HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER TRYOUTS ARE A RIGGED SHITSTORM AND I'M PISSED ABOUT IT

F

FrankoRunner99

BRONZE
Alright, buckle the fuck up, cause I’ve been bottling this shit in for days, and I need to fucking SPEAK. High school soccer tryouts are the most miserable, brain-dead, soul-crushing experience ever invented by humanity. I don’t even know how to summarize the complete shitstorm I just lived through this beautiful month of November, but here we fucking go.


First off, TRYOUTS SUCK ASS.
Like, genuinely, what the actual fuck is the point of putting us through five goddamn days of HELL just to decide who gets cut? They make you run until you’re puking (love that SoCal heat, right?), yell at you like you’re some unpaid ball-shagging intern, and then casually post a shitty wrinkled piece of paper in the locker room, listing the chosen ones. Or worse, they put it on their fancy-ass Instagram account like they’re some fucking Real Madrid academy or some Premium shit. Bro, we’re not pros. We’re 15-year-olds with raging acne and bad attitudes.

Let me tell you what happened: I just got CUT. Not "Oh, maybe you’ll make JV" cut. I mean "Didn’t make it onto ANY team, not even the landfill-tier Fresh/Soph squad that exists just so the varsity coaches don’t feel bad about axing half the school." It’s like they looked at me, shrugged, and decided we were barely worth the paper they used to print the shitty, wrinkled tryout results. My name? Not on the paper. Not on the polished, Instagram post list with some edgy Kendrick Lamar soundtrack either. Not even on the “you suck but here’s JV or the freshman/sophomore trash team” roster. Nope. My ass got kicked out with the rest of the “plebs,” like we’re dogshit they stepped on. And the best part? No explanation. Don’t think you can ask for feedback. OH NO !!!!! That’s like pulling teeth. You have to go BEG the coach to tell you why you didn’t make it, like he’s doing YOU a favor. “Oh, we just felt like you didn’t stand out enough.” Yeah, no shit, Coach Clipboard, because your beloved Varsity Darlings™ didn't pass your precious Nike Flight Premier League Team Academy™ balls like they'd get straight up executed if they did.

The Varsity Boys™ Are Pre-Selected GODS.
Here’s the kicker: TRYOUTS DON’T EVEN MATTER. Yeah, you heard me. That Varsity squad? PRE-FUCKING-MADE. All those little darlings from last year? They automatically make Varsity again. It doesn’t matter if they were lazy or played like shit during tryouts—they’re in. Coach Clipboard literally said there's like 5 FUCKING SPOTS available on Varsity BEFORE FUCKING DAY 1 OF TRYOUTS STARTED. They automatically get a pass. Why? Oh, because they’re club kids or academy babies. The coach SOMEHOW, already knows them from those clubs. The system is rigged as shit, and we all fucking know it.

Meanwhile, us regular dudes? We’re treated like unpaid extras in a bad sports movie. We’re out here running suicides in 90-degree heat, praying the coach will notice us. Guess what? They fucking DON'T. They’re too busy joking around with their Varsity favorites, high-fiving them and clapping them on the back like they're gonna grab beers after practice or some shit.


The Tryout Experience is Straight-Up TORTURE. It’s 2 hours of hell every day for a week. I got treated like garbage after five days of killing myself out there. Wanna touch the ball? Ha, good luck with that. Those Varsity assholes won’t pass to you because “who the fuck is this kid?”
You can scream “BALL, BALL, BALL” all you want. You can yell “SEND ME” till your throat bleeds. No one gives a shit. And when you finally get the ball? Oh, sorry, the coach didn’t see that play because he was too busy licking the cleats of some MLS Next Academy bastard.

The thing is, yeah, these club kids are good. I’ll give them that. You’d be good too if your parents shelled out $1,000 a month for you to get coached by some mysterious "Elite Coach" who "almost made it pro" in Spain. It actually costs a FUCKING BALLSACK to play on those "Elite" clubs. But the system is RIGGED. The coaches KNOW these kids from clubs because they’re in this weird little soccer mafia together—some shady Illuminati shit in the area where the Varsity coaches keep their precious weird ass connections with the club coaches all tight and buddy-buddy, trading players like they're fucking slaves in the Confederate states 160 years ago.

