HELP new to club soccer, son is a goalkeeper

multisportson

multisportson

SILVER
After 5 years of playing travel ice hockey, my son decided he wanted to play soccer as a goalkeeper. We tried a spring season of AYSO to see if he was serious (he was), and so we spent a season playing hockey and a little club soccer when he could make it to games.

It took me nearly 5 years to figure out the rules of travel hockey, both written and unwritten, and now I am completely lost in the world of club soccer. How much do clubs usually charge? How many practices per week? How much goalkeeper training, if any, should I expect? What are the different leagues? I stumbled upon this site, but haven't found much specific to goalkeeping and/or news for newbie travel soccer parents. If there is a thread on this site that could help a parent new to club soccer, could someone direct me to it? Or if there is information specific to goalkeepers, I'd appreciate that too. I have a million questions and am not sure where to turn for help. Thank you!
 
multisportson said:
How much do clubs usually charge? How many practices per week? How much goalkeeper training, if any, should I expect? What are the different leagues? I stumbled upon this site, but haven't found much specific to goalkeeping and/or news for newbie travel soccer parents. If there is a thread on this site that could help a parent new to club soccer, could someone direct me to it? Or if there is information specific to goalkeepers, I'd appreciate that too. I have a million questions and am not sure where to turn for help. Thank you!
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Club fees were addressed already. In our experience the keeper training provided by the club is normally free. Leagues: SCDSL/CSL/SDDA/ENCL/EGSL/etc...

As for the amount of time training, here was my daughters weekly schedule last year:

Monday - 1.5 hours keeper training
Tuesday - 1.5 hours training with team
Wednesday - 1.5 hours (45 minutes conditioning /45 minutes futsal)
Thursday - 1.5 hour team practice
Friday - 1 hour keeper technique session (every other week or so)
Saturday morning - 2 hours (1 hour warm up/1 hour game)
Saturday evening - 1.5 hour futsal
Sunday - 1 hour private keeper training
Total - 11.5 hours on average per week

As respects to training time, that was a healthy schedule for an '05 girl. But she was hell bent on proving the DOC of our last club wrong for placing her on the 2nd team. If you have additional questions PM me. Welcome to family of keepers. And I like to tell everyone: "the only thing worse than keepers are their parents." It is stressful position for your kid and you; you will need a sense of humor. Good luck.
 
MyDaughtersAKeeper said:
And I like to tell everyone: "the only thing worse than keepers are their parents." It is stressful position for your kid and you; you will need a sense of humor. Good luck.
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This is 100% true. That's the downside of it. The upside about it is, as you can see from all the ads here for keepers as young as 2008, is that a good keeper is always in demand.

To OP, it would be useful to know the age of your DS and if he is going to do keeping FT. Though there is a split in consensus, most people around here have advised me that the kids shouldn't specialize in the spot until U11-U13 roughly. The reason for that is you don't know if they'll grow into the role, particularly if they are male, once they hit puberty and whether they'll continued to be interested in the position (since its so high stress). So my son, a 2008, generally spends only 1/2 his time in goal and usually about 1/4 of the game time on the field. So he is currently cross-training between the 2 positions. Team practice is 1.5 times a week twice a week, goalkeeper academy once a week for 1-1.5 hrs (his club offers striker, defensive, and goalie academy), private field work with a trainer 1 hr a week (to make up for the touches he misses while in goal...if he were older and went FT keeper I'd probably replace this with private keeper training), 1/2 warmup before the game and a 1 hour game. Since your son already did 5 years of field hockey I suspect he is already an older.
 
Thank you everyone for the great links and info! My son is an '06 and yes, he started playing ice hockey at a pretty young age. He actually wanted to be an ice hockey goalie, but his coach said no because he's too fast, and I said no because it's too expensive! :) He says he wants to be in net about 75% of the time and 25% on the field, but unfortunately once he showed he could play keeper, he never gets out on the field. From what I understand, at age 10, he really should still be out on the field, working on his general skills.

I appreciate the information about how much time people spend training, because for now, we are committed to him being a multi-sport athlete. In ice hockey, if you want to be on the best teams, you have to play all year, and you don't play other sports. It seems like this is probably true in most youth sports, and probably soccer is no exception? So we're happy to play at whatever level/flight, and as he gets closer to 8th grade (which seems to be the point where people say you should pick a sport and stick with it), hopefully he'll pick soccer, because it's waaaaay cheaper than ice hockey! :)
 
