Tryouts - 10 mins in

This is my first time going through this with my son. Here would have been my assumption:

- 70% known at U9, plenty of kids moving over from U8 rec but the core from the U8 academy known
- 80% known at U10, less kids moving over from rec
- 90% known at U11, at this point kids are self selecting in different sports

its all about reasonable expectations of a parent, which is tough.


i think our team when we were true 9s, had 1 player straight from rec, and he became our keeper, the other 9 all were playing at the club as playups on u9 teams or on the u8 team.

spectator, I'm agreeing with you again! That's great advice, especially at the Academy level where they are going to take your kid anyway. It's just a matter of which team he ends up on and even that can change at any point during the season.

zizou are you comparing same club or different clubs?

club A - first division
vs
club B - second division


or


club A - first division
vs
club A - second division

One more thing - if you're trying out or at a club where the Academy teams' rosters are locked down from the get go - RUN AWAY.  There needs to be player movement at Academy - lots of it.  Parents will criticize this model saying the kids need continuity but that's not the case - kids need to learn their skills and how to use them with a team - even if that team changes week over week.  It also gives coaches the opportunity to watch the kids as they develop rather than pigeonhole them at U9 into one role/team.  Coaches will also get an opportunity to see how a certain player adapts and works with a group - things that do come into play at Select when rostering the teams then.

We played Academy at two clubs - one had set rosters from day one - no player ever moved up or down.  That club is struggling now at Select because good players got frustrated and left by U12-U13.  The other club had lots of movement - never the same rosters week over week.  The ONLY people who griped about that were the parents who wanted their kid on the 'top' Academy team.

I can't figure out how to quote properly, but spectator's comments are exactly right. The most important thing you should ask is how often do players move between levels at Academy. (At Select, the player pass and team rostering thing make that much more complicated.) If you do not hear that players are in pooled games, or practice as an age group, or there's frequent movement in between seasons, run as fast as you can.

The amount of growth from year to year is astounding. Plus, as people's interests vary, kids talent levels will too. However, if your player is looking at an Academy club where the top team is set, it will be set for a while.

What will inevitably happen is, particularly as is true at many of the clubs with 3 or fewer Academy teams at any of the age levels, is that the top team will have the top players. However, the gap between the bottom of the top team and top of the second team can be close. As the rosters expand, from 6v6 to 8v8 to 11v11, some of those folks will naturally move up. (Or what's more likely is that players who have been playing up will come down to age level and will fill in those spots.)

But the problem comes when you get to 11v11. Except for the very large clubs, most cannot field a team at every level in Select soccer. So there's usually a top team and a bottom team, that has some folks from rec. The problem is that the top level players will want to migrate to the top teams and the folks who have always been left off the top team will also leave for a team better than the low level 2nd team. The result is that the top team suffers as it loses depth and talent.

That problem is created back in Academy when teams are set in stone for a year. If you have a pool, then you can move players up and down. That may hurt team chemistry but it will help club chemistry as everyone then has a shot. Plus, then when a player has not performed, if you only move players once a year, then it's a huge shock. That shock only gets worse the longer the player is kept at a level where they don't belong. This problem seems to be more of an issue on the Girls side, but the Boys side is not immune.

Best advice, ask if they pool teams at Academy and ask parents if there has been movement. Lack of movement over the years suggests that parent politics matters more than coaching evaluations and that will be the kiss of death for teams down the line.

Well NSA tryouts had some U13 spoilers from Concrode show up, may have enough for 3 teams instead of the 2 as planned. Not fair if you don't come all three nights.

Some people have various reasons for not showing up all 3 nights. Club hoppers or not, to compete u need players and that rising 13 team needs players. They took 2 or 3 UFA girls to academy cup to fill the void.

This is totally inconsistent with how they said things would work. I find it hard to believe and highly unlikely they will be sending top players to Cumming at this point. What they have indicated is that they have learned from mistakes of other mega-mergers and taking this step was one of huge mistakes. If they did this now they would add lying to the list of disastrous decisions.

That's why I'm interested about the age also because no top rising 10s, 11s, 13s or 14s are going to UFA. Rising 14s are next week obviously, but no rumors of girls heading up. Not a single top rising u13 went to ufa ( I have a very very good friend there)