"You know Eduardo from Premier West Coast LASC Gold League ECNL Tier 1 MLS Next !? He's definitely VARSITY MATERIAL !!!!"
You’re not in a club? Guess what? You’re invisible. You don’t exist. You play AYSO or, God forbid, you’re just a kid who loves soccer and practices at the park? LOL. You’re a joke to this team ! They give you those dead blank stares like you're a fucking leper. It’s not about skill; it’s about politics.

Let me tell you something about these Varsity assholes. They act like they’re hot shit because they made the team last year. Newsflash, you arrogant little pieces of shit: YOU ARE NOT GOING PRO. You’re not even going D1. You’re gonna play at some NAIA school in Nebraska, blow out your ACL sophomore year, and end up selling congealed pizza at Albertsons. Fucking NONE of us are going pro. We're just a bunch of awkward teenagers, and maybe two of us MAX will play D3 soccer in college and warm the fucking bench before we blow up our ACLs and realize we peaked in high school. No one's getting scouted here. But hey, keep posting your stupid goal clips from LASC scrimmages on Instagram like you’re fucking Cavan Sullivan (don't get me started on that overrated bastard with an ego bigger than R9's stomach).

And don’t think I forgot about JV and the Freshman/Sophomore teams. JV is the undershit reserve filler fat just in case one of the Varsity Princes™ blows up his ankle on their pristine turf field during a game. And Fresh/Soph is just a daycare with soccer balls. It’s where dreams go to die on the shit grass field that smells like regret and dogshit piles. “But they're developmental teams!” Shut the fuck up. They're pity teams.


Final Thoughts (or Whatever):
FUCK TRYOUTS. Fuck this perverted gate-keeping darwinistic system. Fuck the Varsity-Club-Academy circle-jerk. And fuck those OVERPRICED, douchebag clubs that force you to PAY the GDP of a FUCKING MICRONATION to play in their fancy ass "PREMIUM !!!" league for a 3 months season. I’m not salty—I’m fucking FURIOUS. High school soccer is a corrupt, rigged, elitist, flaming pile of spirit-crushing SHITSHOW that sucks all the joy out of the game. And you know what? I’m done. I'm FUCKING DONE. I’ll stick to Sunday league games where the only drama is who brings the orange slices.

If you read this whole rant, congrats. You probably just wasted 10 minutes of your life, but hey, at least I feel better now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
 
I, for one, appreciate a good, old fashioned, unapologetic rant, even if it might just be someone's self pity-party along a stages of grief path.

On a semi-related note, though, there's often a lot of overlap between clubs and HS, and it wouldn't be uncommon for coaches to already have a lot of perspective on who is good/otherwise going into try-outs. Moreover, one thing I've certainly observed with my kid, re club vs AYSO/rec: there's a world of difference between just practicing year-round with qualified coaches and good players, vs just practicing "in season" and recreationally. An average player put into a club program will be better, after a year or two, than a more skilled and athletic player just playing AYSO in-season; that's just reality.

And you know what? In the spirit of the rant, I'm not even going to express condolences that life isn't fair. As a parent who puts my kid in club to give him advantages, I know that's an opportunity that not everyone has, and one that he has because I worked a lot to have the resources to provide that type of advantage for my kids. I do not feel bad that my kids can have additional opportunities because of my work. If my actions inspire future rants about how unfair the the club systems are, then so be it.
 
FrankoRunner99 said:
Alright, buckle the fuck up, cause I’ve been bottling this shit in for days, and I need to fucking SPEAK. High school soccer tryouts are the most miserable, brain-dead, soul-crushing experience ever invented by humanity. I don’t even know how to summarize the complete shitstorm I just lived through this beautiful month of November, but here we fucking go.


