Those bus rides and road trips are great. We are in the same situation as you though probably not as many or as long of a road trip for tournaments. All that stuff is good. Its the excessive that I'm talking about like driving 12 hours/week
Mens Soccer - New Roster
- Thread starter gary2
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Childhood isn't the same anymore anyways, I have a few kids on my block and rarely see them outside, never see them congregating together. I graduated high school in 1977, and my daughter was born when I was 42, and I was 50 when she started playing soccer, at that point I hadn't been paying attention to your sports for 30 years, I was thinking it would be like in Western, PA in the 70s, boy was that not true! I never realized year round travel teams, specializing at age 10, parents hiring personal trainers for 8 year olds. but I still kind of parented like it was 1975, and I do agree, It was fun for me too, now that she's out of the sport, I miss hanging out with the soccer parents at the school or the club teams. But I surely wouldn't have joined a team an hour away, there where plenty of teams nearby. I didn't even realize how many until she had played a few years.
I'm with you on this. Loved the bus rides, especially with the high school team, it was a small school and the coach couldn't ride the bus she would leave from her job and meet the team at the game, so a parent would volunteer as a chaperone, my job is pretty flexible, so I would do it half the time, I have to admit, it would drive some people crazy, but I had fun, miss those days now
No, you can’t have a ‘normal’ childhood and achieve great things by age 18. You just can’t. Not for soccer, not for gymnastics, not for ballet. Heck, future ballet dancers attend cyber school so they can train all day. Even the younger ballet dancers pretty much do nothing but school and dance. Rec soccer, much less travel, was out by 5th grade.
For some either their skills can’t keep up and they are asked to repeat levels. For others, the demand becomes too much and they drop out. Those that do these things, love it. It isn’t wasted. The hard work and dedication are their own reward.
Question for her soccer dads: Did your kids and their teammates have trouble developing relationships with peers that weren’t as invested in outside activities? The dancers all seemed to have this issue. They could be friends with each other, or kids who did high level gymnastics, but struggled getting other kids to understand why they just aren’t available to hang out or go to school dances.
My daughter was the opposite, she played some travel soccer, was a ballet dancer for 13 years, played soccer for 12 years, was a star player at her high school, played for a year in college, but for some reason was never friends with the kids most invested in soccer, she did hang out with the other kids and did go to school dances etc, more than with the soccer or dance kids. I always wondered why, I just think she needed to get away from the ones that where obsessive about it.
Your daughter seems like she was talented and well balanced. Kept things in perspective. Probably happy and now successful.
She and a top ballet development school would have been a horrific match. These types of programs aren’t a good fit for most ands and most kids aren’t a good fit for these types of programs. For the ones that are, the journey is most certainly it’s own reward.
My daughter is doing ok, she has a job and is in her 2nd year of college credit wise, like a lot of kids, the pandemic kind of stunted her progress for awhile. She was a good soccer player, mostly because she was a big, strong, fast and athletic defender, It's probably true that if she had been obsessed with the soccer life she may have gone farther, she seriously always seemed to want to do it for fun and fellowship with the team, more than competing. And the ballet I think helped her in soccer, except when she got a yellow card for kicking someone in the face who was standing straight up
I agree, she would of wanted to quit something like that.
My daughter is quiet and a bit shy. She has one or two close friends from her high school and they aren’t athletes. Her best friends on the soccer team don’t go to the same high school. The ones that treat her the best, accept her as she is, don’t have drama, and actually have serious motivation and drive are her club teammates. They will be her lifelong friends more than her classmates in her high school. My oldest daughter played college soccer. Her best friends are her college teammates. When you have common goals you often stick with them. Find me a study that says any of this crap we are talking about is bad for them.
I don't know what AAU team he played for but those teams dont practice. He wasn't driving to Cleveland twice a week. They all just show up at a weekend tournament and play. He made the NBA playing Single A basketball instead of commuting 12 hours a week like the TN soccer player.
