Silverlakes Summer Showcase

L

LifeOfSoccer

SILVER
Anyone know when they might post schedules? Tournament starts next weekend and nothing has been published.
 
Slobodan said:
They'd like to make sure you pay the absolute most for flights and hotels. Sorry... been there.
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I feel ya. Not happy our coach chose to play on the surface of the sun at a place we could drive back & fourth to. If I’m doing a stay & play, Norco is not it. San Diego would have been way better and we wouldn’t melt there….oh and their schedules have been out for over a week
 
LifeOfSoccer said:
I feel ya. Not happy our coach chose to play on the surface of the sun at a place we could drive back & fourth to. If I’m doing a stay & play, Norco is not it. San Diego would have been way better and we wouldn’t melt there….oh and their schedules have been out for over a week
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You can go horseback riding in Norco if you go super early before the sun comes up.
 
LifeOfSoccer said:
I feel ya. Not happy our coach chose to play on the surface of the sun at a place we could drive back & fourth to. If I’m doing a stay & play, Norco is not it. San Diego would have been way better and we wouldn’t melt there….oh and their schedules have been out for over a week
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I lovingly referred to them as "stay & pay". Nothing says, "someone else is making money" like your team discount rate at $40 a night more than what you could book it for on your own.
 
Slobodan said:
I lovingly referred to them as "stay & pay". Nothing says, "someone else is making money" like your team discount rate at $40 a night more than what you could book it for on your own.
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Agree: This aggravates me more than it probably should, but it feels like insult on injury that not only do you need to pay to travel, but the tournament is literally taking an extra cut above and beyond the tournament fees for the hotel reservations (along with whatever travel partner agency is also profiteering from the scheme). I get that it's a private industry, but this is so scummy: if you want that extra money, just add it to the tournament fees, and let people make their own travel arrangements. This underhanded BS to pad insider pockets is just very distasteful.
 
sigmabody said:
Agree: This aggravates me more than it probably should, but it feels like insult on injury that not only do you need to pay to travel, but the tournament is literally taking an extra cut above and beyond the tournament fees for the hotel reservations (along with whatever travel partner agency is also profiteering from the scheme). I get that it's a private industry, but this is so scummy: if you want that extra money, just add it to the tournament fees, and let people make their own travel arrangements. This underhanded BS to pad insider pockets is just very distasteful.
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100%. I got in big trouble at a showcase because of the stay & play scummy deal. Our team stayed at the most expensive hotel in Scottsdale. Coach got everything paid for. Suite and food all covered. I was poor at that time of the year and my wife and I disobeyed and stayed at air b n b for $40 a night by the fields. Someone snitched on us, and we got in trouble. I told them to go pound sand and sue me then.
 
crush said:
100%. I got in big trouble at a showcase because of the stay & play scummy deal. Our team stayed at the most expensive hotel in Scottsdale. Coach got everything paid for. Suite and food all covered. I was poor at that time of the year and my wife and I disobeyed and stayed at air b n b for $40 a night by the fields. Someone snitched on us, and we got in trouble. I told them to go pound sand and sue me then.
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I've been told that the typical requirement is at least 85% of a team's players paying "the vig", or the team faces disqualification in the tournament (probably varies per tournament). I assume the travel is always effectively free for coaches; my son's club requires parents to pay for coach travel expenses for tournaments (in addition to club fees, their own travel costs, etc.; annual costs for my son playing club soccer amount to around $5000/yr, in my estimation). I don't know how often the disqualification actually happens, but that's the nominal risk if enough parents don't also pay the underhanded juicer to the club hosting the tournament.

Fortunately, we probably only have a few more years of club sports; my son is going into 8th grade, and by mid high school I expect we'll only be doing high school sports, since he probably won't be good enough to be on a scholarship track. We can put that money toward reducing the inevitable enormous college loans, I suppose.
 
sigmabody said:
I've been told that the typical requirement is at least 85% of a team's players paying "the vig", or the team faces disqualification in the tournament (probably varies per tournament). I assume the travel is always effectively free for coaches; my son's club requires parents to pay for coach travel expenses for tournaments (in addition to club fees, their own travel costs, etc.; annual costs for my son playing club soccer amount to around $5000/yr, in my estimation). I don't know how often the disqualification actually happens, but that's the nominal risk if enough parents don't also pay the underhanded juicer to the club hosting the tournament.

