notintheface
GOLD
a year of not playing is huge. and if you are abiding by gavin newsoms orders 100% then yes, the gap matters. especially since it looks like hes going to keep his restrictions for a couple more months.
You've already lost nearly a year of play, along with every other team. They're 10. The skills they should understand at 10 they will also be working on when they're 11 and 12 and 13 and so on. Please don't lose any sleep over your kid not getting in a game against a team that is just as rusty, it truly means nothing in the grander scope of their learning the game.
This attitude of "I have to have my kid on the field as much as possible this year because they will revert into these horrible awful players if they don't" is simply untrue and you should question why anyone would say that to you. This year is a year of treading water and any coach who tells you otherwise is flat out lying to you in order to keep your dollars rolling in. Much more important than individual matches, consistency is what will get and keep your kids game IQ high. This is why when in mid-June we saw that league play was exceedingly unlikely for the year, we basically called the year a wash and went on a plan to keep kids fit along with keeping up their individual skills because they are unlikely to keep their game IQ with no sustained summer tournaments and fall league play.
This is one of the things you will learn for yourself as your kid gets older-- game IQ is not this cumulative thing that a 10 year old will build up over time but a very fleeting muscle memory for kids as they develop. A kid who can win a take-on at 10 may or may not be able to win that same take-on against that same opponent at 11. That's fine. You don't need to spend the extra outlay driving out to Scottsdale, staying in a hotel, eating out, and then driving back, just for 3 games because they'll make or break your kid. They won't, trust me.
