Our rec. club has 2 U14 teams and 2 U12 girls teams. Since there are 2 years at each age group, most every season in the past we usually had an older team and younger team primarily. So at U14 we usually have a team mostly of 8th graders and a younger team of 7th graders mostly. The older team usually played in a higher skill bracket and the younger team usually in a lower bracket. So last season we tried it a little different. We held tryouts for U14 and U12. We had a strong team and weaker team at each age group. IMO it was much better as it pooled together equal skilled girls onto each team. The U14 team was still mostly 8th graders with 4 7th graders. Interesting at the U12 team though as it was 50/50 between 6th and 5th graders as the talent pool of younger girls was high (and even a 4th grader who was a leading scorer). So the coach from the tryout U12 team wants to keep his whole team from last season intact and play u14 this upcoming season. That means moving up 5-6 girls whom are still U12 eligible. He is telling his younger players and parents that they will get better development by staying with him as a coach and also not mixing into a team with weaker players at U12 level. Ironically, the younger girls whom are U12 eligible still are bigger and better scorers than the older girls so physically they could play at U14 level in a weaker division. Now by doing this however it is roadblocking both U14 and U12 from forming a true high-level tryout team as the talent pool would be too thin. The 8th graders (older girls) only have 4-5 skilled girls, some middle of the road and some very weak in skill and experience. U12 wouldn't be able to field a high level team either. Is this coach recommending to do the right thing or not a good idea?
IMO, The club, not the individual team coach, should be deciding how tryouts and teams are formed. There should be some sort of club agreement or policy (or an executive decision by the Club DOC) on how teams are formed.
As a coach, I have been like your coach, I have fought to keep my team together in an almost exact situation. My team and the older team had a school breakdown: my kids were all public school and most of the other kids were private, so it made some sense to keep the girls together with their friends. But my team struggled at the U14 level first season, and when parents saw how well the older U14 girls did, I caught some flak, but weathered the storm. From a purely selfish point of view, I wanted to keep my team together: I had organized them (I get no club support for my travel teams), recruited them, fundraised for them, and I had gotten to know the girls. I wanted to keep them together because it was more fun for me. Given the amount of time I spend coaching other people's kids for free, I don't feel comfortable with that.
Yup, you need a club philosophy and someone to implement it at the top. Otherwise, you're not a club... you're a collection of teams. Either you are competitive, with tryouts, and you select the teams that way, or you're rec and you make up teams another way. Even then, you need a guiding philosphy about how that's done. By geographic area? By age? By letting coaches recruit whoever they can? Sounds like your "club" has no idea about how they want things to run, so you get situations like this. So what the other coach is doing isn't "right" or "wrong", because you have no standard to differentiate right from wrong. You all need to figure out how you want to run your club before you can figure that out.
What would the situation look like if this guy doesn't try to keep his group together? Same? Different? Would he have gotten the U12 'select' group again? Would he have moved up in ages naturally, coaching his own daughter? And how was he as a coach? Did he 'deserve' the select group? Was he up to the task? By the time comments like above (underlined) are being made, my warning bells are going off. Can anybody be that 'hot stuff' as a coach. U12-U13 probably isn't the place for some raging ego D-bag coach. He's obviously not interested in what is best for the whole program, so willing to upset the balance of two age-groups to carve out his own fiefdom. If there's a replacement available, I'd be talking about firing him.
Youth sports are supposed to be about the youth, not about the coaches. If the coach is a great U12 coach, then he ought to be kept at U12 so that more players benefit from his coaching. If the focus is on coaches needing to coach different age groups so that they can develop as coaches, then they should be given a different age group regardless of how successful particular teams have been in the past. Again it is a question as to what is the focus of the club. I hope that it is on developing players rather than developing teams. The reality is that in "pay to play" many clubs focus on developing teams instead of players. This is the problem with the league/team structure. It is a distraction from the goal of developing players. This particular coach is already "recruiting" for his new team. This selection process of tryouts and recruiting might have some validity except that professional coaches find it very difficult to predict which players even as late as age 16 will develop into professional players. So we are kidding ourselves if we think this process selects the players with the most potential.
Let me clear up the fact this is a rec. program and not a true club with paid coaches and trainers or anything like that. As far as our philosophy, its basically to provide opportunities for anyone to sign up and play soccer, have fun and develop their skills the best we can. Of course the coaches are volunteers and many don't have soccer backgrounds but develop as they go (I being one of them as well but have been coaching now for 7 years). I really don't want to digress into discussing the coaches intention in question. I could get into a long soap opera about quarrels amongst the coaches (he seems to be the center of all coaching disputes in our organizatoin) that and we could get into 50+ posts alone in that subject. Let me just get your opinions about the following: 1) is it better for the 5-6 U12 aged children to move up and play on an entry level U14 team with the same girls they played on their last season team or remain and play on a top skilled team again at U12 (they should do really well again). 2) If the younger girls from U12 move up, is that fair to the other U14 girls and U12 girls that aren't on this team? The older U14 girls (8th graders) were expecting a few of the skilled 7th graders coming in to help round out the team but now the other coach is roadblocking that by telling his parents to not have their daughters go to the tryout team but play for him again. 3) Is it better to pool together equal talent (high skill and low skill teams). Or divide teams based mostly on age evenly with a few high skill, moderate and low skill on 2 teams? I've coached it both ways now. I coached the "lower skill" U14 team last season and found it much better format that way vs the older/younger team approach. The 2-3 girls whom were my most skilled on my team, I was able to get them playing time in a few games on the higher skill team as well. It really worked out to everyones benefit I think. Only down side was my team was 1-7 in the lowest skill division offered, but we competed in every game and improved as the season went on. I thought the season was successful despite the win loss record. Our "tryout" teams in U12 and U14 both came in 2nd place in our rec. program at the highest skill level offered. Best our rec. organization has ever represented in our league. But its not about the glory of winning and such, its more about what is best for the girls enjoyment of the game and development for the next level.
