https://www.socceramerica.com/publi...ke-hoyer-youth-soccer-needs-options-betw.html
- Chuck Coan, July 24, 2018 at 2:32 p.m.
Last time I checked, every major youth soccer organization in the country was using computers to register their players. Why is it that we can not get a simple, straight answer on exactly how many players were registered at each age group in the major soccer associateons in the USA? State by state. So that the clubs can understand what kind of impact what they are doing is having on player retention.
I can tell you that focusing everything on the top of the pyramid has an extremely detrimental effect on the base. We just brought back our club from the brink of extinction. 2000 kids down to 500 because the board was made up of "classic, elite" players parents and that is where every dime of resource went as the rec/entry level program that built our club virtually disappeared. As the well went dry we were barely able to field a team at age group in the local competitive division! We are back to 1500, rec/entry level players are filtering into our academies and our classic division, which is still struggling, sees a brighter future starting next year as the academy kids begin to move up.
In my opinion we started killing the sport in our regon when every club went to club wide tryouts and we began telling teams worth of young players that they were not good enough to play with us and pushed them to under resourced, poorly organized, poorly coached rec programs. One or 2 years of that and they found another sport or quit entirely! Throw the birth year debacle into the picture and the pace of departure accelerated.
What is best for the players is the question that is never asked. As for the title of this piece, every club in this area provided mid level opportunities from 1980 to about 2000. After that there simply were not enough kids because they all had to be elite or their parents took them elsewhere like to the 12 new clubs claiming they were elite! Which is why elite soccer is not. the kids playing "elite" soccer are the ones whose parents can afford it and support it. If you don't have both pieces, you have nothing. All the skill and athleticism means absolutely nothing without those 2 things. So, elite? I do not think so. No base, no peak