multisportson said:
I appreciate the information about how much time people spend training, because for now, we are committed to him being a multi-sport athlete. In ice hockey, if you want to be on the best teams, you have to play all year, and you don't play other sports. It seems like this is probably true in most youth sports, and probably soccer is no exception? So we're happy to play at whatever level/flight, and as he gets closer to 8th grade (which seems to be the point where people say you should pick a sport and stick with it), hopefully he'll pick soccer, because it's waaaaay cheaper than ice hockey! :)
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Well, I'm assuming you know this but the club soccer season at your sons age (even for lower level bronze teams) begins in the spring, continues through the summer tournament season, and goes into the fall. If you are in snow country (which you may be because hockey is more popular there than in the sun belt), club there tend to also do futsal (indoor soccer) when it is too cold to play outside including in winter/early spring. So many people find it difficult to do both club soccer and something else. That's even harder of course if your son is cross-training hockey field/hockey goalie/soccer field/soccer goalie since he's effectively training in 4 different areas and requires specific instruction in each. In our '08 club, for example, we've had some kids who have also been doing baseball but their parents are coming around to the conclusion they probably can't carry both particularly since they have to miss games for one or the other.

The other way to go is if you are not sure that you want to commit to club soccer (and the expense of it) is to do AYSO Extras. It's cheaper and the commitment isn't as intense as club soccer (though your mileage may vary depending on the club and whether they organize to enter tournaments). The downside however is that the training is usually volunteer based and therefore not as profession (again YMMV), the level of play isn't merit based (since all kids selected must play at least 50%) and you may have missed spring tryouts.

There are also those who will tell you that grade 8 is too late to specialize in just one sport, considering how early kids are specializing these days, but that is a subject up for intense debate and there are a range of opinions over when exactly kids should pick. The downside is by specializing late, you know other kids are getting touches on the ball (puck) that your child is not. The counter argument is that cross training develops various aspects of an athlete.
 
Grace T. said:
Well, I'm assuming you know this but the club soccer season at your sons age (even for lower level bronze teams) begins in the spring, continues through the summer tournament season, and goes into the fall. If you are in snow country (which you may be because hockey is more popular there than in the sun belt), club there tend to also do futsal (indoor soccer) when it is too cold to play outside including in winter/early spring. So many people find it difficult to do both club soccer and something else. That's even harder of course if your son is cross-training hockey field/hockey goalie/soccer field/soccer goalie since he's effectively training in 4 different areas and requires specific instruction in each. In our '08 club, for example, we've had some kids who have also been doing baseball but their parents are coming around to the conclusion they probably can't carry both particularly since they have to miss games for one or the other.

The other way to go is if you are not sure that you want to commit to club soccer (and the expense of it) is to do AYSO Extras. It's cheaper and the commitment isn't as intense as club soccer (though your mileage may vary depending on the club and whether they organize to enter tournaments). The downside however is that the training is usually volunteer based and therefore not as profession (again YMMV), the level of play isn't merit based (since all kids selected must play at least 50%) and you may have missed spring tryouts.

There are also those who will tell you that grade 8 is too late to specialize in just one sport, considering how early kids are specializing these days, but that is a subject up for intense debate and there are a range of opinions over when exactly kids should pick. The downside is by specializing late, you know other kids are getting touches on the ball (puck) that your child is not. The counter argument is that cross training develops various aspects of an athlete.
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Yeah, I have figured out that soccer is 12 months, but luckily my son's soccer team is working with us during his flag football season. Similarly, they worked with us when we were in hockey season, even when we had to miss games. I guess solid goalkeepers are hard to come by out here in the IE? (no, we're not in Canada, ha, my kid just fell in love with a crazy winter sport) I looked into AYSO Extra, but they said they wanted a 12 month commitment, and we're not ready to make that kind of commitment. Our current team also wants a 12 month commitment (I guess 12 month contracts are normal?), but if they want my boy, they have to work with us on the other sports. It helps that we are not on the top team, and don't want to be there. He hasn't even been playing soccer for a year yet, so I know he's got so much to learn, especially as a goalie. It's so very technical! He's committed to it, though, so I was trying to have him take private goalkeeper lessons on top of the once a week that the club was providing.

We just finished up a hockey season with a team where you were expected to be on the ice 5-6 times a week, play 12 months, and regularly travel out of state for tournaments and exhibitions. We figured out pretty quickly that (a) we can't afford this and (b) it's just not what my son wants. He wants to play a lot of sports, and to the extent that means he won't ever be on a championship team, that's fine. I'm just hoping that soccer will be more flexible, although I know the pressure will be on soon to specialize and give everything else up.
 
multisportson said:
Yeah, I have figured out that soccer is 12 months, but luckily my son's soccer team is working with us during his flag football season. Similarly, they worked with us when we were in hockey season, even when we had to miss games. I guess solid goalkeepers are hard to come by out here in the IE? (no, we're not in Canada, ha, my kid just fell in love with a crazy winter sport) I looked into AYSO Extra, but they said they wanted a 12 month commitment, and we're not ready to make that kind of commitment. Our current team also wants a 12 month commitment (I guess 12 month contracts are normal?), but if they want my boy, they have to work with us on the other sports. It helps that we are not on the top team, and don't want to be there. He hasn't even been playing soccer for a year yet, so I know he's got so much to learn, especially as a goalie. It's so very technical! He's committed to it, though, so I was trying to have him take private goalkeeper lessons on top of the once a week that the club was providing.