I think most kids are involved in something these days that takes their time away from others. My daughters had great friends who weren’t soccer players but were involved in their things. But what my kids also experienced were close relationships with teammates from other school districts, and that was always a very positive thing for them.
So you find one person to use as your reasoning when there are thousands if not tens off thousands of athletes commuting everyday to a practice an hour or even longer. Hell, every kid in Atlanta and LA going to a practice 10 miles away takes an hour or more each way. There are multiple high level soccer programs in Atlanta and LA that have to deal with practice locations and every family deals with commuter traffic. Those Atlanta and LA clubs send their players to every big name D1 program. Again, for every one player you cherry pick I can find you a hundred that commute to practice for hours and are doing great with their childhood. Pick any sport except football because football doesn’t have the same travel structure. They rely on high schools that they attend for their sport. But every other sport with a solid club or AAU or whatever they call it kids commute far and wide.
And, he assumes his AAU team doesn’t practice. While this could be true - based on what little I know of basketball clubs, I am guessing it isn’t the case. The few of which I am aware most certainly do practice and focus on skill development.
All of this was a pivot away from his GCC soccer take about being irrelevant in soccer. In any given year they have a handful of players who play on elite club teams in their age group. Why? Because they were always going to go to GCC, or they chose to go there because their HS soccer was non existent or bottom of the barrel. On the girls side, which we established in this thread is essentially the same as the boys, had a few years ago in the same team 2 future Pitt players (one was a full time starter), a future Notre Dame player, and a future Penn St All-American. That doesn’t count other players who got scholarships to play for MAC and A10 schools. And then of course other players who played year round for a lesser club team. All on the same field together.
GCC is probably the 40th best HS boys soccer team in Western PA. So I stand by what I always said. They are irrelevant
No, I am pushing back against the idea that the ONLY path to a D1 soccer scholarship is to travel 12 hours/week. I also dont believe men's basketball players should leave home at 15 for a basketball boarding school. Let them have childhoods. 2 more guys: TJ McConnell, Ryan Luther. Public school kids, bad local AAU teams. Both played high level D1. McConnell is making a cool $8 million in the NBA. Would he be making $15 million had he been shipped off to a boarding school?
This isnt to say because these guys did it, everyone can do it, but my guess is that the kid you are speaking of probably would have found herself on a D1 roster had she played for a more local team and did the college ID camp circuit or guested as a player on a more elite team for a few tournaments.
But if they win championships at their level, they aren't irrelevant, except to you, if your own kid is in a rec league, you probably skip their games to watch THE BEST teams in the travel league
I’ll be the first to cut down someone from GCC bragging about how good they are comparative to a AAAA team. It’s simply not the case. They’ll finish near the bottom of any AAAA section every single year and wouldn’t ever be a playoff team. Their 60 goal scorers would struggle to get 20 in AAAA. But it’s an apples and oranges comparison. And it doesn’t mean they aren’t relevant. Because they are relevant and every year they have multiple talented kids on their roster while no one else in Single A does. This is assuming HS soccer is relevant at all. Which it kind of isn’t in many ways. So that’s that.But if they win championships at their level, they aren't irrelevant, except to you, if your own kid is in a rec league, you probably skip their games to watch THE BEST teams in the travel league
What does relevant even mean? I think to you it means relevant to world class soccer development or something like that, probably for 90% of the soccer playing kids and parents, the only thing that's relevant is making their high school team, even if they go no further. That's the way we where, it was like an honor when my daughter made the team in 9th grade, 20 made it and like 60 tried out. I seriously didn't think she'd make it, it was really relevant. As a senior, she was at a different HS, they where a pretty bad team at a low level, but they won their last 2 games to grab the last home game playoff berth, that was relevant, who cares if only one girl on the team played at a high level travel program.
