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Post by straightred on Oct 31, 2018 7:19:47 GMT -5
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Post by zizou on Oct 31, 2018 8:09:50 GMT -5
I know you, straightred, were not taking sides by posting this. You were performing a public service. But that is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Since it is election season, it is like listening to politicians who think their constituents are not smart enough to understand the difference between real life and what a politician will say to get elected.
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Post by Soccerhouse on Oct 31, 2018 9:19:13 GMT -5
WOW -- has to be one of the worst analogies in the history of sport.
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Post by straightred on Oct 31, 2018 9:38:06 GMT -5
I know you, straightred, were not taking sides by posting this. You were performing a public service. I tried as hard as I could to post the link without commentary, but I think you caught the sarcasm in my subject line. No doubt DA is great for some kids, especially those who don't have an ecnl option nearby. It's just the arrogance of USSF that astounds me time and again.
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Post by soccerfan30 on Oct 31, 2018 9:46:42 GMT -5
So DA is the pipeline to the USYNT, Olympic Team and the USMNT, none of those have won a championship just like the Harvard Mens Team so I think it's a great analogy 🤣
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Post by touchlinedad on Oct 31, 2018 10:48:30 GMT -5
I somewhat understand why DA bars their players from playing high school soccer. The level of play and competition is wildly uneven and U.S. Soccer wants its best players to play at the highest level possible. But 99 percent of DA players are never going to play for the National Team. Players like Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Christian Pulisic were never going to play high school soccer. But those players are few and far between. So why ban all the DA players from playing in high school?
Personally, I think U.S. Soccer should remove itself from the Development Academy system over time. I bet no other major country in the world has its top youth league run by its national association. U.S. Soccer should focus its efforts on expanding the game at the grassroots level instead of their topdown approach which is not working. If anything, U.S. Soccer should be trying to help raise the standard of play at the high school level. But that should have been done years ago and it's probably too late now.
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Post by Soccerhouse on Oct 31, 2018 10:52:47 GMT -5
When the decision was made years ago on the boys side - at least in this area Concorde and GA United were subsidizing the costs -- so it made 100% perfect sense, If "we are" paying for you to play 10 months a year on the DA team, why should I let you go play high school?
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Post by daddyo on Oct 31, 2018 12:59:23 GMT -5
The level of HS play does vary greatly but take a team like Wando HS from Mt. Pleasant, SC. They have not lost a game in 2 years and 95% of their boys play at USA/MP, Great team and the number of players (100 plus) that tryout is baffling
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Post by straightred on Oct 31, 2018 13:20:58 GMT -5
When the decision was made years ago on the boys side - at least in this area Concorde and GA United were subsidizing the costs -- so it made 100% perfect sense, If "we are" paying for you to play 10 months a year on the DA team, why should I let you go play high school? If it is fully-subsidized, the club should be able to set all the rules. How many DA clubs are fully funded on boys' side? On girls' side I don't think it is more than a handful of clubs. Their argument would be a lot stronger if DA was free.
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Post by diceshooter on Oct 31, 2018 15:40:48 GMT -5
The benefit of the current DA system is the 10 month season. IMO, more development is possible during a 10 month season with a good coach. Doesn't mean it occurs in every instance, as there a number of bad DA coaches, but the possibility is there. The 10 month season would be impossible if the league allowed high school play.
In contrast, 3 to 4 month season currently prevalent in high school and college is terrible.
That said, the federation is able to ban high school because we let them. Kids (and parents) DO have a choice.
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Post by atv on Oct 31, 2018 16:07:34 GMT -5
The benefit of the current DA system is the 10 month season. IMO, more development is possible during a 10 month season with a good coach. Doesn't mean it occurs in every instance, as there a number of bad DA coaches, but the possibility is there. The 10 month season would be impossible if the league allowed high school play. In contrast, 3 to 4 month season currently prevalent in high school and college is terrible. That said, the federation is able to ban high school because we let them. Kids (and parents) DO have a choice. Show me the data/ results. USWNT are pretty darn good. Arguably best in the world. They are products of a non-DA (mostly ECNL) and strong college soccer system.
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Post by rifle on Oct 31, 2018 19:33:52 GMT -5
Can’t take anything from the USWNT. They’ve dominated in the past. Time will tell if the head start holds in the future.
