Club Team Tiers

R

Rollonyoubears

BRONZE
New to club this year, so i'm sure i'm the millionth person to say this but holy hell. Can we all just have a common tier structure for flights? Between blue, white, black, gold, green, navy, premier, elite, academy, elite academy, it's insane. I could add 50 more terms...

Time for an all hands meeting. :)

Rant over.
 
Rollonyoubears said:
New to club this year, so i'm sure i'm the millionth person to say this but holy hell. Can we all just have a common tier structure for flights? Between blue, white, black, gold, green, navy, premier, elite, academy, elite academy, it's insane. I could add 50 more terms...

Time for an all hands meeting. :)

Rant over.
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If there was a common tier structure there would only be 1 top team. If there's all kinds of wacky tiers that don't really corelate to each other there can be all kinds of top teams. If there's more top teams there's more paying customers
 
But every club has a top team per age group, so it's not like parents aren't used to the concept. Unless you are getting into higher levels with the older kids, keep it gold, silver, bronze. Simple. The concept of an Academy level team that does not physically stay at an Academy is silly.

For perspective's sake, I have a B2016 player.
 
Ignore all the nonsense (though it's hard). If you find a coach who cares about your kid, seems to know a bit about soccer, and who your kid enjoys playing for - - you've won at club soccer. Stop there. And it doesn't necessarily take $3,000 a year to accomplish that, but sometimes it does, so be prepared to roll with the punches financially. After 3 or 4 years of that, it gets slightly more complicated, but by then this message board will have taught you all you need to know.
 
Rollonyoubears said:
But every club has a top team per age group, so it's not like parents aren't used to the concept. Unless you are getting into higher levels with the older kids, keep it gold, silver, bronze. Simple. The concept of an Academy level team that does not physically stay at an Academy is silly.

For perspective's sake, I have a B2016 player.
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Gold, silver, bronze, is just as silly and confusing as Premier, Elite, Academy. They don't really represent anything; don't indicate a particular level of play, because it differs from club to club. In larger clubs it isn't unusual for the 3rd or 4th team to out perform the 2nd or even 1st as they get older.
Of course this results in hurt feelings, and teams/coaches moving to a different club or breaking up. Coaches name to distinguish teams works well for this, as the team club name changes, but everyone can keep track of the team because the coach name stays with the team. The problem with the coach method occurs when the coach gets sacked for one reason or another, then it's back to confusion, as the team name and new coach don't match.

The Best method in my opinion is [Club name, location, age group, roman numerals (club colors work well also, but some people confuse the color gold with the medal)]. This works very well when a club has multiple teams in the same age group playing in the same league/level.
 
Ah yes, "Club Team Tiers."
Experiencing a club that has 2 flight one teams for younger boys. One of the flight one teams has one more year of club dev under their belt, but the "2nd" flight one team routinely beats the "1st" flight one team head to head and in record W/L. I'm told that clubs often do this to placate as many families as possible to their $, but in reality all it's doing is creating a club whose best players are split into two teams, irritating the top players and their parents. Worse, it's hamstringing the development of top talent in the club, something the club should be coveting for their ECNL program. Question: do the larger, successful clubs play these games, or are they more logically based on player talent?
Thoughts?
 
Rollonyoubears said:
New to club this year, so i'm sure i'm the millionth person to say this but holy hell. Can we all just have a common tier structure for flights? Between blue, white, black, gold, green, navy, premier, elite, academy, elite academy, it's insane. I could add 50 more terms...

Time for an all hands meeting. :)

Rant over.
Click to expand...
Welcome! Here's a potential picture of your journey in youth soccer in SoCal: you'll learn the existing system in a bit. You'll get a handle of the best teams and clubs in the area in your kid's age group. You'll find out who the top coaches and players are in the area.

And then it will change.

A new league will start, or a league will create a new tier system desired around letters, numbers, colors, shoe brands, European league names, etc. The change will be deemed more conducive to player development. Coaches will switch clubs. That kid who murdered everyone one year will sit on the bench the next year and then be out of the sport entirely. Kids will move from team to team trying to stay ahead of the curve and to stay in the top leagues. Other predictable things will happen. Parents will be weird on the sideline. You might (read: will) have weird, regrettable moments yourself. You'll laugh. You'll shake your head. You'll rightly recognize that all of this is insane.

Then it will switch again and a similar dance will play out.

All marking.

Ignore all of this. Foster a love for the sport outside of the club system. Train individually and in small groups. Find a good trainer if you can muster it. Eventually, you'll learn who the charlatans are in the sport and you'll learn the real deal coaches and trainers who can help your kid develop a bit if they want to move forward with this soccer thing. There are a lot more of the former than the latter. Eventually, it will click for your kid and you'll find clubs and coaches that work, or they'll stop and try something new, which is ok.
 
Rollonyoubears said:
New to club this year, so i'm sure i'm the millionth person to say this but holy hell. Can we all just have a common tier structure for flights? Between blue, white, black, gold, green, navy, premier, elite, academy, elite academy, it's insane. I could add 50 more terms...

Time for an all hands meeting. :)

Rant over.
Click to expand...
There's an 'all hands' meeting every year. It takes place in your wallet.

Welcome to the show.
 
focomoso said:
I noticed early that the higher the level of play, the quieter the parents on the sideline.
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Interesting anecdotal/aside: I have always been one of the parents encouraging my kids from the sideline (always positive/general, never coaching or yelling specific instructions). I think my two most used phrases are probably "hustle" and "get there".

I have found myself shouting less, though, as my son has gotten better. To wit, it feels like he's beyond the point of needing encouragement to put in the effort on the field, so I find myself now mainly just applauding good plays, and not otherwise being very vocal on the sideline. Whereas previously it seemed like there were a lot of low-energy moments, now it seems like the effort is there, and it's just a matter of execution, for which yelling from the sideline doesn't really help.

I can see how (notwithstanding the occasional jackass parent) the sideline would be much more quiet at higher levels of play.
 
Soccer ranking app currently has Pateadores b2014 pre ecnl at 4th in the state and 10th in the nation. Major app glitch. I would like to know what went wrong there. We need to start questioning who is behind this app and if we can trust it.
 
Whenever I see something like that, it's usually when a data source was just added manually. It seems that Surf Cup may have just been added to them, and they didn't do well. Having offense show as 220 in the nation, and defense showing 1, is a tell that something is likely off. I have seen this type of glitch a number of times in the past, and talked with the developer about it. My hunch is somewhere it is not using the correct age range when doing the sorting of teams before display. He has not been able to track it down. However - if you wait a day for it to recalculate overnight, it's not likely that it will look this way tomorrow.


pats 2014b.jpg
 
Jamisfoes said:
Soccer ranking app currently has Pateadores b2014 pre ecnl at 4th in the state and 10th in the nation. Major app glitch. I would like to know what went wrong there. We need to start questioning who is behind this app and if we can trust it.
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Mark (the person who made the app) posts here all the time, and will answer your emails rapidly if you care to reach out to him!
If you don't trust the app, don't use it, but I find it to be unbelievably accurate.
 
Larzby said:
Mark (the person who made the app) posts here all the time, and will answer your emails rapidly if you care to reach out to him!
If you don't trust the app, don't use it, but I find it to be unbelievably accurate.
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I find it accurate most of the times also but a glitch like this shows there is room for improvement.
 
Ask him yourself. If it's not a good enough explanation, stop paying him $10/year. Immediately jumping to "who's behind it, can we trust him or is something nefarious going on" says more about you than either him or the app.
 
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