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Well this whole thing started when I said Pitt has gotten local recruits from non-soccer schools like Connellsville, GCC, and others. Joe said GCC wins their rec league every year and I said they are irrelevant as in the grand scheme of WPIAL soccer.....because they are on the same level as the Connellsville team I mentioned or a Hempfield. I dont care that they can beat Monessen and Derry. They would be a very bad Quad A team and thus, they are irrelevant.
The path to a D1 soccer scholarship for females, comes from really 2-3 leagues. That’s it. ECNL is one of the top leagues where 94% end up playing in college. If you look at majority of smaller to P5 female D1 teams, look at the roster and where kids played. Look at the womens national team. Many come from the same 2-3 leagues. And that means players that had to travel some distance to find a team in those leagues. Good players know those leagues are producing talent, competition, exposure, and attracting better coaches. If you want to play D2 or D3 different story. But even a walk-on at a d1 isn’t coming from some Rec league. It’s highly competitive and the big club leagues are producing D1 players. Our older team didn’t do as well in their region and not even too 100 nationally, but have 10-12 girls signed to play D1 including 4 players going to SEC schools. Because of exposure and still better than any local Rec or even state league team.
i don't know that i'd call century rural since it's like 10 minutes from bmore suburbs.
it's what they do. my son is on a travel soccer team and we're still town based. we're the only one, though. (amazing that they've stayed together). we play in the highest EDP division for MD/DC/NOVA so it somehow works. but we play only big clubs with paid coaches.
we played a big team from NOVA last year at our field. some of the dads asked about or cachment area. they were floored when we said everyone could either walk or have a short bike ride to the field. they pulled from leesburg and dulles, by comparison. (note: we won!).
but we're the only team like this among our peers in the top 2 divisions in all of MD, DC, and northern virginia.
my 13 yo is at a 2 week intensive ballet camp as i type this. most of the year, she dances 6 days per week. her feet are going to be a mess when she's older, but she loves it.
The overwhelming majority of female D1 soccer players are going to come from within 45 minutes of a major to semi-big city. Very few rural towns are producing D1 players. The reason all that all those D1 schools have GA or ECNL players isnt because they are traveling 12 hours/week to those teams, its because they live in a populated area that has one of those teams. If someone lives 2 hours away and they are good enough, they can play in the top division of the state league for a local club and still go D1 if they go to those college ID camps. You are giving those clubs far too much credit.
Lets bring FK into this for this hypothetical:
I guess Hotspurs isnt GA. Just Century/Beadling. With Riverhounds in ECNL. Lets say there's a girl from Fox Chapel who only wants to play for Hotspurs. Doesn't want to fight traffic to get to Highmark and doesn't want to cross rivers to get to the South Hills for Century/Beadling. If this girl is one of the top players in the area, do not tell me that she can't go to some ID Camps and get decent D1 offers just because she played in PA West D1 as opposed to GA. A quick Google search shows Pitt, RMU, Duq, and St. Bonaventure came to their March College Showcase and I'm sure they produce D1 players, just not in the same numbers.
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1. Century seemed like it was in a rural place, I visited once for a soccer game.
2. What is EDP?
3. NOVA = Northern Virginia?
Anyone who is a member of any club can go to the ID camps, it's like a for profit thing isn't it? I used to get emails with offers to go to those all the time.
Anybody who knows? I'm just curious? What teams are in MD from this league? Is it Maryland United?
My daughters arch rival was McLean youth. Those were some great battles.
Is Baltimore Celtic still around? The club landscape changes almost by the day so this might be a post that’s already obsolete.
but back about 7-10 years ago, the highest league any kid from western pa could play in was USYS. This was when ECNL was just starting out for girls and boys only had the DA academy. But no clubs in western pa were DA or ECNL. My club at the time would win just about every USYS state cup on the girls side from U12-U19, so we’d have 6-7 girls teams competing for a Region 1 Championship. Our boys would only have maybe 2-3 teams representing PAWest at Regionals. Anyway, we had one boys team there that reached the regional championship game vs Baltimore Celtic. In western pa, soccer is a suburban sport. Every other area is more diverse. The Baltimore Celtic coach couldn’t believe he was playing a championship game vs an all white team, while his team was 90% Hispanic or African American. That’s usually the case for western pa boys when there’s a team good enough to compete regionally and nationally.
