A good article about Coaches and Parents here in America

Micromanaging from the coaches is need for kids under 10.
 
There's a tremendous piece on this month's "real sports with bryant gumbel" about youth sports in norway, with some great lessons for us all. they dominate winter olympics and have the world's best female soccer player.

until 13 years old, they don't keep score (or winners and losers in track events), they don't do "travel teams" and they don't rank anybody. it's all purely for fun.

After that, major programs, funded in large part by sports gambling(!!!)
 
messy said:
There's a tremendous piece on this month's "real sports with bryant gumbel" about youth sports in norway, with some great lessons for us all. they dominate winter olympics and have the world's best female soccer player.

until 13 years old, they don't keep score (or winners and losers in track events), they don't do "travel teams" and they don't rank anybody. it's all purely for fun.

After that, major programs, funded in large part by sports gambling(!!!)
Click to expand...
Enjoy that show and saw that episode. It is impressive what they do. Cost of participation is purposefully kept low. But they also mentioned that after 13 years old athletes are weeded out from these national programs. It felt like they were cut and never brought back into the mix, hopefully I am wrong. And with their size in both population and land mass it makes something like this much more manageable.
 
messy said:
There's a tremendous piece on this month's "real sports with bryant gumbel" about youth sports in norway, with some great lessons for us all. they dominate winter olympics and have the world's best female soccer player.

until 13 years old, they don't keep score (or winners and losers in track events), they don't do "travel teams" and they don't rank anybody. it's all purely for fun.

After that, major programs, funded in large part by sports gambling(!!!)
Click to expand...

Gosh, I thought we were supposed to be following the Japanese model. Or the Dutch. Or the Spanish. Now we're supposed to be doing what Norway is doing? Is there any country in the world that isn't better than the U.S. at creating great soccer players? Now that Bryant Gumbel has determined that more snow is key to making great soccer players, I guess I should apologize for criticizing USSF's decision to hold the GDA spring showcase in Colorado.
 
messy said:
There's a tremendous piece on this month's "real sports with bryant gumbel" about youth sports in norway, with some great lessons for us all. they dominate winter olympics and have the world's best female soccer player.

until 13 years old, they don't keep score (or winners and losers in track events), they don't do "travel teams" and they don't rank anybody. it's all purely for fun.

After that, major programs, funded in large part by sports gambling(!!!)
Click to expand...
It seems it would be pretty easy implementation by Cal South and local leagues to stop posting scores for all teams under 13. I would even say under 15. I don’t think many 10 year olds are looking up their team records online and every team that they play. It’s clearly serving the the adults and not the youth. I’m amazed at how many parents know
more about socal youth soccer team records and players than any professional soccer league. I imagine it would make its way to the internet somehow but it would at least make it harder to obtain and reduce the amount of people that are accessing the scores/standings. It might help reduce some of the craziness from the adults involved and put the focus more on serving the youth and developing players than just creating winning teams.
 
foreveryoung said:
It seems it would be pretty easy implementation by Cal South and local leagues to stop posting scores for all teams under 13. I would even say under 15. I don’t think many 10 year olds are looking up their team records online and every team that they play. It’s clearly serving the the adults and not the youth. I’m amazed at how many parents know
more about socal youth soccer team records and players than any professional soccer league. I imagine it would make its way to the internet somehow but it would at least make it harder to obtain and reduce the amount of people that are accessing the scores/standings. It might help reduce some of the craziness from the adults involved and put the focus more on serving the youth and developing players than just creating winning teams.
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What about State Cup?
 
espola said:
What about State Cup?
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Personally I am not a fan of State Cup and wouldn't mind if it went away. Another example of a youth event that really serves the adults. It's the adults that make State Cup important to the kids and it's full of truly terrible sideline behavior BUT since that's just my personal opinion maybe State Cup is the one exception and the scores are public.
 
End of the Line said:
Gosh, I thought we were supposed to be following the Japanese model. Or the Dutch. Or the Spanish. Now we're supposed to be doing what Norway is doing? Is there any country in the world that isn't better than the U.S. at creating great soccer players? Now that Bryant Gumbel has determined that more snow is key to making great soccer players, I guess I should apologize for criticizing USSF's decision to hold the GDA spring showcase in Colorado.
Click to expand...
Funny. Of course we don’t know if Norway (or Japan?) is making better soccer players than us, but we certainly know that Holland and Spain are. So are Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, etc etc.
Norway’s philosophy about sport, and life in general, is fun to look at.
 
foreveryoung said:
It seems it would be pretty easy implementation by Cal South and local leagues to stop posting scores for all teams under 13. I would even say under 15. I don’t think many 10 year olds are looking up their team records online and every team that they play. It’s clearly serving the the adults and not the youth. I’m amazed at how many parents know
more about socal youth soccer team records and players than any professional soccer league. I imagine it would make its way to the internet somehow but it would at least make it harder to obtain and reduce the amount of people that are accessing the scores/standings. It might help reduce some of the craziness from the adults involved and put the focus more on serving the youth and developing players than just creating winning teams.
Click to expand...

You'd have to fix the bracket system too then because the wins/losses determine promotion (and for what's left of it, relegation). The clubs want the promotion so they can attract better players and have multiple teams in the same club (and a more healthy bottom line). The coaches know that they'll be judged on promotion/relegation. At the same time, you can't have gold level teams playing bronze teams and whipping them 20-0. The main reason scores are still tracked, despite the player development initiatives of 2 years ago, is because of the need to bracket teams. But the brackets have also become a way that parents judge the success and competence of the teams (and the players and coaches on them).
 
