I've been asked to create a U12 girl's program and create a traveling team. I've coached a 7 or 8 of the kids before and have a passing familiarity with several of the kids, but I'm a little hesitant to take a have-tryouts-make-cuts approach. U12s around here play 9v9 and I've been told that there's probably a pool of 20 or so players with the interest and/or skill to play travel ball. I don't want to make any cuts because these kids are still developing (we've only had a serious league for 4 years) and because the two best players are notorious for not practicing: they're athletic kids and play soccer, football, basketball, hockey and tennis. One's a fine, fine goal scorer and the other is a natural goalkeeper. Maybe they'll start to take soccer more seriously, maybe not. I'd just hate to cut someone for these two and then have them not really participate. My thought is this: have a squad of everyone (I think I have a decent assistant coach, which is a first for me) and for each game I'd activate 16 kids, and the other four or five would get a game off. I'd let parents know a week in advance so they have some free time. I'm not too worried about keeping the kids happy -- I can do that -- the bigger problem is keeping parents happy. I haven't heard of anyone doing anything like this. Do you think it would be a problem?
I believe you are on right track. My sons coach(es) did this when there was not enough players for two complete travel teams. They fielded two teams but had swing players who would play on both. Swing players were different every week. All players played for both teams. Both teams practiced together so coaches were familar with all players and games were scheduled several hours apart (i.e 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM) so players had chance to rest and/or travel to 2nd game. I was quite skeptical when he proposed this but it did work. Last year enough were still playing for town travel team at U16 and will continue this year as a U19 team. There is an Effective Playing Time Relative to Game Format and Roster Size listed on page 3 http://usyouthsoccer.org/doc_lib/ADDENDUM - U12.pdf This may asist you in team sizes. My daughters travel coach is doing similar for indoor seaon (7v7) and he has 20 players. He entered two teams and assigns players to games. He emails schedule in advance and if there are conflicts he has pool of players to replace them. Some players do play in both games. Good luck and thank you for coaching!
As mentioned above, I'm doing this for indoor. It is almost a necessity for the Winter Indoor season.
The two issues I think you may run into are league rules and parents. Depending on the league your team plays in, there may be a requirement that you roster 18 players for the season (as opposed to being able to vary the squad by game), and you go from there. Also, the kids may be OK with your system, but the parents may take issue with, "I'm going to pay $XXX, and my kid may not even be on the squad?" You'll need their buy-in to help make this fly, provided it's OK with the league. Good luck!
In your case a "practice squad" may work as well. Most likely the league will have roster limits, so you couldn't switch kids to and from the active roster. The practice squad would be kids who are part of the team but are not on the game roster. I used this with a high school team. I told the girls that they had a choice of being cut, or being a practice player. I had two girls choose to be practice players, and I had two who chose to be cut. In terms of parents, you'll have to explain the situation to them in much the same way. The girls who are on the practice squad get the same training as all of the girls, they are on the team, they simply won't play in the league games. However, you could use them in tournaments or exibition games. It takes a special kid to be at every practice without the reward of playing in the games. But, it can be worth it in terms of their development. good luck.