Fortunately, we probably only have a few more years of club sports; my son is going into 8th grade, and by mid high school I expect we'll only be doing high school sports, since he probably won't be good enough to be on a scholarship track. We can put that money toward reducing the inevitable enormous college loans, I suppose.
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Smart move and good on you for being honest with reality. What pisses a lot of middle-class parents is the mark up for the rooms. Go online at its $139 a night. Going through the pay and stay BS it costs $30 extra a night, 3 nights x $30 is $90 per family that is forced into paying extra or their kid might not play. The snitch lady on our team had it out for me.
 
crush said:
Smart move and good on you for being honest with reality. What pisses a lot of middle-class parents is the mark up for the rooms. Go online at its $139 a night. Going through the pay and stay BS it costs $30 extra a night, 3 nights x $30 is $90 per family that is forced into paying extra or their kid might not play. The snitch lady on our team had it out for me.
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In 8 years of attending these “stay and pay“ events, I have never seen a team or club reprimanded for not staying at the team assigned hotel. We get Air BnB or a better priced hotel at every event.
If more teams blew off the overpriced stay and play hotel, this sketchy practice of tournament directors stuffing their bank accounts would come to an end.
 
LouSag said:
In 8 years of attending these “stay and pay“ events, I have never seen a team or club reprimanded for not staying at the team assigned hotel. We get Air BnB or a better priced hotel at every event.
If more teams blew off the overpriced stay and play hotel, this sketchy practice of tournament directors stuffing their bank accounts would come to an end.
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100%. I got snitched on by a sour grape parent. Full of envy and jealousy and was always looking for the edge to help her dd get more play time or make me look bad as a parent. I real piece of work. In less than one week, I turned done coaches' private sessions for a weekly fee, turned down the five-star hotel of stay and pay so your child can play and of course, I complained about how much per diem and where coach was staying to the snitch. In this one week, my kid was benched from being a starter and the youngest on the team (playing up Lou) to coach adding two more super stars to his already super big roster of 18 so he could make an extra $6000 and now have 20, when he promised he would only take 18. Huge importance for ECNL player, FYI. Now two kids would get punished right before tipoff and guess whose kid went to the bench Lou?
 
crush said:
100%. I got snitched on by a sour grape parent. Full of envy and jealousy and was always looking for the edge to help her dd get more play time or make me look bad as a parent. I real piece of work. In less than one week, I turned done coaches' private sessions for a weekly fee, turned down the five-star hotel of stay and pay so your child can play and of course, I complained about how much per diem and where coach was staying to the snitch. In this one week, my kid was benched from being a starter and the youngest on the team (playing up Lou) to coach adding two more super stars to his already super big roster of 18 so he could make an extra $6000 and now have 20, when he promised he would only take 18. Huge importance for ECNL player, FYI. Now two kids would get punished right before tipoff and guess whose kid went to the bench Lou?
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I understand your plight.

Coaches per diem and privates with coaches to favor playing time is a separate but equally sketchy topic. Most legit coaches have a “no private training policy” with that coach for players on their team to prevent appearance of favoritism. For you parents new to the ECNL system, avoid those coaches who don’t have that policy.

And book at any hotel you want to stay at. The “team assigned” hotel from whatever showcase or tournament is a complete scam.
 
LouSag said:
I understand your plight.

Coaches per diem and privates with coaches to favor playing time is a separate but equally sketchy topic. Most legit coaches have a “no private training policy” with that coach for players on their team to prevent appearance of favoritism. For you parents new to the ECNL system, avoid those coaches who don’t have that policy.