Grace T. said:
You'd have to fix the bracket system too then because the wins/losses determine promotion (and for what's left of it, relegation). The clubs want the promotion so they can attract better players and have multiple teams in the same club (and a more healthy bottom line). The coaches know that they'll be judged on promotion/relegation. At the same time, you can't have gold level teams playing bronze teams and whipping them 20-0. The main reason scores are still tracked, despite the player development initiatives of 2 years ago, is because of the need to bracket teams. But the brackets have also become a way that parents judge the success and competence of the teams (and the players and coaches on them).
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I never suggested that the leagues stop tracking the scores. Just that they stop making the info available online for the parents to see. That’s an easy change to implement and could have some positive affects. There’s no reason I can think of that the results of every game need to be known online by anyone that wants to see. Again it’s the adults that are looking at the results, not the kids. Then we tell them whether the team they are playing are good or not.
 
foreveryoung said:
I never suggested that the leagues stop tracking the scores. Just that they stop making the info available online for the parents to see. That’s an easy change to implement and could have some positive affects. There’s no reason I can think of that the results of every game need to be known online by anyone that wants to see. Again it’s the adults that are looking at the results, not the kids. Then we tell them whether the team they are playing are good or not.
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For every 1 person that wants to block the scores from the masses, there are probably over 50 people who want to see the scores. I think you're out numbered bro. So what if they show the scores. My dd always asks me if the team she's about to play is any good. She's been doing this since she was U9. Maybe your kid doesn't care how good the next team is, mine does, and I'm sure others do as well. How will we know how to compare teams if no scores are posted?
 
MR.D said:
For every 1 person that wants to block the scores from the masses, there are probably over 50 people who want to see the scores. I think you're out numbered bro. So what if they show the scores. My dd always asks me if the team she's about to play is any good. She's been doing this since she was U9. Maybe your kid doesn't care how good the next team is, mine does, and I'm sure others do as well. How will we know how to compare teams if no scores are posted?
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This is the crux of the problem. At this age, comparing teams is pointless. It's the absolute last thing anyone should be worrying about. What matters is developing players and if teams are worried about their record or youth soccer rank or promotion and relegation, they don't develop players as well.
 
focomoso said:
This is the crux of the problem. At this age, comparing teams is pointless. It's the absolute last thing anyone should be worrying about. What matters is developing players and if teams are worried about their record or youth soccer rank or promotion and relegation, they don't develop players as well.
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We don't worry about YSR so much. Its more of how well are we gonna play against the next team. You don't want to play a team you're gonna crush, that does no one any good. And knowing how well the next team does can help you avoid playing them or schedule games against them. The coaches/docs don't schedule/arrange every tournament/friendly, sometimes its left up to the team managers/parents to find good competition. So knowing a good team to play would be helpful.
 
foreveryoung said:
I never suggested that the leagues stop tracking the scores. Just that they stop making the info available online for the parents to see. That’s an easy change to implement and could have some positive affects. There’s no reason I can think of that the results of every game need to be known online by anyone that wants to see. Again it’s the adults that are looking at the results, not the kids. Then we tell them whether the team they are playing are good or not.
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The promotion/relegation (along with the tournament trophies) is what the coaches are chasing (and what's distorting the focus on development). So the only thing your proposal would do is just hide the info from the parents (which would have the unintended consequence of making the bracket a team is in even more important to the parents). And so long as there's an "official" score to report for a match, some enterprising fellow will find a way to get it out to the parents (since there's a market for the information being hidden from them, but which would still be available to the coaches/DOC since you'd need transparency for purposes of promoting/relegating [none of them will accept CalSouth arbitrarily telling them they got promoted/relegated without an explanation as to where they stood] and setting up scrimmages)
 
Grace T. said:
The promotion/relegation (along with the tournament trophies) is what the coaches are chasing (and what's distorting the focus on development). So the only thing your proposal would do is just hide the info from the parents (which would have the unintended consequence of making the bracket a team is in even more important to the parents). And so long as there's an "official" score to report for a match, some enterprising fellow will find a way to get it out to the parents (since there's a market for the information being hidden from them, but which would still be available to the coaches/DOC since you'd need transparency for purposes of promoting/relegating [none of them will accept CalSouth arbitrarily telling them they got promoted/relegated without an explanation as to where they stood] and setting up scrimmages)
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The brackets are already extremely important to parents but I agree it's not a major fix and someone would likely create a "pay to see the scores" website for the same info but it could be a first (baby) step in sending a message that we should refrain from focusing on standings/rankings at the younger ages if we want to keep kids playing sports and develop better soccer players. A lot more could be done but this would be an easy one to implement.
 
foreveryoung said:
I agree it's not a major fix and someone would likely create a "pay to see the scores" website for the same info but it could be a first (baby) step in sending a message that we should refrain from focusing on standings/rankings at the younger ages if we want to keep kids playing sports and develop better soccer players. A lot more could be done but this would be an easy one to implement.
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One of the other issues in youth soccer is the lack of trust between clubs and parents. The impression among some [many?] parents is that the track suited ones are only in it for the salary and use the kids like tools when it suits them. The impression among some [many?] coaches is that the parents are fickle and insane, chasing the wins and club hoping when it suits them. Then there's the lack of communication generally re playing time, expectations, coach's strategy etc. Hiding this information from the parents but making it available to the clubs is going to make that worse.

I agree we have to move more away from competition and towards development at the younger ages. But I don't see any easy fix for it as long as we have the bracket system (and we need the bracket system or you'd have gold teams pounding bronze teams 20-0). If it were easy, it would have been done already (but US soccer didn't even have the guts to make its development initiatives mandatory).
 
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