First off, TRYOUTS SUCK ASS.
Like, genuinely, what the actual fuck is the point of putting us through five goddamn days of HELL just to decide who gets cut? They make you run until you’re puking (love that SoCal heat, right?), yell at you like you’re some unpaid ball-shagging intern, and then casually post a shitty wrinkled piece of paper in the locker room, listing the chosen ones. Or worse, they put it on their fancy-ass Instagram account like they’re some fucking Real Madrid academy or some Premium shit. Bro, we’re not pros. We’re 15-year-olds with raging acne and bad attitudes.

Let me tell you what happened: I just got CUT. Not "Oh, maybe you’ll make JV" cut. I mean "Didn’t make it onto ANY team, not even the landfill-tier Fresh/Soph squad that exists just so the varsity coaches don’t feel bad about axing half the school." It’s like they looked at me, shrugged, and decided we were barely worth the paper they used to print the shitty, wrinkled tryout results. My name? Not on the paper. Not on the polished, Instagram post list with some edgy Kendrick Lamar soundtrack either. Not even on the “you suck but here’s JV or the freshman/sophomore trash team” roster. Nope. My ass got kicked out with the rest of the “plebs,” like we’re dogshit they stepped on. And the best part? No explanation. Don’t think you can ask for feedback. OH NO !!!!! That’s like pulling teeth. You have to go BEG the coach to tell you why you didn’t make it, like he’s doing YOU a favor. “Oh, we just felt like you didn’t stand out enough.” Yeah, no shit, Coach Clipboard, because your beloved Varsity Darlings™ didn't pass your precious Nike Flight Premier League Team Academy™ balls like they'd get straight up executed if they did.

The Varsity Boys™ Are Pre-Selected GODS.
Here’s the kicker: TRYOUTS DON’T EVEN MATTER. Yeah, you heard me. That Varsity squad? PRE-FUCKING-MADE. All those little darlings from last year? They automatically make Varsity again. It doesn’t matter if they were lazy or played like shit during tryouts—they’re in. Coach Clipboard literally said there's like 5 FUCKING SPOTS available on Varsity BEFORE FUCKING DAY 1 OF TRYOUTS STARTED. They automatically get a pass. Why? Oh, because they’re club kids or academy babies. The coach SOMEHOW, already knows them from those clubs. The system is rigged as shit, and we all fucking know it.

Meanwhile, us regular dudes? We’re treated like unpaid extras in a bad sports movie. We’re out here running suicides in 90-degree heat, praying the coach will notice us. Guess what? They fucking DON'T. They’re too busy joking around with their Varsity favorites, high-fiving them and clapping them on the back like they're gonna grab beers after practice or some shit.


The Tryout Experience is Straight-Up TORTURE. It’s 2 hours of hell every day for a week. I got treated like garbage after five days of killing myself out there. Wanna touch the ball? Ha, good luck with that. Those Varsity assholes won’t pass to you because “who the fuck is this kid?”
You can scream “BALL, BALL, BALL” all you want. You can yell “SEND ME” till your throat bleeds. No one gives a shit. And when you finally get the ball? Oh, sorry, the coach didn’t see that play because he was too busy licking the cleats of some MLS Next Academy bastard.

The thing is, yeah, these club kids are good. I’ll give them that. You’d be good too if your parents shelled out $1,000 a month for you to get coached by some mysterious "Elite Coach" who "almost made it pro" in Spain. It actually costs a FUCKING BALLSACK to play on those "Elite" clubs. But the system is RIGGED. The coaches KNOW these kids from clubs because they’re in this weird little soccer mafia together—some shady Illuminati shit in the area where the Varsity coaches keep their precious weird ass connections with the club coaches all tight and buddy-buddy, trading players like they're fucking slaves in the Confederate states 160 years ago.

