shades of gray.

 

I don't think I would ever want my son to "play down". If he's the best player on the field in his age group and league, that's fine, but I wouldn't seek out a situation where he's not at least being challenged a little.

And yeah, my boys have both played up in age groups from time to time - usually, as Sam mentioned, in a dual roster scenario.

 

My thoughts are colored by being around occasional pushy parents who (almost always wrongly) believed their kids were little prodigies and needed to be playing up, but I tend to think that unless your player is just dominating at his/her own age level -- to the degree that they don't have to try much to succeed and are maybe even bored -- they probably don't need to be playing up.

Similarly, I'm not sure there's much benefit in being the kid that's dominating to that degree, so I'm not a fan of playing down, so to speak (though I don't remember any parents seeking that out over my son's years as a player). My son guest-played on a pretty weak team in his then-club when he was about 11 and, along with another guest player, spent a weekend playing at a level where he looked close to unstoppable. But by the end of maybe game 2 he was bored, realized most of his teammates couldn't do the things he was accustomed to having teammates do, knew the opposition was nothing like what he would typically see, ...

All that said, I could see dual-rostering being a nice option under the ight circumstances (your player isn't wildly better or worse than either team?). That's never been offered as an option in the clubs my son's been part of beyond occasional guest playing or in situations where an age group lacks enough goalkeepers so a kid plays for more than one team.

 

Like many here, I don't think there is necessarily a correct answer. All I can provide is anecdotal evidence from my own experience with my son. In 3rd grade he played up with 4th graders in his first year of select/premier/whatever (cooler uniforms). That was mostly because he was already playing up in the recipe league and was very good. He played on the club's second team, the b squad. It's probably where he belonged. When he practiced with the A team he played winger/outside mid in a 9 player game. After the season I talked with the head coach and he was surprised he was a play up. My son has decent size. The coach said go back to age and if it's too easy we can move him up. That was the best thing to happen to him soccer wise. It allowed to move centrally as a defensive mid which meant more touches and a leadership role. His teams weren't that great, but he kept them competitive. He learned some intestinal fortitude and grittiness for a few years. He played up in 8th grade but with the birth year switch he was only a couple of months behind. He switched clubs after that and has had a mix of play up and on age.

Had he stayed playing up he would have played a lot of wide positions while he was maturing and not gotten the leadership and touches of playing on age. He doesn't have the wide player body type or requisite speed/quickness to play at a high level, so in some respects some of his development would have gone for naught. Fortunately the transition from the 6 to the CB is not as far.

I also tried to manufacture play ups. We'd go to the park at night or weekend afternoons looking for pick up games. I would walk the track and make him join the games. We were fortunate a guy at our church ran a futsal Friday night at church with his son and teammates friends. They were a talented group (currently a starter on a top 5 college team, a couple more d1 players, a d2 player, some juco players, a couple of D3 kids, at least 3 kids who played in the DA). He trailed them them by about 4 years. That and pick up games were great places to play up and practice.

 

This is an area where I guess you could say mine has regularly "played up" by playing in what are almost non-stop pickup games (at least until the fields close for the winter) at the rec fields at the university near us since he was old enough/tall enough to convince the players to let him on the field. And he definitely benefits, starting with a confidence boost he carries around with him during periods when he can regularly get over there and play.

But based on what I've read in this forum the past few years, I'm guessing this kind of opportunity is the exception for most players.

 

Daughter has been invited to guest-play with her club's '06 ECRL team (she's an '07) this coming weekend, so I'll toss a few thoughts into the mix. I think "playing up" is a good choice for players who're versatile (i.e., can play multiple positions effectively), coachable, and who actively seek out new athletic challenges. It's also a viable option for kids who're moving from a large club to a smaller one, particularly if those players previously participated in a league/level that's simply not offered at the smaller club.

As for parents who pressure clubs into allowing their so-called prodigies to play up? Uh, no.