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Post by oraclesfriend on Oct 31, 2018 20:47:48 GMT -5
The benefit of the current DA system is the 10 month season. IMO, more development is possible during a 10 month season with a good coach. Doesn't mean it occurs in every instance, as there a number of bad DA coaches, but the possibility is there. The 10 month season would be impossible if the league allowed high school play. In contrast, 3 to 4 month season currently prevalent in high school and college is terrible. That said, the federation is able to ban high school because we let them. Kids (and parents) DO have a choice. Show me the data/ results. USWNT are pretty darn good. Arguably best in the world. They are products of a non-DA (mostly ECNL) and strong college soccer system. Obviously non-DA but also mostly NOT ECNL as many of those players are too old to have been ECNL products especially the ones that won the last World Cup and even some that weren't too old that play now (Emily Sonnett) also did not play at clubs that were ECNL. I am not saying anything against ECNL as I think it is a good platform but I don't think the success of the USWNT can be laid at their feet either. College soccer, maybe. I think we just had a head start because we actually had a women's soccer program where many countries did not. The DA analogy they gave is not accurate. I can see the benefit of high level training 10 months of the year. I just think "to each their own." Play high school and ECNL/NPL/SCCL/NL/Athena if you want. Play DA only if you want to, have access, and can make the team.
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Post by atv on Nov 1, 2018 6:11:47 GMT -5
Show me the data/ results. USWNT are pretty darn good. Arguably best in the world. They are products of a non-DA (mostly ECNL) and strong college soccer system. Obviously non-DA but also mostly NOT ECNL as many of those players are too old to have been ECNL products especially the ones that won the last World Cup and even some that weren't too old that play now (Emily Sonnett) also did not play at clubs that were ECNL. I am not saying anything against ECNL as I think it is a good platform but I don't think the success of the USWNT can be laid at their feet either. College soccer, maybe. I think we just had a head start because we actually had a women's soccer program where many countries did not. The DA analogy they gave is not accurate. I can see the benefit of high level training 10 months of the year. I just think "to each their own." Play high school and ECNL/NPL/SCCL/NL/Athena if you want. Play DA only if you want to, have access, and can make the team. The USWNT is strong because of title IX (number of schools fielding teams)and the amount of scholarships allowed by the ncaa. >300 Div 1 schools 14 scholarships per school. No other country in the world has this kind of opportunity... WOMEN'S SOCCER BY THE NUMBERS Schools Offering Soccer NCAA Division I 322 NCAA Division II 228 NCAA Division III 428 NAIA 219 Junior College 186 Total 1,383 Athletic Scholarship Opportunities Division I(per school) 14 Division II (per school) 9.9 NAIA 12 NJCAA (*varies per school) 18
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Post by oraclesfriend on Nov 1, 2018 8:37:30 GMT -5
Obviously non-DA but also mostly NOT ECNL as many of those players are too old to have been ECNL products especially the ones that won the last World Cup and even some that weren't too old that play now (Emily Sonnett) also did not play at clubs that were ECNL. I am not saying anything against ECNL as I think it is a good platform but I don't think the success of the USWNT can be laid at their feet either. College soccer, maybe. I think we just had a head start because we actually had a women's soccer program where many countries did not. The DA analogy they gave is not accurate. I can see the benefit of high level training 10 months of the year. I just think "to each their own." Play high school and ECNL/NPL/SCCL/NL/Athena if you want. Play DA only if you want to, have access, and can make the team. The USWNT is strong because of title IX (number of schools fielding teams)and the amount of scholarships allowed by the ncaa. >300 Div 1 schools 14 scholarships per school. No other country in the world has this kind of opportunity... WOMEN'S SOCCER BY THE NUMBERS Schools Offering Soccer NCAA Division I 322 NCAA Division II 228 NCAA Division III 428 NAIA 219 Junior College 186 Total 1,383 Athletic Scholarship Opportunities Division I(per school) 14 Division II (per school) 9.9 NAIA 12 NJCAA (*varies per school) 18 No doubt that college opportunities are a strength for us, but to play devil's advocate here...it is rare for anyone in the D2, D3. NAIA, NJCAA to play for the USWNT. If anyone knows of anyone who has, please let me know. That would be a fascinating success story. So I think we can exclude those numbers or at least throw a bone there and give 1-2 opportunities to those thousands of girls. Secondly, currently a fair percentage of the D1 scholarships are doing to international students. Most big programs have between 3 and 5 international students taking these scholarships (remember to include Canadians in there). Our success is based in opportunity in the past combined with support of title IX. I also think a large part of our success has been this country's size and the popularity of soccer with girls. Girls don't have the other football as a fall sport option. We do have to be cautious that we are not being too arrogant and thinking our past success will always lead to future success. Complacency is a killer.