1. it sort of is. but not in a sense of being out in the middle of nowhere. it's just outside the baltimore sprawl.
2. EDP is a large, multi-state soccer league, serving the northeast and mid-atlantic. western PA is in something different (ask @Fk_Pitt what they do). for younger ages, it's the best one and we're in the highest division (not the best team, at all. but competitive). there's a more prominent one called ECNL that has the best clubs as the kids get older. i think that starts at age 13-ish. it's national but i don't know that it's in every state.
3. yes, northern virginia.
Baltimore Celtic still exists. I don't know if it's 90% black or Hispanic, I have friends with kids on those teams, one boy and one girl and have seen pictures of the teams, they seem about half white. And the girl I know that played for them is a freshman going to play for U of Maryland this year, not sure if she has a full ride or anything? I remember 2 years ago talking to her mom, some of her trainers where saying she should consider quitting her high school team, she asked me what I thought, because we always talked about our daughters soccer, I thought no way, you'll have a lot of good memories and exposure playing for your school, nobody sees your club team, a high school team gets more attention, it's fun, she stayed with her high school, and became the all time leading scorer etc. and got accolades all region, plastered all over the Baltimore Sun, they where happy they stuck with it, instead of shutting it down to prepare for the draft
One thing I found funny and ironic was, when my daughter played for club travel teams etc. they would play their games in front of a couple dozen people, mostly their parents, who had to bring their own chairs. Those teams where usually better skilled teams than her high school teams and would beat the high school team most likely, but her bad high school team had a pretty big stadium and probably up to a 100-200 people watching the games
This is the downside to GA/ECNL/MLS Next. A lot of those kids don't or can't play HS soccer. The competition level js much lower but they miss out on the big crowds (sometimes), school pride thing, people talking about the big game in class, etc. So yea, some random game might draw 500 (is 1000 too many) people whereas their club team just has 100 on some random field in a complex....no stadium.
I am friends with a handful of college head coaches. Through the years, I would bring the Duquesne head coach in to talk to players and parents about the recruiting process. He always tells the kids don’t ever let anyone tell you HS doesn’t matter. He would tell them he doesn’t recruit HS games, but HS certainly has value to players.
1) you’re playing under the lights for your school and community. You’re playing in front of 200 people instead of 36 parents in folding chairs.
2) you’re probably playing a different position than you do on your club team.
3) if you’re a good player, you’re a 9th/10th grader playing against players 2-3 years older than you are. On your club team, everyone is the same age, including opponents
4) you’re likely a leader rather than one of 18 on your club team.
5) you have a trainer at your disposal 24/7.
All of theses things help a players growth.
so while the riverhounds and some Beadling coaches discourage their players from playing HS, they’re often wrong because HS has value. And especially at the AAAA level, the level of soccer is comparable because everyone you train and play against every day also plays at a high club level.
I would say the 9th and 10th grade elite club players are not even the best players on their HS teams at times, even if playing AA or AAA.
HS soccer seems like a ton of fun. Going up against rival schools, trying to advance in the playoffs, seeing your name in the paper, etc
This is true. And even true at GCC when an eventual ND recruit was a support player behind Pitt/PSU and MAC players.
my kid had 1 ACC offer and a bunch of other high major offers, and didn’t start every game as a frosh for a championship HS team. was the 3rd or 4th option in a front 3 at the time.
yeah celtic is still there. ECNL. MD has 3 ECNL teams: pipeline, celtic and maryland united.
celtic actually tried to do a 2nd team in severna park, which was a disaster. pipeline is the best club in maryland. we lost like 5-2 or something like that. not great, but respectable for a town team. weird game b/c they messed up and only had the full size goals on a small field.
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