"You know Eduardo from Premier West Coast LASC Gold League ECNL Tier 1 MLS Next !? He's definitely VARSITY MATERIAL !!!!"
You’re not in a club? Guess what? You’re invisible. You don’t exist. You play AYSO or, God forbid, you’re just a kid who loves soccer and practices at the park? LOL. You’re a joke to this team ! They give you those dead blank stares like you're a fucking leper. It’s not about skill; it’s about politics.

Let me tell you something about these Varsity assholes. They act like they’re hot shit because they made the team last year. Newsflash, you arrogant little pieces of shit: YOU ARE NOT GOING PRO. You’re not even going D1. You’re gonna play at some NAIA school in Nebraska, blow out your ACL sophomore year, and end up selling congealed pizza at Albertsons. Fucking NONE of us are going pro. We're just a bunch of awkward teenagers, and maybe two of us MAX will play D3 soccer in college and warm the fucking bench before we blow up our ACLs and realize we peaked in high school. No one's getting scouted here. But hey, keep posting your stupid goal clips from LASC scrimmages on Instagram like you’re fucking Cavan Sullivan (don't get me started on that overrated bastard with an ego bigger than R9's stomach).

And don’t think I forgot about JV and the Freshman/Sophomore teams. JV is the undershit reserve filler fat just in case one of the Varsity Princes™ blows up his ankle on their pristine turf field during a game. And Fresh/Soph is just a daycare with soccer balls. It’s where dreams go to die on the shit grass field that smells like regret and dogshit piles. “But they're developmental teams!” Shut the fuck up. They're pity teams.


Final Thoughts (or Whatever):
FUCK TRYOUTS. Fuck this perverted gate-keeping darwinistic system. Fuck the Varsity-Club-Academy circle-jerk. And fuck those OVERPRICED, douchebag clubs that force you to PAY the GDP of a FUCKING MICRONATION to play in their fancy ass "PREMIUM !!!" league for a 3 months season. I’m not salty—I’m fucking FURIOUS. High school soccer is a corrupt, rigged, elitist, flaming pile of spirit-crushing SHITSHOW that sucks all the joy out of the game. And you know what? I’m done. I'm FUCKING DONE. I’ll stick to Sunday league games where the only drama is who brings the orange slices.

If you read this whole rant, congrats. You probably just wasted 10 minutes of your life, but hey, at least I feel better now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Click to expand...
First off, I welcome you to the socal soccer forum. This is the place to let it rip and get it all off your chest. I feel your pain Franko. My dd (Dear Daughter, FYI) had a great time playing HS Soccer. However, my pals dd had a horrible experience at her school. Her coach was Mr. Club and had all the access to colleges coaches and used it to his advantage, which was to try and prey on some of his players. He got fired for trying to sleep with one his players.
 
FrankoRunner99 said:
Alright, buckle the fuck up, cause I’ve been bottling this shit in for days, and I need to fucking SPEAK. High school soccer tryouts are the most miserable, brain-dead, soul-crushing experience ever invented by humanity. I don’t even know how to summarize the complete shitstorm I just lived through this beautiful month of November, but here we fucking go.


First off, TRYOUTS SUCK ASS.
Like, genuinely, what the actual fuck is the point of putting us through five goddamn days of HELL just to decide who gets cut? They make you run until you’re puking (love that SoCal heat, right?), yell at you like you’re some unpaid ball-shagging intern, and then casually post a shitty wrinkled piece of paper in the locker room, listing the chosen ones. Or worse, they put it on their fancy-ass Instagram account like they’re some fucking Real Madrid academy or some Premium shit. Bro, we’re not pros. We’re 15-year-olds with raging acne and bad attitudes.

