Big changes afoot at GA Soccer

I coached 20 years ago when all we had was classic and Athena and the only way to play regionally was tournaments or state cup. The super clubs had not been formed yet and recruiting was rampant because there were a lot of midsize clubs geographically very close to one another. Many coaches sacrificed player development to win at all costs because they knew that if their team was relegated the best players would likely leave. So weaker players were benched and coaches coached to win not to develop. Now my daughter plays SCCL. Sure winning is still important but to me it seems like team and player development is more important and the amount of travel is right for her age and level. To me it’s a better system and maybe needs to be more inclusive, but I think it’s better for players than promotion/relegation.

Let's get back to GA Soccer now. Anyone no why the leadership change? And what's going to happen to GA Soccer?

Just for the record, I wasn't arguing FOR pro/rel, my assertion was that the USSF ignores FIFA on pro/rel for our top league, so we could just as easily have ignored them for the age mandate. My second assertion was that USSF screwed over everyone ELSE in the federation when they introduced bio-banding for their league after the age mandate. Now DA will even be tiered without pro/rel, additionally screwing over clubs within their system.

As far as I can tell, USSF is at the root of all the problems in US Youth (and adult) soccer. They need real leadership over there.

Back to the topic at hand and the repercussions of GYSA leadership turnover, the big clubs will not return to USYS or team-based pro/rel leagues (for their 2nd-3rd teams). There are simply too many upsides to the club-based league approach. For clubs with 1-2 teams per age group this may not seem to make as much sense, but when you have 3-4-5 team at an age group and you have to pay/coordinate coaches to coach all these teams, it starts to become a headache to manage. Coaches can coach more than one age group within the league because all the teams are at a single location in a given day. Additionally, it looks like the clubs in both SCCL and SCCL-P seem to have BOTH leagues playing the same club on the same day (same location I'm not sure). I'm sure it helps the logistics of running a big club.

I do like the idea of club-level based pro/rel, because it changes very little about the league structure or the number of teams you have participating in the league or where your club's teams are all playing in a given day. Boys and girls sides at a club should be treated as different entities however.

If I was GA Soccer I would: 

a)go all-in on playing in state only and ask every parent(in their marketing campaign) "do you really want to drive 6 hours to play soccer matches when better(or same) competition is here".

b)I would guarantee a minimum of 13 games for each division and start games in mid August for fall season

c)I would drop completely out of National League in the current format of stand alone league. I would instead have all the GA teams play full slate of GA games and coordinate with other states end of season competition where top team from each state(with 4 states) play in Piedmont finale(or some version of this – could be top 2 teams, but a bracket of 4 makes sense).



Embrace the differences vs trying to be the same. Stop thinking that 9 game seasons are acceptable. Stop thinking that parents want to travel all over creation.