I will "admit" my daughter is at Ladera. She has played for both the "golf pro" and "engineering sales guy". God forbid the guys have day jobs. Pretty sure that's a given for any coach, unless they're living under a freeway. DS holds his national B coaching license and the two of them combined know more about coaching and teaching real soccer then any clueless parent whose only goal is their 8 year old winning every weekend. They coach possession style soccer (not kickball) that every other club coach "teaches", and they get good results.
I agree that the club could stand to be run more efficiently, however, none of you have any real intel on what is actually happening with LR Surf & SCDSL or the "top 3's salaries". LR Surf will be accepted into SCDSL...so much speculation here & misinformation being spit, but hey, it's fun to talk trash all while hiding behind a computer.
The problem isnt they have day jobs, the problem is at clubs that are properly setup, they have people who are "soccer people" in charge. In fact some even have pro-bono lawyers, community members, officials from the city they are located in and many more. Having a C, B, A license doesnt tell you anything about the quality of the individual or the quality of the coaching. I know many coaches in the Mexican leagues who dont have licenses, played professionally, played on their national teams and develop kids that are technically superior to most coaches...period. "Possession Soccer" is now some marketing term they throw out to every parent - along with "playing out the back". Hell I have licenses, not hard to come by, but my ethics would never let me take on a club team - wouldnt be fair to the kids. I will say though, a B does mean he put some effort in. Also, a properly run club should have a HIGH percentage of coaches at C level and higher. Club im involved with probably has the most A licensed coaches around. As far as not teaching kickball, you must not watch enough games or convinced yourself you arent being duped. The FACT is most clubs at Surf dont play possession. They in fact play through the center via attempted through-balls and balls over the top. Works pretty well at younger ages and levels where kids are not very good with their heads or clearing the ball. Once you understand that, not hard to take the ball and counter. Again,
I have experience with clubs, admins and fee structure. NO CLUB, any properly run club that isnt solely motivated by money, has individuals who run ALL ASPECTS of the club. You can not be the manager of every team, assistant coach of every team while being the person in charge of said club. In fact, he coaches teams that he isnt even listed as the coach for - not shady or anything. I see Ladera teams playing without enough kids - wont shut a flight down due to low numbers. This only occurs, and you can run a search on here and threads on boards across the country, when someone doesnt anyone else to see how the finances are run and just putting teams out to make money. You claim misinformation but you obviously have never talked to refs, former coaches, former club parents (from one of the many different names he has had over the years) and other this guy argues with or he has screwed over.
Lets say, for the sake of argument, we are all Full of Shit. Not like I have never told Townson in his face he is full of shit and shouldnt be in charge of anything to do with children. Even Lets say, like you claim, we only talk crap over the computer. Lets examine one issue. The game forfeits and how they have come about:
Fact: Anaheim Surf Ladera has field space because of AYSO. (not a secret)
Fact: Anaheim Surf Ladera isnt getting space through proper channels. If this wasnt true, their would never be any games being forfeited over "field conflicts" - as they would have fields to play on.
Fact: Improprieties have had to occur in order to even have the ability to forfeit the games. A club MUST SUBMIT fields (and times) for scheduling for the SCDSL season. This is why it takes forever to get a damn schedule from SCDSL, even up to a couple weeks prior to the season begins. This means this turd submitted fields/times for games that were never going to happen. Most likely this was due to AYSO having games scheduled. You know, the real reason why he has a club - AYSO.
So lets breakdown that even further why this happened. This guy didnt want to pay for other fields, because its EXPENSIVE. Which means no money for him or anyone at the top. You cant piss of AYSO/parents because AYSO is huge and drop the hammer on this guy - which means bye-bye extra income. So the easy choice for him is to forfeit games and just schedule crap that was never going to happen. Most parents he is dealing with dont have a clue. So easy to say "coach not available", "field screw up", "not enough players", etc. So the fucked up part is THE KIDS GETS SCREWED. Kids just want to play. The responsibility of the admin/coaches is to make this happen and improve the kids. Kids shouldnt have to ask a parent "Do we get to play this week?". A parent, who is paying for certain number of games, should be REALLY PISSED OFF. If a coach doesnt show up, or no one at a field on game day our league know within 30 mins. Then again our parents are probably more informed about how everything is run, where ALL THE MONEY goes and the backgrounds of our coaches - even a nice big meeting once a year that explains it all to parents.
So it appears you are fine with all this as long as your child isnt being screwed. Why would she be? Given her coach is one of the people at the top of the pyramid, none of her games will be forfeited or ever have an issue with practice space. Your team will have the proper number of kids as well. Not like many of the flight 3 teams put out by Ladera where the poor kids are playing 1 or 2 kids down. Chasing kids all day. Im sure that helps their development though - at the very least theyll have tons of fun running to cover kids all day.