Let me tell you what happened: I just got CUT. Not "Oh, maybe you’ll make JV" cut. I mean "Didn’t make it onto ANY team, not even the landfill-tier Fresh/Soph squad that exists just so the varsity coaches don’t feel bad about axing half the school." It’s like they looked at me, shrugged, and decided we were barely worth the paper they used to print the shitty, wrinkled tryout results. My name? Not on the paper. Not on the polished, Instagram post list with some edgy Kendrick Lamar soundtrack either. Not even on the “you suck but here’s JV or the freshman/sophomore trash team” roster. Nope. My ass got kicked out with the rest of the “plebs,” like we’re dogshit they stepped on. And the best part? No explanation. Don’t think you can ask for feedback. OH NO !!!!! That’s like pulling teeth. You have to go BEG the coach to tell you why you didn’t make it, like he’s doing YOU a favor. “Oh, we just felt like you didn’t stand out enough.” Yeah, no shit, Coach Clipboard, because your beloved Varsity Darlings™ didn't pass your precious Nike Flight Premier League Team Academy™ balls like they'd get straight up executed if they did.

The Varsity Boys™ Are Pre-Selected GODS.
Here’s the kicker: TRYOUTS DON’T EVEN MATTER. Yeah, you heard me. That Varsity squad? PRE-FUCKING-MADE. All those little darlings from last year? They automatically make Varsity again. It doesn’t matter if they were lazy or played like shit during tryouts—they’re in. Coach Clipboard literally said there's like 5 FUCKING SPOTS available on Varsity BEFORE FUCKING DAY 1 OF TRYOUTS STARTED. They automatically get a pass. Why? Oh, because they’re club kids or academy babies. The coach SOMEHOW, already knows them from those clubs. The system is rigged as shit, and we all fucking know it.

Meanwhile, us regular dudes? We’re treated like unpaid extras in a bad sports movie. We’re out here running suicides in 90-degree heat, praying the coach will notice us. Guess what? They fucking DON'T. They’re too busy joking around with their Varsity favorites, high-fiving them and clapping them on the back like they're gonna grab beers after practice or some shit.


The Tryout Experience is Straight-Up TORTURE. It’s 2 hours of hell every day for a week. I got treated like garbage after five days of killing myself out there. Wanna touch the ball? Ha, good luck with that. Those Varsity assholes won’t pass to you because “who the fuck is this kid?”
You can scream “BALL, BALL, BALL” all you want. You can yell “SEND ME” till your throat bleeds. No one gives a shit. And when you finally get the ball? Oh, sorry, the coach didn’t see that play because he was too busy licking the cleats of some MLS Next Academy bastard.

The thing is, yeah, these club kids are good. I’ll give them that. You’d be good too if your parents shelled out $1,000 a month for you to get coached by some mysterious "Elite Coach" who "almost made it pro" in Spain. It actually costs a FUCKING BALLSACK to play on those "Elite" clubs. But the system is RIGGED. The coaches KNOW these kids from clubs because they’re in this weird little soccer mafia together—some shady Illuminati shit in the area where the Varsity coaches keep their precious weird ass connections with the club coaches all tight and buddy-buddy, trading players like they're fucking slaves in the Confederate states 160 years ago.

"You know Eduardo from Premier West Coast LASC Gold League ECNL Tier 1 MLS Next !? He's definitely VARSITY MATERIAL !!!!"
You’re not in a club? Guess what? You’re invisible. You don’t exist. You play AYSO or, God forbid, you’re just a kid who loves soccer and practices at the park? LOL. You’re a joke to this team ! They give you those dead blank stares like you're a fucking leper. It’s not about skill; it’s about politics.

Let me tell you something about these Varsity assholes. They act like they’re hot shit because they made the team last year. Newsflash, you arrogant little pieces of shit: YOU ARE NOT GOING PRO. You’re not even going D1. You’re gonna play at some NAIA school in Nebraska, blow out your ACL sophomore year, and end up selling congealed pizza at Albertsons. Fucking NONE of us are going pro. We're just a bunch of awkward teenagers, and maybe two of us MAX will play D3 soccer in college and warm the fucking bench before we blow up our ACLs and realize we peaked in high school. No one's getting scouted here. But hey, keep posting your stupid goal clips from LASC scrimmages on Instagram like you’re fucking Cavan Sullivan (don't get me started on that overrated bastard with an ego bigger than R9's stomach).