 

I should add that my U10 son's team plays up in a 2nd-division U11 USYS league. His team is composed of skilled and athletic players, while many of the opponents are...just big/tall. I don't know that playing up has necessarily helped accelerate the U10 kids' development as soccer players, but it has made them a bit more wily in terms of how they evade defenders and how they deal with opponents' size advantages.

 

We love to promote to the point of incompetence. Unless the child dominates playing up, it is better to let them dominate their own age group and gain confidence and skill. Occasionally playing up can be a good challenge, but playing someone up to be the fifth best player at an older age is silly and a waste.

 

I disagree with this. Playing and practicing against people equal or better than you is a good thing. Now, if you're going to be the fifth best player on a squad of 7, then yea, don't do it. But "5th best" out of 13-15? I don't see the harm.

"Dominating" is great as long as you keep dominating. Dominating for years at younger ages then finding out you're "human" can be detrimental.

 

It’s good to get a mix of it all, if possible.

Kids need pushed/challenged. Kids need some confidence. Kids need the opportunity to dominate and to be put in their place.

All of it can lead to growth. Playing with better helps. Playing with worse helps. In the end, they need to play. If the kid isn’t playing quality minutes and quality time in relation to training and competition, then playing up isn’t beneficial, but neither is playing within the age group. Kids need to play. Period.

 

I will tell this story as long as there are soccer parents: I was assigned a team at U12. My club , volunteer coach community travel level, had previously two "A" teams, in the top division, but it was clear they weren't the same. So they decided to take 6 from each and make one clear A team, and have two B teams made up of the prior travel kids "cut" from the A teams and new to travel kids. I had mostly the bottom 3rd of the talent pool, plus the 3 really good kids in the top 10 who unfortuately for them played the same position as the A team kids coaches ;-(

We did ok at U12, those 3 tp 10 kids joined the A team again with roster expansion moving up to U13. Two went on to be captains of their HS teams. But funny thing is, the players on my team who maybe scored 1.5-3 (out of 5) in the previous years tryouts, moved up to be 2.5-4s. Going into u14, they were mostly 3-4.5s. Meanwhile, kids on the A team, who never played, stagnated around 3 or even dropped to 2.5. I reached out during the u14 rostering, saying you know, there's kids on my team who should probably move up, there's kids on your team who might benefit from playing on my team - no, those kids would be too good on your team, your players only look good against lower competition. parents definitely felt like the A team were the 16 best kids, I had the next 22 best, rather than the more likely scenario that the A team had the 5 exceptional kids, I had the 5 least talented kids, and there were 28 kids in the middle of a curve with varying skills that made them mostly interchangeable.

Keep in mind, the club paid external evaluators for the tryouts, so the ratings were independently derived.

u14 season ends, kids go off to freshman year of HS. Shockingly, kids who played a lot on my team earn starting jv and freshman spots over kids who spent u12-u14 getting < 10 minutes a game.

Playing a lot > training with better players but not playing.

 

I'm not disagreeing because I don't know enough to disagree, but doesn't that contradict the idea -- expressed quite a bit over the past decade or more -- that American youth teams have traditionally spent too much time playing organized, official games and not enough time on practice and convincing kids to put real time into working on their own?

Again, I don't know if it's right or wrong, but my own in his last year of HS was put on a really strong u18/u19 team made up of kids from two age groups (u18 and u19) by his club where, as it worked out, he was strictly a bench player in the games that were their real focus, the State Cup. I talked to him about following a handful of his teammates back to his old club for that last year and playing for fun while he waited to join his college team at the end of the summer. He was a hard no on that idea based on the fact that the practices and teammates were much, much more demanding at the club where he'd be a bench player (and would have to fight for the playing time he got).

Granted, what he needed was different than what kids at u12 need.

 

Yeah, there's a lot of detail left out. Like, my sons u11 team, they were the classic "get trounced the year you are on the low end of the 2 year age group, beat up on the teams with younger kids when you are in the top half of the 2 year age group".