We just finished up a hockey season with a team where you were expected to be on the ice 5-6 times a week, play 12 months, and regularly travel out of state for tournaments and exhibitions. We figured out pretty quickly that (a) we can't afford this and (b) it's just not what my son wants. He wants to play a lot of sports, and to the extent that means he won't ever be on a championship team, that's fine. I'm just hoping that soccer will be more flexible, although I know the pressure will be on soon to specialize and give everything else up.
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Goalkeeper is a tough position to start out playing the game. And - if he is determined to become a goalkeeper, he will never crack the top ranks unless he is good with his feet (a skill one gains by playing in the field) and has some idea of how strikers think (a coach once told my son that he should not just want to score, he should want to make the keeper quit the game). Good luck.
 
multisportson said:
Yeah, I have figured out that soccer is 12 months, but luckily my son's soccer team is working with us during his flag football season. Similarly, they worked with us when we were in hockey season, even when we had to miss games. I guess solid goalkeepers are hard to come by out here in the IE? (no, we're not in Canada, ha, my kid just fell in love with a crazy winter sport) I looked into AYSO Extra, but they said they wanted a 12 month commitment, and we're not ready to make that kind of commitment. Our current team also wants a 12 month commitment (I guess 12 month contracts are normal?), but if they want my boy, they have to work with us on the other sports. It helps that we are not on the top team, and don't want to be there. He hasn't even been playing soccer for a year yet, so I know he's got so much to learn, especially as a goalie. It's so very technical! He's committed to it, though, so I was trying to have him take private goalkeeper lessons on top of the once a week that the club was providing.
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FYI, private goalkeeper lessons are much more expensive than the average field private lessons. It's because good goalkeeper coaches are hard to come by. And yes, as you say, and as you can see from the posts on this site, teams can be pretty desperate to get a good goalkeeper so you do have some leverage, but careful, that leverage can only take you so far, particularly given the rules regarding tournament qualifications and team switches within leagues.

If you do go the private coach route, and since your son has been doing it only for a bit and given his age level, make sure that you find a coach that builds up your son's knowledge. Should start with proper positioning, movement and catching technique as well as the forward dive. Should also incorporate the use of the legs and mastering the back pass. Once those are mastered, moving onto closing the angel and charging out of the goal (when and how to do it) followed by introducing proper low diving technique and punches/slaps. Once those are mastered using the low dive and moving onto high catches. And only taking the high dive, defending the cross, and the punch over the bar once those are mastered. Opinions may vary as to when and how each technique should be taken up, but if the coach is going straight to high dives and crosses, he's not doing it right.

I agree with espola as well. At that age, to learn goalkeeping properly, he also needs to have knowledge of field play and how the game in general works. Some of the best goalkeepers have been former forwards/attacking mids.
 
Grace T. said:
FYI, private goalkeeper lessons are much more expensive than the average field private lessons. It's because good goalkeeper coaches are hard to come by. And yes, as you say, and as you can see from the posts on this site, teams can be pretty desperate to get a good goalkeeper so you do have some leverage, but careful, that leverage can only take you so far, particularly given the rules regarding tournament qualifications and team switches within leagues.

If you do go the private coach route, and since your son has been doing it only for a bit and given his age level, make sure that you find a coach that builds up your son's knowledge. Should start with proper positioning, movement and catching technique as well as the forward dive. Should also incorporate the use of the legs and mastering the back pass. Once those are mastered, moving onto closing the angel and charging out of the goal (when and how to do it) followed by introducing proper low diving technique and punches/slaps. Once those are mastered using the low dive and moving onto high catches. And only taking the high dive, defending the cross, and the punch over the bar once those are mastered. Opinions may vary as to when and how each technique should be taken up, but if the coach is going straight to high dives and crosses, he's not doing it right.

I agree with espola as well. At that age, to learn goalkeeping properly, he also needs to have knowledge of field play and how the game in general works. Some of the best goalkeepers have been former forwards/attacking mids.
Click to expand...

