In THE sport where players strive to have the honor of playing for 2 jerseys, club and country, it is not wise at an early age in our soccer culture to phase out this mentality all in the name of pay to play clubs or elite clubs and zero neighborhood team ball, i.e. your barrio boys. The ones you run with since kids and share a common sentiment that your side of town is your community. Thus that jersey is like a National Team. Us soccer junkies already know a player in the pros might play for an elite club in Chelsea or Barca but he doesn't skip on returning to the dudes he grew up with and play for a NT that perhaps is worse than his club. I mean my lil' brother had his elite club team (that cost a ton) and as well played for our high school. So I've witnessed how American players can thus grapple in their youth years, with the coming experience of playing for your club and wearing that second jersey of your National Team. Learning early in life to deal with two different coacohes and what they each demand. The different tactics to their two teams, formations, opponents tactics, traveling a few miles for an opponent to then having to travel great distances. Some have been arguing for years that our high school scene is not cutting it so a player has to go outside of this approach to an elite club. Check. Got it. However, in sports the world over, the more a young kid touches the ball and obviously plays the sport the better he or she will be. Thus cutting down actual games from a players diet is never a good thing imho. I would have every kid on like 3 teams, club, high school and an indoor/futsal squad. To make no mention of combative pick up games versus grown men. It's worked in our culture of producing basketball talent for decades but this is another thread topic for USSF soccer.
This statement should be qualified a little. They get one year's worth of paid education for every year they were on a team in one of the three Major Junior Leagues. So they only get a full 4-year University Scholarship if they spent 4 years in the CHL. I also think they need to sit out one year before becoming eligible for CIS. I don't think they're allowed to jump immediately from the CHL to CIS. But I don't know for sure, so don't quote me on it.
Bingo, my friend in high school left for one of these in the midwest after winning the state title in his sophomore year. He now plays for the Flyers and our HS program is in the same spot it was then.
in japan they play for both. and the all japan hs championships are a big deal. of course being coached by a hs coach in japan is like it is in the us...
in Michigan, Hockey has been the same way for years. Anyone wanting to play college-level played club and HS was a lower level. (as a result the best programs in the state were the ones who could convince their club players "hey, screw college hockey, play for us")
You can value education and go to college at any age 25, 30, 35.. I went to a plain old college. If I had real talent in soccer, I would dare to be different.
Realistically, though, the chances of going pro, in any sport, are pretty low. It's a much better bet for the vast majority of kids to take a sports scholarship, rather than rolling the dice with trying to go pro right out of high school. Whether or not kids choose to play for a high school team or an academy doesn't really change this calculus, though.
I don't expect much from those. They probably don't have 'real talent'. I certainly don't expect Messi Xavi level. Maybe other Dempseys will come out of it on rare occasions.
I think some people have the notion that scholarship players are getting big money. Heck not all the D1 programs are fully funded and they get a max of 9.9 scholarships (may be wrong on that number). Not saying that every little bit doesn't help (as a recent graduate I feel the pain of student loans) however if it's chase your dream of becoming a pro vs a partial scholarship then it is a different decision I think.
Would that decrease the number of kids signing up? If not, is there a legal reason why this wouldn't work? If not again, you can tell Sunil that I endorse your plan and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I guess the question is what kind of pro level play can you realstically hope for. If I had a kid who showed athletic promise, a scholarship to play soccer at Georgetown (or some other school with top-tier athletics) would be a much better decision than chasing the dream of being an average-level MLS player. Only if it looked like he had a good chance at playing at a higher level in Europe would it be a good idea to consider foregoing college and rolling the dice. Sports are great, but pinning your future hopes on going pro and making a lifelong living off of that is an unrealistic dream for the large majority of even the most elite high school and college kids.
And again you regurgitate an argument who's flaws have been pointed out to you multiple times (in this case, the sheer number of U.S. players, even recent ones, who spent some time in college) Well right now the Rapids seem to be 1 for 3 in getting their top Academy prospects to join the team instead of go to college. Davy Armstrong turned down a scholarship to Washington to sign with the Rapids in mid-2010 and has played in a total of one game, as a sub in the reserves only CCL game against Metapan last year. Meanwhile top candidates Dillon Serna and Shane O'Neill both signed letters of intent with colleges last month (Akron and Virginia respectively). 5 other Academy members also signed LOI's, and James Rogers is already at New Mexico, though I don't think the Rapids tried to sign him to a contract yet (there's also a belief that he might be eligible for homegrown status through Salt Lake). Right now the lure of college is still a hard one to overcome.
I wasn't trying to suggest that the lure of college was not there. My main point is when we speak of scholarships we are not talking full rides (maybe dependent on your grades are for academic scholarship). It's not like they are turning down a free education to go play soccer professionally. For the majority of kids going to college is the right choice.
Players can absolutely jump straight from the CHL to the CIS... The best college hockey team in Canada, the University of New Brunswick, currently has five players on its roster that played CHL hockey last year. Actually, they have a player that played in the AHL this year on the roster. CIS hockey pretty much lets anything go on the eligibility front. On topic, there is a group of investors in Ontario that are currently working towards the creation of the "Ontario 1" league, which would be an elite u23 league based on the CHL model. They are looking at a 2013 launch.
These are the DAs, so they're not pay to play. Am I right on that? Anyway, these are kids in their mid to late teens, so they've already had years of playing with their barrio boys.
Not all DA squads are free at the moment. In fact, not all MLS DA's are free. This is one of the factors which the USSF judged the academy teams on in their recent evaluation/grading. http://www.ussoccer.com/Teams/Development-Academy/Academy-Overview.aspx For instance in the category of "funding" (the ability of clubs to reduce player fees) in DFW............Andromeda got 0 stars, Solar got 3 stars, the Dallas Texans got 4 stars, and FCD got 5 stars. It's a common misperception that the development academy isn't pay to play. Most of the MLS clubs are on their way to eliminating player fees, but they're not there yet. In fact, DCU is one club that got a poor rating in this area in 2011. When it comes to non-MLS DA teams................you just have to ask yourself one question. How do these clubs make money? How can they afford their facilities, coaching staffs, travelling costs. Thru the grapevine "gossip" suggests many of them are really struggling to keep up financially. They're not getting it from the USSF, that's for sure. There are only so many bake sales and car washes that you can do!! Of course, the biggest argument on both the MLS Youth and Youth Nat boards isn't the pay-to-play aspect of the DA. The really good kids can get "scholarships" at most clubs. It's the switch to the 10-month schedule, which forces kids completely out of high school soccer.
I agree and I would for further, if I were shooting for scholarships, it makes more sense to groom kids for academic scholarships. They are way more varied and common than athletic scholarships. If you're kid is also a minority (like mine would) and/or working-class/lower-middle class (since they're phasing out racian quotas), and he's in the 95th percentile+ in math, you're pretty much golden. If my kid isn't good enough for La Masia by the age of 12, f'it. I'm going Mexican Tiger Dad on him (Future book title "El Tigre Del Norte"?).
I'm still not sure what this has to do with the new DA schedule though. Most kids are going to earn their scholarships thru their club play, not thieir HS team.
Having a sibling who is a college coach, I can state, generally, that the coaches basically ignore HS soccer when evaluating a player. They evaluate them based on their play for club or DA program. To the extent the player thrives at the HS level, that information is used for the press release when they sign for the college, nothing else. So, other than the social aspect (I'm not discounting this), there is basically nothing of soccer value to playing HS ball.