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Post by atv on Nov 1, 2018 9:13:22 GMT -5
The USWNT is strong because of title IX (number of schools fielding teams)and the amount of scholarships allowed by the ncaa. >300 Div 1 schools 14 scholarships per school. No other country in the world has this kind of opportunity... WOMEN'S SOCCER BY THE NUMBERS Schools Offering Soccer NCAA Division I 322 NCAA Division II 228 NCAA Division III 428 NAIA 219 Junior College 186 Total 1,383 Athletic Scholarship Opportunities Division I(per school) 14 Division II (per school) 9.9 NAIA 12 NJCAA (*varies per school) 18 No doubt that college opportunities are a strength for us, but to play devil's advocate here...it is rare for anyone in the D2, D3. NAIA, NJCAA to play for the USWNT. If anyone knows of anyone who has, please let me know. That would be a fascinating success story. So I think we can exclude those numbers or at least throw a bone there and give 1-2 opportunities to those thousands of girls. Secondly, currently a fair percentage of the D1 scholarships are doing to international students. Most big programs have between 3 and 5 international students taking these scholarships (remember to include Canadians in there). Our success is based in opportunity in the past combined with support of title IX. I also think a large part of our success has been this country's size and the popularity of soccer with girls. Girls don't have the other football as a fall sport option. We do have to be cautious that we are not being too arrogant and thinking our past success will always lead to future success. Complacency is a killer. Show me the data on international student scholarships on the women’s side on Div 1 schools. This is frankly not accurate. Not on women’s side. There are far more boys playing this game at the youth level but about 130 less Div 1 schools and about 5 less scholarships per team. Plus exponentially less international students on “D1 women’s college rosters” compared to men’s teams. Maybe future semi-pro pro/ rel teams will fill the gap if this ever becomes a reality.
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Post by straightred on Nov 1, 2018 10:32:06 GMT -5
Before this thread becomes a referendum on the merits of Title IX, I think it is better to discuss the merits of the USSF's Director of Talent Identification comments in the linked article.
Yes, the U.S. gave the USWNT a decades long head start vs the rest of the world, in great part due to Title IX and supporting women in sport more than most other countries. No doubt, the rest of the world is now catching up. I just think the way for the U.S. to maintain its lead in the women's game, and to make progress in the men's game is not to have the USSF oversee an enormous, rigid, and joyless (for many) assembly line that now begins as early as U12 for the purpose of spitting out 2 or 3 players per birth year on the national team.
I get that it is a lot easier to keep an eye on who you hope might be the next Mia/Landon by having them in your system, but I think the current system is not conducive to developing creative players, it is not conducive to building the sport's popularity in our country; the latter being the single biggest long-term factor in producing more world class players.
USSF's talent ID director should be spending more time figuring out how to find talent, and less time trying to convince everyone how they are the only game in town.
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Post by atlfutboldad on Nov 1, 2018 10:48:56 GMT -5
(This is about women's/girls soccer only - boys/mens is not a concern for me) I'm going to use the rationale that between full and half scholarships you end up with each scholarship being about a 2/3 scholarship. So multiplying the total number by 3/2 to give the full number of at least partial scholarships given out. This may be a bad assumption, but it works well for this model. D1: 322 x 14 = 4508 X 3/2 = 6762 partial scholarships D2: 228 x 9.9 = 2257 x 3/2 = 3386 partial scholarships D3: 428 x 10 (guess, no number given above) = 4280 x 3/2 = 6420 partial scholarships NAIA: 219 x 12 = 2628 x 3/2 = 3942 partial scholarships JC: 186 x 18 = 3348 scholarships (no multiplier) At about a 2/3 scholarship for those numbers...that's over 20K girls on scholarship. So around 5K scholarships awarded per year (I imagine there's fewer redshirts in the non-college football world). Lets assume the player pool for the USWNT over U21 is about 2 women per year to age 33 (of course its skewed to younger women moreso than older) = 66 women Player pools U15-U21 (I honestly don't even know whether womens sides goes up to U23). Lets say 5 teams x 60 players = 300 girls/women So total around 350 players from ages U15 to the USSF/WNT...vs 20K in college. In the DA system there's like 65 clubs with 4 teams (14/15/17/19) = 3900+ girls/women in the DA system. I don't understand HOW this helps the USSF whittle things down to the best ~50 players per year? My opinion: USSF DA is a BAD idea. USSF SHOULD have focused on overhauling ODP (rebrand it the USDA if they want) and making a top-flight FREE Academy system for identifying the BEST players and pipelining them to the USGNT/USWNT. State pool to regional pool to national pool. Play for whatever club you want...if you're good enough you can also practice and play with the best in the state/region/country. In general, DA/NL/ECNL/NPL/SCCL/Select is garbage. We need a unified system. State USYS to Regional USCS to National USSF. On the boys side...MLS clubs academies should be an entirely different semi-pro system similar to Europe. They should only be playing friendlies with local clubs. If your DA training/travel are subsidized, makes sense they make the rules. Those rules suck though. Lebron James played high school basketball AND FOOTBALL. Nuff said.