And book at any hotel you want to stay at. The “team assigned” hotel from whatever showcase or tournament is a complete scam.
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I took coaches word for the season and his promises of how many on the roster for ECNL and he was a liar because of greed. Sometimes you just have to deal with a lying coach who is all about extra pay days and using his influence over a parent and his dd. I chose not too play his games and me and coach had a long talk on the phone, and I let him have it. He heard me out and the rest is history. He hasn't won squat since lying to me and his teams seem to always break up mid season.
 
Honestly, it's mostly our current culture of middle class parents feeling obligated to pay excessive money to allow their kids to have extra opportunities which has created this environment of abuse, where parents are dealing with huge additional financial strain for marginally better outcomes for their kids. And I say that as "part of the problem": I'm paying for my kid to play on a second tier team in a local city club, so that he can get exercise and skills, even though he has virtually no chance of receiving a scholarship or seeing any meaningful value over time from the club experience. I'm fortunate to be fairly happy with the team/coach/club, and I like to think that if I was not I would walk away, but there's a huge business in feeding hopes and dreams enough to suck the maximum amount of money from parents who just want the best for their kids. The very common "vig" of stay and play tournaments is just a symptom of the overall problem.

I'd love to see parents and clubs refuse to play under suck conditions, but the reality is that as long as clubs have parents who are willing to pay the effective extortion, they won't push back on the tournaments, and it'll only get worse. As I've said before, that's why I'm somewhat glad my kid is not borderline "actually good"... at least I feel confident I will be able to walk way in a few years, and feel okay about the opportunities I was able to provide.
 
sigmabody said:
I've been told that the typical requirement is at least 85% of a team's players paying "the vig", or the team faces disqualification in the tournament (probably varies per tournament). I assume the travel is always effectively free for coaches; my son's club requires parents to pay for coach travel expenses for tournaments (in addition to club fees, their own travel costs, etc.; annual costs for my son playing club soccer amount to around $5000/yr, in my estimation). I don't know how often the disqualification actually happens, but that's the nominal risk if enough parents don't also pay the underhanded juicer to the club hosting the tournament.

Fortunately, we probably only have a few more years of club sports; my son is going into 8th grade, and by mid high school I expect we'll only be doing high school sports, since he probably won't be good enough to be on a scholarship track. We can put that money toward reducing the inevitable enormous college loans, I suppose.
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A few years ago, I believe it was the Man City Cup weekend (could of been Surf Cup) fell on the same weekend as San Diego Comic Con, so all of the hotels were just over the top expensive. The local Motel 6 was close to $300 per night. Most of the team said screw this and did the daily back and forth drive from the SGV to Del Mar. Lots of gas money since gas prices were higher then than now, but everyone still saved a lot of $$$. No one from the team or club heard anything from Surf Sports.
 
Stay and play is icky, and there isn't a player or a coach that wishes it weren't a thing, as by its nature it costs the players more than if they found their own lodging based on their own parameters each time. From a tournament director standpoint, I've seen them share that stay and play offsets what they have to pay the hotels for all of the refs. I'm sure the amount of money saved/gained varies on cost/availability/quality of local lodging, and it may be a lot or a little depending on tournament. But all of this detective work and/or sneaking around is probably silly and unnecessary. Registering for such a stay and play tournament means that the tournament has the credit card and the signed contract that the team is going to meet the entry requirements. They get direct feedback from the hotel(s) whether a team has enough paid rooms for the stated requirement. If they don't, they are charged a fee, as per the contract they agreed to. Anyone on the team that isn't staying in the required lodging is sure hoping that there are enough that are, as if there aren't, the additional charge is going to hit the team anyway - and they are directly causing it.
 
sigmabody said:
if you want that extra money, just add it to the tournament fees, and let people make their own travel arrangements. This underhanded BS to pad insider pockets is just very distasteful.
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100000%!

Just add it to the fee. Let folks decide what to do.

But quick question: do you not have the option to "buy out" of the stay and play list of hotels for a fee and then be able to book anywhere?
 
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