And don’t think I forgot about JV and the Freshman/Sophomore teams. JV is the undershit reserve filler fat just in case one of the Varsity Princes™ blows up his ankle on their pristine turf field during a game. And Fresh/Soph is just a daycare with soccer balls. It’s where dreams go to die on the shit grass field that smells like regret and dogshit piles. “But they're developmental teams!” Shut the fuck up. They're pity teams.


Final Thoughts (or Whatever):
FUCK TRYOUTS. Fuck this perverted gate-keeping darwinistic system. Fuck the Varsity-Club-Academy circle-jerk. And fuck those OVERPRICED, douchebag clubs that force you to PAY the GDP of a FUCKING MICRONATION to play in their fancy ass "PREMIUM !!!" league for a 3 months season. I’m not salty—I’m fucking FURIOUS. High school soccer is a corrupt, rigged, elitist, flaming pile of spirit-crushing SHITSHOW that sucks all the joy out of the game. And you know what? I’m done. I'm FUCKING DONE. I’ll stick to Sunday league games where the only drama is who brings the orange slices.

If you read this whole rant, congrats. You probably just wasted 10 minutes of your life, but hey, at least I feel better now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Click to expand...
Hmm... sounds a lot like club tryouts.

My condolences.
 
Slobodan said:
Hmm... sounds a lot like club tryouts.

My condolences.
Click to expand...
I still remember one tryout I was asked to bring my dd to in Temecula. My dd already made the squad but coach asked her to come out to show some of the others that my dd was looking to make the cut. I feel bad I didn't see why we were asked to come even though she offerred a spot. One player missed the cut because her parents were poor. The kid that made the team had parents worth millions and well, coach saw the potential in the rich kid over the poor kid, even though the poor kid was way better.
 
Slobodan said:
Hmm... sounds a lot like club tryouts.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting perspective. The club my son is in had a few try-outs, and they were generally pretty laid-back (in my perception, at least). Basically, they ran some drills and some small-sided scrimmages, and that was it. It wasn't very athletically challenging, and certainly not a week of hard workouts or anything approaching that.

The part about the club coaches already having most of the slots filled is certainly accurate, though, at least for the club. In my case, the top team in my son's age group had a "try-out in name only"; it was basically just normal practice for the existing team during the try-out time slots. External players tried out with the lower teams only, and the top team was clearly pre-selected before the try-outs. That was just the nature of the coach and club.
 
crush said:
First off, I welcome you to the socal soccer forum. This is the place to let it rip and get it all off your chest. I feel your pain Franko. My dd (Dear Daughter, FYI) had a great time playing HS Soccer. However, my pals dd had a horrible experience at her school. Her coach was Mr. Club and had all the access to colleges coaches and used it to his advantage, which was to try and prey on some of his players. He got fired for trying to sleep with one his players.
Click to expand...
WHAT. THE. HELL !?!?!??! So that's the true nature of those "elite coaches", huh ? Coaches don't give a shit about skill or hardwork. It's only the freaking money. It's all business. Just stick to the parking lot league. It's free and I'm the only damn player.
 
sigmabody said:
That's an interesting perspective. The club my son is in had a few try-outs, and they were generally pretty laid-back (in my perception, at least). Basically, they ran some drills and some small-sided scrimmages, and that was it. It wasn't very athletically challenging, and certainly not a week of hard workouts or anything approaching that.

The part about the club coaches already having most of the slots filled is certainly accurate, though, at least for the club. In my case, the top team in my son's age group had a "try-out in name only"; it was basically just normal practice for the existing team during the try-out time slots. External players tried out with the lower teams only, and the top team was clearly pre-selected before the try-outs. That was just the nature of the coach and club.
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Your 2nd paragraph hits the point. 2-3 available slots because the team was formed weeks ahead of time. Disappointing to hear the high school experience has become a parallel process. To be expected, I suppose, once the DA died.

Having said that, in my experience, most high school coaches know less about the game than 2/3 of the players at the varsity level. Same thing happened to my kid freshman year. Some really good players just don't tryout well, either, and too many times you're at the mercy of who you scrimmage or 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 with. Ridiculous.
 
