Just curious... In your club's intramural program (U5-U9) do you keep your teams together from one season to the next? Or do you reshuffle your players to maintain parity among the teams (no powerhouse teams) and thus a coach has new players, or mostly new players, from one season to the next? Please share what benefits you see with the methodology your club follows. Thanks!
Dr. Ron Quinn, Assoc. Prof., Dir. of Health, Physical Ed. and Sports Studies and Head Women's Soccer Coach, Xavier Univ: "The needs of the child, while playing soccer, should be placed above the needs, convenience and self-interest of the adults. True player development focuses on the development of the player, not the development of the team! Up to age 12, this should be the only criteria used in designing and running (youth soccer) programs." At that age the focus should be on player development, not teams.
Many moons ago when I was on the board of our local park district ("house" or town) league, we shuffled the teams every season via a blind draft. The benefits included a player focus vs. a team focus from season to season, players not being "pigeonholed" into particular social or competitive roles from season to season, and better competition = fewer complaints about teams being "stacked" and fewer kids being discouraged by lopsided games. When we got to U10 age our teams played "house" (town) teams from surrounding towns that kept the same squads from year to year. It was hard to compete but because of the reasons above the surrounding towns changed their programs to match our yearly reshuffling, then the competition evened out. My kid left to join a local travel club, and the irony is that same season the club was joined by numerous kids from the other towns that didn't like "their" town teams being broken up and reshuffled.
Our club has only in house teams in those age groups. These teams are primarily made up of kids according to which school they attend, all of them being from the same HS district. The teams stay the same, but there's always some shuffling from year to year as some kids leave or enter the program. My U9 team is unique though as we have kids from 5 different schools. The kids were together from U6 rec and we added friends of each to have enough on the roster. Basically though, the teams are the same from year to year based on parent/player request and who will volunteer to coach/manage each. This unfortunately does create many lopsided games though as the coaching and player interest is not the same across the board. Every year I get parents asking me if there is any space on our team because their child is interested in being more serious about soccer. It really sucks to have to say no, but it would be great to have more equal competition each week. I haven't gotten onto the board yet for our club, but I'm planning on it next year and hope to change this approach.
Each time there is a move up an age group, players get put back into a general player pool. Our league allows players to friend with only one person when they register. The person they friend has to reciprocate on their registration, so there are no daisy chains where you could basically hand pick a team. They prioritize team creation based on friends from registration first, then geography to help with commuting to practice areas, then late registrations fill in the rest. The theory is that it prevents dynasty teams, but to be honest it doesn't prevent there being haves and have nots each season. There's a pretty standard bell curve as far as domination and parity goes most of the time. From a coaching standpoint it has its pros and cons as well. Moving around to different teams means kids who have been placed on teams with poor coaches can eventually experience different coaching as they move up and get a variety of styles (if said coach even has a "style"). The con is that players that are familiar with each other don't get chances to learn more advanced topics because a coach will have to start from scratch with "new" players who may not be as advanced.
I've run our club's rec league for 10 years. Spring and fall season each year. Each and every time, teams are completely remade in all age groups. Many reasons, kids (and family) schedules change, kids drop and pickup the sport from season to season, coaches change or go to other sports. The bulk of your kids are in the same school district with 5 different elementary schools. It is beneficial to have 'friends' in other schools. It helps once they are all thrown into the same Middle School.
That is so true and why, when you are trying to teach fundamentals, the academy system is superior to the league/team structure. We accept huge inefficiencies in U-Little player development using the league/team structure.
In a non affiliated rec house league you can do anything you want.the best teams are the ones coached by the house league organizers. In ayso the team changes every year to try and get evenly matched teams. Incidentally, it never wortheir are are always some better teams, some middle of the road teams and some bad teams.