Rob, you are still looking at this from a "team" perspective. It really should be about the players. There is no single right answer, and from a player's perspective, some will be better off with choice 1, some with 2, some with 3. So as long as you frame things like this, you won't get a satisfactory answer. The only way to really fix this is have the club nail down how teams are formed, and stick to that. Otherwise, you will always have coaches who try to work things around to their own benefit. Even if you work things out for the next season, what about the seasons down the road? You need a roadmap. "Recreational" for our club is truly random, teams re-done every season and by geography/school. Coaches are not involved in the process at all. In fact, our state forbids rec teams from holding any sort of tryout, so there's a clear split between rec/competitive. You have a weird hybrid, and if you allow coaches to choose the teams you'll always have issues. IMO if it's truly rec, you should have a system in place to randomize things so coaches can't build little kingdoms. If it's tryouts, you do tryouts every year and select the best players, but I'd still restrict it to within the age group unless it is an exceptional case.
I don't think there is a hard and fast rule. I can see benefits to both approaches. As a coach, I've had the bias to keep my team together, and while the kids come first, I really don't feel "selfish" or feel I am acting to the detriment of the kids. The primary question is whether the kids are growing, maturing in the game, and having fun. I know when I played I had a season where I was on the 1-7 team and I hated it. Wins were everything, and this did NOT come from coaches or parents, it was all me. I've been competitive about everything my whole life. I've had girls' teams where the girls would be OK finishing 1-7 if they could see the improvement and were having fun. I think it's different for girls, but I know a lot of boys who would be overly discouraged to finish 1-7, so if you think your current breakdown would result in a steady stream of those kinds of seasons, you might want to do something else. I do think, however, that your more skillful players can thrive on the "weaker" team if you opt for the keeping-the-team-together approach. Yeah, they might be challenged more if you moved them up, but I think that it's also beneficial when kids have dramatic success, too. Those 2-3 players might do better if they are the "stars" of the team. They can be challenged to really dominate the game, to show every time a teammate has the ball, to make the supporting run every time. Since they are better, the game should be a little slower for them, so help them recognize every moment in a game that they can make a difference. I had three players like that when I kept my team together. I challenged all three to take ownership of the little moments of the game and two responded beautifully and are nuanced players. The third, who was already a blazer, hit a growth spurt and got even faster. I couldn't keep her on the team as her father thought I was holding her back. She's playing up and advanced for this level, relying mostly on her speed. She's a fine finisher, though, so maybe she's not being hurt developmentally.... The point is that kids can be challenged in either set-up. I don't think there is a right or a wrong way to handle it, but as has been pointed out before, you have to let your parents know what the club, or the coaches, have as their preference because splitting teams up on a kid-by-kid basis will give some parents cause to complain.
Let me preface by saying I'd stick with the tryouts. I firmly believe we're not all created equal and by u12, rec or not, getting the kids in appropriately challenging environments is a large duty of the program. You obviously 'know' what the right answer is and I doubt you'll hear anyone here agree with him sweeping through and gutting your program for the sake of his 'team.' Working out a fluid and dynamic system that allows the better of 'B' team to make appearances 'up' and more importantly train up would be optimal. Like you're already doing. What is really needed here, as was mentioned above, is a well defined club policy for this. Either the parents are good with tryouts separating skill levels at appropriate ages to facilitate individual development or let them go join a pay to play cut-throat club. Or was this always a ploy of some coaches (him) to put together 'good' teams and bolt.
We usually get a couple girls new to soccer every season even at the U14 and U12 levels. My findings are its very frustrating for most of players when you mix drastic talents of skill level on a team (i.e decide to split teams by age instead of skill). The entry level and unskilled players are very overwhelmed by the elite players whom are really athelic and/or been playing for many years. Elite players are frustrated that they don't have enough team support to run counters or have any resemblance of a posssesion game at all. Some elite girls parents in the past pulled their children to go to club. We were able to keep a few girls last season in our program because we did the tryout teams and those girls/parents seemed happy with last season (and still only spending our $200 per year and staying with local team vs. $1,400 for area club and traveling great distances). I agree the organization should be based on skill level selection to determine teams and dynamic where players alternate over course of their career with older and younger members, but of a comparable skill level. I think the coach in question has the opinion that its best to maintain player continuity and chemistry, but again that is only focusing on his opinion of keeping 12-15 girls happy (with some ego motives as well). We have between 50-60 U12/U14 girls registered on 4 teams that need to be thought about for what is best for the full pool of registered players. The best situation for our best athlete in the organization should be on equal group as the girl whom can't kick or run and just comes to hang out with friends aftershchool on the pitch. Keep the best from leaving for club and keep the new ones or unskilled players signing up every season because its fun to play.
Keep the U-12 girls at U-12. Cannot emphasize this enough. Very few girls are ready to go to U-14 and play full 110x70 fields. Keep the smaller sided games and fields. So much better for their development. I've seen enough U-14 girls get swallowed up on the large fields.
I agree that this seems to be about a coach and his kingdom. It is good for kids to get the chance to be the best in their division. . . so I wouldn't promote the U12s up. I think the move from U12 to U14 is a big move for girls of that age, and the age when many drop out.