FrankoRunner99 said:
WHAT. THE. HELL !?!?!??! So that's the true nature of those "elite coaches", huh ? Coaches don't give a shit about skill or hardwork. It's only the freaking money. It's all business. Just stick to the parking lot league. It's free and I'm the only damn player.
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The top elite coaches work with elitiest parents. They come first because they got the money rolling in. I shared this story before but I think it's worth repeating for you Franko. I was at Great Park back in the day. Great Park has all the great club coaches in SoCal. Anyway, I was sitting in my car waiting for my dd to finish practice. I was parked by a very nice Mercedes. I kid you not, rich Papa Bear and kids coach looking for extra hustle cash come over next to me and I can hear the conversation, and it went something like this.

Elite Coach: Like I said, if Junior comes to my private trainings two days a week for extra training (so coach can get paid extra side cash), I don't see why in due time and extra privates that Junior will be in the starting line-up

Elite Father getting in his Mercedes: That's great advice coach. Junior will be at your privates.

Elite Coach: Awesome

Elite Father: Don't forget dads poker night on Friday coach. I'm bringing my buddy who has a son who wants to make your team next year.

Elite Coach: I will be there for sure, and I look forward to meeting your rich friend and his son. I can make anyone elite as long as they work hard, put in the work and daddy pays me to mke them elite.

It went something like that. I was tripping out on this convo and could see how this game is really played for some parents with money and access. Dude in Laguna Beach paid something like $500,000 to get his kid on the rowing team at SC.
 
I have learned as my son is a freshman, that yes, high school soccer is kinda rigged. The choices of who gets on what team is really odd. I am not quite sure what is political, what is malice and what is a lack of intelligence. I guess I will find out more through the years.
 
zanian said:
I have learned as my son is a freshman, that yes, high school soccer is kinda rigged. The choices of who gets on what team is really odd. I am not quite sure what is political, what is malice and what is a lack of intelligence. I guess I will find out more through the years.
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A weird one, which I have witnessed, is some coaches DO NOT LIKE multiple sport athletes, even if they are related. For example, doing cross country and then soccer.
 
Slobodan said:
Having said that, in my experience, most high school coaches know less about the game than 2/3 of the players at the varsity level. Same thing happened to my kid freshman year. Some really good players just don't tryout well, either, and too many times you're at the mercy of who you scrimmage or 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 with. Ridiculous.
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My kid's would-be HS just hired club coaches for their soccer program, so they will certainly know the game. It will also presumably advantage the club players, since they will have the same style and attributes that the coaches are looking for.

That said, I'd be personally quite surprised if some "really good players" didn't try out well; I've done enough player evaluations (even casually) to feel like good skill is hard to miss, irrespective of match-ups. It's kinda the same as interviewing people for a normal job: generally you can tell within a couple minutes if the person is really good or really bad, and in the really good case, after that it's just a matter of what the criteria are, what you're looking for, and if the person is the right fit. Unless the coach is filling the roster based on criteria other than ability to play, it's unlikely someone who is actually really good is going to be passed on, imho (and in that other case, match-ups in try-outs won't matter anyway).
 
FrankoRunner99 said:
Alright, buckle the fuck up, cause I’ve been bottling this shit in for days, and I need to fucking SPEAK. High school soccer tryouts are the most miserable, brain-dead, soul-crushing experience ever invented by humanity. I don’t even know how to summarize the complete shitstorm I just lived through this beautiful month of November, but here we fucking go.


First off, TRYOUTS SUCK ASS.
Like, genuinely, what the actual fuck is the point of putting us through five goddamn days of HELL just to decide who gets cut? They make you run until you’re puking (love that SoCal heat, right?), yell at you like you’re some unpaid ball-shagging intern, and then casually post a shitty wrinkled piece of paper in the locker room, listing the chosen ones. Or worse, they put it on their fancy-ass Instagram account like they’re some fucking Real Madrid academy or some Premium shit. Bro, we’re not pros. We’re 15-year-olds with raging acne and bad attitudes.