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Post by oraclesfriend on Nov 1, 2018 14:39:39 GMT -5
Too many things to reply to here to quote so I am just going to state some points.
1) to the statement of numbers of international players in WOMENS soccer I did not have time to compile much data but just looking at a few big D1 programs (and some my child wishes to join that aren't big). FSU has 6 players rostered (England, Venezuela. Costa Rica, Finland, Canada, China). Florida has 4 (3 are starters). Harvard has 4. West Virginia has 8. Tennessee has 1. Clemson has 1, UNC has 2. UCLA has 6. BTW this took only 10 minutes to look into. This does not count dual nationals like Katie Johnson from USC who chose Mexico WNT. International players ARE coming to US colleges for experience, education and fun and decreasing the number of positions for US players.
2) I don't think DA is a bad idea in and of itself, but arrogant of them to think they can waltz in and become the "best league". It does help them to screen for players though as they film every game and have National team scouts that can go to a more focused set of events and have access to all of that film to decide where those places are. I don't think the no high school soccer is a bad idea either, but it would have made sense to me to have both year round and high school options. They could have worked with ECNL to make that happened and they chose not to do so. I think a unified system would have been best, but when have you ever seen a bunch of egos get in a room and put it aside for the greater good...uh NEVER!
3) There are some issues with ODP as the scouting option too. Some people live too far away and in big states I think it can be problematic to choose the best 50 or even 150. Take California or Texas for example...wouldn't you suspect their best 500 kids to be better than the 50th best kid from New Hampshire? We have all stated too the issues with selection in ODP in other threads.
4) I wish I had the answer. I don't, but I am patient enough to wait and see what happens next.
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Post by mistergrinch on Nov 1, 2018 14:51:05 GMT -5
Show me the data on international student scholarships on the women’s side on Div 1 schools. This is frankly not accurate. Not on women’s side. There are far more boys playing this game at the youth level but about 130 less Div 1 schools and about 5 less scholarships per team. Plus exponentially less international students on “D1 women’s college rosters” compared to men’s teams. Maybe future semi-pro pro/ rel teams will fill the gap if this ever becomes a reality. Since oraclesfriend is probably busy.. i'll go with the top 10 programs with international scholly players:
1. Stanford - 1
2. USC - 1 3. UNC - 2 4. Georgetown - 0 5. Santa Clara - 1 6. UCLA - 6 7. FSU - 7 8. Duke - 0 9. Baylor - 0 10. Vanderbilt - 1
So that's 19 in the top 10 on current rosters (almost averaging 2 per).. not quite 3-5, but I bet that if I went out to the top 30 or 40 that number goes up.
I know that Florida has 4, WVa has 8.. there are plenty with internationals now. Enough to make it worth mentioning.