Played traditional american kick and chase series of 1v1s get to the 50/50 ball soccer. Every drill reinforced it. Their 3v2+GK drill started with a keeper punt to the 3. Never worked on any kind of possession or build up of play. So yeah, playing for that team 1x a week with 2 practices, maybe not as good as practicing with the top team in the group with more modern coaches 2x a week but not getting as much playing time in the 1 game/week.

I kinda feel like the "playing up" discussion ends at HS, since at that point "if youre good enough, you're old enough". But playing still matters. By HS serious player sshould be
finding places to play informally - pickup with their teammates, pickup with adults at local parks, etc. once they recover from the 20 games in 6 weeks HS season.

 

That's why I finished with this:

Playing is important. Quality match play. Playing in training. Playing for fun. Playing in the "street." However one wants to label it, kids need to compete in a playing setting.

Yes, training is good. Yes, training with "better" players is good. But, if that is all a kid ever does and never puts it to test in playing...it's really wasted. Kids can learn to be quality training players, but then fail when it comes to competition. Same thing applies to "small-sided games" that is highly touted. It is extremely important to include them in either training OR competitive play. But, in the end, a full-sided match has so much more to it than a SSG brings. Players can learn to play in small spaces, but get lost in the big space a full-sided match can bring out.

A friend of mine started a club, while every other club in his area has league play (7 games) and two tournaments (3-6 games added), his club plays friendlies and such instead. So, they did play league, but then added more friendlies and ended up playing 25 games during the fall.

It's not hard to replace a training session with a friendly. Or, it's not hard to add an extra training session that ends up being a friendly. Kids benefit. It's better than traveling all over the region or country for a lousy tournament.

 

I've seen this quite a bit over the years watching my son and those around him -- technical players who look amazing indoors in the winter (we're in a cold climate) whose game just doesn't translate to a full-field, 11v11 game.

When my son was younger and I helped coach his rec teams and was involved in his first club in various roles, I all but begged other coaches I was around to push kids (and their parents) to work at home on their own, with little success. I never understood why that didn't happen more than it did.

 

This isn't about playing up per se (sp?), but about Ponchat's comment about competing. I don't know if my sons journey can be replicated and but it worked for him. We kept him at a smaller club with not as good of players (good kids with whom he's still friends with to this day. He played up his first year in the club, 3rd grade but went back to age from 4th grade through 7th. By a couple of different rankings websites (not got soccer's points accumulation method but ones that compared opponents played with some math behind them) his teams were consistently between 25 and 35 in the state. He played most of those years in the states 3rd division. He was the best player and had an Uber competitive streak. He never played against the big clubs 1st teams in his age group but occasionally squared off against their 2nd teams in tournaments. What he got to do was play centrally, cover a lot of ground and fight to give his team a chance in some of those games. He wasn't a ball hog or a dribblito. He was mostly a defensive mid with a box to box role. He scored a lot but mostly played tough defense and scored when needed. My wife and I would look at each and say that he's scoring in the next five minutes. You could tell in his body language that it was time to tale over the game with a little extra. His team would end up tying a lot of the 2nd Division teams they met in tourneys or state cups. To this day we talk about him needing to have that "City" (club name) mentality and keep grinding. By most measures of Big Soccer boards his career would be a Mega success. I dont want sound like I'm bragging but more of an example how playing at age and not at the best teams can aide development. Had he gone to a better team he may have been a good player but complementary to team success and developed the on field competetiveness.

 

To this point, my 2008 is trying to get in with a summer team of college players. At that age, they *need* to be playing with adults as much as possible but many local adult leagues won't allow it due to insurance. We've even considered having him tryout for the one of the local UPSL teams and forgoing club for his last year if that works out.

 

Not sure where you are located, but UPSL is largely a joke. It’s often compared to Sunday/beer league soccer in many parts.

The level isn’t often great, if you even get to play the games because so many get cancelled. Clubs even are cut during the season.

 

in my area, it has Crew U19s and FCC U19s, so it's much better. Granted, I don't know what the bottom of the table team is like, but the middle is pretty mixed and at least one of the teams beat the Academy teams at least once. But yeah, it's a mixed bag as you look at the UPSL/NPSL divisions.