I used to tell goalkeepers (including my son) that if you are all alone facing a breakaway, you have the choice of coming out to cut down the angle, or staying on the line to protect as much of the goal as you can. If you come out, and don't get the ball, you are much worse off than if you stayed on the line - but it's more exciting.
 
Grace T. said:
FYI, private goalkeeper lessons are much more expensive than the average field private lessons. It's because good goalkeeper coaches are hard to come by. And yes, as you say, and as you can see from the posts on this site, teams can be pretty desperate to get a good goalkeeper so you do have some leverage, but careful, that leverage can only take you so far, particularly given the rules regarding tournament qualifications and team switches within leagues.

If you do go the private coach route, and since your son has been doing it only for a bit and given his age level, make sure that you find a coach that builds up your son's knowledge. Should start with proper positioning, movement and catching technique as well as the forward dive. Should also incorporate the use of the legs and mastering the back pass. Once those are mastered, moving onto closing the angel and charging out of the goal (when and how to do it) followed by introducing proper low diving technique and punches/slaps. Once those are mastered using the low dive and moving onto high catches. And only taking the high dive, defending the cross, and the punch over the bar once those are mastered. Opinions may vary as to when and how each technique should be taken up, but if the coach is going straight to high dives and crosses, he's not doing it right.

I agree with espola as well. At that age, to learn goalkeeping properly, he also needs to have knowledge of field play and how the game in general works. Some of the best goalkeepers have been former forwards/attacking mids.
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so far, the club coach is doing exactly how you mentioned it, so that's good! I had no idea what needed to be taught and when. Thanks!
and how much do privates usually cost? $40? is that cheap? that's how much it costs in hockey.
 
espola said:
I used to tell goalkeepers (including my son) that if you are all alone facing a breakaway, you have the choice of coming out to cut down the angle, or staying on the line to protect as much of the goal as you can. If you come out, and don't get the ball, you are much worse off than if you stayed on the line - but it's more exciting.
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My son has very little help on defense, so he comes out of the box a LOT and it scares the heck out of me.
 
espola said:
I used to tell goalkeepers (including my son) that if you are all alone facing a breakaway, you have the choice of coming out to cut down the angle, or staying on the line to protect as much of the goal as you can. If you come out, and don't get the ball, you are much worse off than if you stayed on the line - but it's more exciting.
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I think it also depends on the style of play of the goalie. If you have a big keeper that's good with his high dives and can take out even a shot to the corner, have at it and stay at your line. If you are more of a ground player, come out.

It also depends on the goal size. The U8s, for example, no way you can defend that big goal...coming out at the minimum might make the forward nervous and flub the ball....similar for the teens when they move into the full regulation goal at first. The answer then is usually always come out.
 
multisportson said:
so far, the club coach is doing exactly how you mentioned it, so that's good! I had no idea what needed to be taught and when. Thanks!
and how much do privates usually cost? $40? is that cheap? that's how much it costs in hockey.
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$40 is cheap for a private field trainer. Most of the goalie trainers I know (and there are only 3 or so good ones anywhere near my area) charge $100+ per hour, again because there are fewer. My son got referred to one guy who did training for the galaxy academy that charged $200+ for a private....ahh....no thank you for an under 10.
 
Grace T. said:
$40 is cheap for a private field trainer. Most of the goalie trainers I know (and there are only 3 or so good ones anywhere near my area) charge $100+ per hour, again because there are fewer. My son got referred to one guy who did training for the galaxy academy that charged $200+ for a private....ahh....no thank you for an under 10.
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$100? wow! and here I thought I'd save money if we moved from hockey to soccer!! hahaha
 
multisportson said:
My son has very little help on defense, so he comes out of the box a LOT and it scares the heck out of me.
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That's a little concerning. My son in his first club game had to come out 20 times....3 v. 1s, 2 v. 1s. 1. v 1s....got about 2/3 of them. They got wooped 10-3. Fortunately, he's still had to come out by not as often. If he's coming out a lot then the club may have other issues (and no wonder then they are so desperate for a good keeper). That's not particularly fair to a new keeper either so hopefully they aren't keeping him out there the entire time.
 
There is nothing wrong for a goalkeeper at early age to be on a bad team. This way he will get plenty of action.
 
AFC said:
There is nothing wrong for a goalkeeper at early age to be on a bad team. This way he will get plenty of action.
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I'd agree so long as the young goalkeeper isn't expected to be "the guy" that saves the team and only plays on goal the entire time period, and so long as the coach is working with the defense to make them more effective. Given that this is a new goalkeeper whose parent has indicated that he's coming out a lot (when it is unlikely the club has taught him, let alone helped him master, the techniques for coming out such as how to collapse dive properly in order not to get hurt), my antenna would be up.

An older would be a different story.
 
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