[edit]Sorry, I missed 1..fixed
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Post by oraclesfriend on Nov 1, 2018 14:56:29 GMT -5
No doubt that college opportunities are a strength for us, but to play devil's advocate here...it is rare for anyone in the D2, D3. NAIA, NJCAA to play for the USWNT. If anyone knows of anyone who has, please let me know. That would be a fascinating success story. So I think we can exclude those numbers or at least throw a bone there and give 1-2 opportunities to those thousands of girls. Secondly, currently a fair percentage of the D1 scholarships are doing to international students. Most big programs have between 3 and 5 international students taking these scholarships (remember to include Canadians in there). Our success is based in opportunity in the past combined with support of title IX. I also think a large part of our success has been this country's size and the popularity of soccer with girls. Girls don't have the other football as a fall sport option. We do have to be cautious that we are not being too arrogant and thinking our past success will always lead to future success. Complacency is a killer. Show me the data on international student scholarships on the women’s side on Div 1 schools. This is frankly not accurate. Not on women’s side. There are far more boys playing this game at the youth level but about 130 less Div 1 schools and about 5 less scholarships per team. Plus exponentially less international students on “D1 women’s college rosters” compared to men’s teams. Maybe future semi-pro pro/ rel teams will fill the gap if this ever becomes a reality. Please see my post regarding international women's students and know that I purposely put the programs with 1 or 2 kids only just to show that the average I showed was a decent estimate. In addition the comment was never meant to directly compare girls' scholarship opportunities to boys'. The success of our womens team has a lot of reasons and the college game is just one. While more boys play soccer in the US than girls do the percentage of boys that play soccer in the US compared to the percentage that play soccer in other sports is far fewer than the same statistic for girls (looking 20 years ago when our women's success started). This is the head start of which I was speaking. Other countries are catching up on the womens side. Are we catching up on the men's??? Don't think so but I am not sure since I like what I see with some of the young guys on USMNT.
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Post by atv on Nov 1, 2018 16:06:31 GMT -5
Thanks. I stand corrected as Both FSU and UCLA have a heavy concentration of non US players. Probably some others as well. Most of the games I’ve watched have zero or one.
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Post by atlfutboldad on Nov 1, 2018 22:25:16 GMT -5
3) There are some issues with ODP as the scouting option too. Some people live too far away and in big states I think it can be problematic to choose the best 50 or even 150. Take California or Texas for example...wouldn't you suspect their best 500 kids to be better than the 50th best kid from New Hampshire? We have all stated too the issues with selection in ODP in other threads. I take your point, but having 0-3 clubs per state usually centrally located is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult for a player from the outer reaches to attend 4 times a week than twice a month. Lets postulate that the best player in the state in a particular year is in Columbus or Valdosta. Does it make sense for them to drive 4+ hours 4x a week to go to Tophat or twice a month to somewhere in ATL? DA does not solve the fringes problem. Add to this the fact that ALL DA/ECNL clubs are in the heart of the ATL traffic belt and it compounds the problem. Are Alaska and Rhode Island's top 50 going to be as good as California or Texas...not a chance in hell. But the USSF knows that. 50 players for a given year is a lot, especially when the USSF only cares about maybe 5 of them. For the rest it should just be an honor to be chosen. If DA was the top of the heap, a DA team in a given state should NEVER lose to an ECNL team in their age group in the same state. It would be like ATL UTD losing to Mercer. DA is completely impractical and will never achieve the goal it was set out to achieve...making the USNT better. If anything, its lead to worse MNT results.
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Post by atlfutboldad on Nov 1, 2018 22:38:18 GMT -5
Also, the point of the first part of my post is that there are around 5K partial scholarships offered a year vs around 50 spots on a GNT/WNT. So what are most of these girls playing for?
For the vast majority of very good female players, playing ECNL/SCCL/select with the hope of getting noticed to play in college (and oh yeah, you can play for your high school) makes much more sense than playing DA with all its restrictions.
Unless DA suddenly becomes free...then I could see it being highly coveted.
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Post by oraclesfriend on Nov 3, 2018 7:45:15 GMT -5
3) There are some issues with ODP as the scouting option too. Some people live too far away and in big states I think it can be problematic to choose the best 50 or even 150. Take California or Texas for example...wouldn't you suspect their best 500 kids to be better than the 50th best kid from New Hampshire? We have all stated too the issues with selection in ODP in other threads. I take your point, but having 0-3 clubs per state usually centrally located is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult for a player from the outer reaches to attend 4 times a week than twice a month. Lets postulate that the best player in the state in a particular year is in Columbus or Valdosta. Does it make sense for them to drive 4+ hours 4x a week to go to Tophat or twice a month to somewhere in ATL? DA does not solve the fringes problem. Add to this the fact that ALL DA/ECNL clubs are in the heart of the ATL traffic belt and it compounds the problem. Are Alaska and Rhode Island's top 50 going to be as good as California or Texas...not a chance in hell. But the USSF knows that. 50 players for a given year is a lot, especially when the USSF only cares about maybe 5 of them. For the rest it should just be an honor to be chosen. If DA was the top of the heap, a DA team in a given state should NEVER lose to an ECNL team in their age group in the same state. It would be like ATL UTD losing to Mercer. DA is completely impractical and will never achieve the goal it was set out to achieve...making the USNT better. If anything, its lead to worse MNT results. If the best player is in Valdosta with DA she has the option to play in Jacksonville which is way closer than anywhere she would have to go for ODP. In my mind there is no perfect solution. The opportunities are always going to be more numerous around a large metro area. DA is just another option for girls and while some don't like the "no high school rule" I think people are being naive if they don't realize that the rule is attractive to some kids. On my child's team for example we have 3 girls who attend hybrid schools that have no extracurricular activities and my kid doesn't want to play for her school...doesn't like the girls and doesn't like the poor quality play of the very small school she attends but likes the school so doesn't want to change schools. Plus there are a lot of kids that are homeschooled now. I don't believe that the "no high school" is a turn off for everyone, but I respect that it is for some. That is what is good about today's system is that there is a choice. As for DA doing what it was meant to do...improve the national teams...it is obviously way too early to say that for girls. For the guys I don't think it has made them worse. If you look at the guys that lost the world cup qualify games most of them were too old to have spent any time in DA though there are a few that spent a couple of years. This sort of project will take two DECADES to determine the success of it on the men's side. Soccer in the USA has a lot of issues. We can all agree on that. We Americans spend way too much time blasting new ideas. There is one poster on here that always say how great it is that there is a level of play, club, team for everyone who wants to play soccer in our area. I agree with that poster. No idea is perfect and there are things that I don't like about DA, but that is also true about every option. I am more willing to be patient and see what happens. As for the USSFDA analogy that started this whole thread...DA is not Harvard BUT they did pick an analogy that can also be argued. Harvard is not always the number one school in the nation. Their comment about Harvard letting you leave and do some school elsewhere and then come back was kind of stupid. No school would let you leave mid-semester and then complete the semester with them, but even Harvard lets people take courses elsewhere in other terms.
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Post by rudy on Nov 3, 2018 10:58:13 GMT -5
How many decades. DA started in 2007. It's in its second decad and yes many had multiple years in DA. Results? Not so much...
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Post by Futsal Gawdess on Nov 4, 2018 6:14:51 GMT -5
If the best player is in Valdosta with DA she has the option to play in Jacksonville which is way closer than anywhere she would have to go for ODP. In my mind there is no perfect solution. The opportunities are always going to be more numerous around a large metro area. DA is just another option for girls and while some don't like the "no high school rule" I think people are being naive if they don't realize that the rule is attractive to some kids. On my child's team for example we have 3 girls who attend hybrid schools that have no extracurricular activities and my kid doesn't want to play for her school...doesn't like the girls and doesn't like the poor quality play of the very small school she attends but likes the school so doesn't want to change schools. Plus there are a lot of kids that are homeschooled now. I don't believe that the "no high school" is a turn off for everyone, but I respect that it is for some. That is what is good about today's system is that there is a choice. As for DA doing what it was meant to do...improve the national teams...it is obviously way too early to say that for girls. For the guys I don't think it has made them worse. If you look at the guys that lost the world cup qualify games most of them were too old to have spent any time in DA though there are a few that spent a couple of years. This sort of project will take two DECADES to determine the success of it on the men's side. Soccer in the USA has a lot of issues. We can all agree on that. We Americans spend way too much time blasting new ideas. There is one poster on here that always say how great it is that there is a level of play, club, team for everyone who wants to play soccer in our area. I agree with that poster. No idea is perfect and there are things that I don't like about DA, but that is also true about every option. I am more willing to be patient and see what happens. As for the USSFDA analogy that started this whole thread...DA is not Harvard BUT they did pick an analogy that can also be argued. Harvard is not always the number one school in the nation. Their comment about Harvard letting you leave and do some school elsewhere and then come back was kind of stupid. No school would let you leave mid-semester and then complete the semester with them, but even Harvard lets people take courses elsewhere in other terms. Spot on. Spot on. Spot on. We can all pontificate about solutions, however it will take some time before those solutions take hold. In the meantime the structure we have is what we have. You as the parent/player have to make the best of what is available. I say again, if you don't like DA/GDA, move to ECNL, still don't like that, move to ECNL 2/NPL/NL/SCCL/Select/Academy/Local-Leagues, etc. You have to try to make a version of soccer available within your environment fit into your personal goal(s). I think with the alphabet soup of soccer leagues available, you should be able to find one.
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