Let me tell you what happened: I just got CUT. Not "Oh, maybe you’ll make JV" cut. I mean "Didn’t make it onto ANY team, not even the landfill-tier Fresh/Soph squad that exists just so the varsity coaches don’t feel bad about axing half the school." It’s like they looked at me, shrugged, and decided we were barely worth the paper they used to print the shitty, wrinkled tryout results. My name? Not on the paper. Not on the polished, Instagram post list with some edgy Kendrick Lamar soundtrack either. Not even on the “you suck but here’s JV or the freshman/sophomore trash team” roster. Nope. My ass got kicked out with the rest of the “plebs,” like we’re dogshit they stepped on. And the best part? No explanation. Don’t think you can ask for feedback. OH NO !!!!! That’s like pulling teeth. You have to go BEG the coach to tell you why you didn’t make it, like he’s doing YOU a favor. “Oh, we just felt like you didn’t stand out enough.” Yeah, no shit, Coach Clipboard, because your beloved Varsity Darlings™ didn't pass your precious Nike Flight Premier League Team Academy™ balls like they'd get straight up executed if they did.

The Varsity Boys™ Are Pre-Selected GODS.
Here’s the kicker: TRYOUTS DON’T EVEN MATTER. Yeah, you heard me. That Varsity squad? PRE-FUCKING-MADE. All those little darlings from last year? They automatically make Varsity again. It doesn’t matter if they were lazy or played like shit during tryouts—they’re in. Coach Clipboard literally said there's like 5 FUCKING SPOTS available on Varsity BEFORE FUCKING DAY 1 OF TRYOUTS STARTED. They automatically get a pass. Why? Oh, because they’re club kids or academy babies. The coach SOMEHOW, already knows them from those clubs. The system is rigged as shit, and we all fucking know it.

Meanwhile, us regular dudes? We’re treated like unpaid extras in a bad sports movie. We’re out here running suicides in 90-degree heat, praying the coach will notice us. Guess what? They fucking DON'T. They’re too busy joking around with their Varsity favorites, high-fiving them and clapping them on the back like they're gonna grab beers after practice or some shit.


The Tryout Experience is Straight-Up TORTURE. It’s 2 hours of hell every day for a week. I got treated like garbage after five days of killing myself out there. Wanna touch the ball? Ha, good luck with that. Those Varsity assholes won’t pass to you because “who the fuck is this kid?”
You can scream “BALL, BALL, BALL” all you want. You can yell “SEND ME” till your throat bleeds. No one gives a shit. And when you finally get the ball? Oh, sorry, the coach didn’t see that play because he was too busy licking the cleats of some MLS Next Academy bastard.

The thing is, yeah, these club kids are good. I’ll give them that. You’d be good too if your parents shelled out $1,000 a month for you to get coached by some mysterious "Elite Coach" who "almost made it pro" in Spain. It actually costs a FUCKING BALLSACK to play on those "Elite" clubs. But the system is RIGGED. The coaches KNOW these kids from clubs because they’re in this weird little soccer mafia together—some shady Illuminati shit in the area where the Varsity coaches keep their precious weird ass connections with the club coaches all tight and buddy-buddy, trading players like they're fucking slaves in the Confederate states 160 years ago.

"You know Eduardo from Premier West Coast LASC Gold League ECNL Tier 1 MLS Next !? He's definitely VARSITY MATERIAL !!!!"
You’re not in a club? Guess what? You’re invisible. You don’t exist. You play AYSO or, God forbid, you’re just a kid who loves soccer and practices at the park? LOL. You’re a joke to this team ! They give you those dead blank stares like you're a fucking leper. It’s not about skill; it’s about politics.

Let me tell you something about these Varsity assholes. They act like they’re hot shit because they made the team last year. Newsflash, you arrogant little pieces of shit: YOU ARE NOT GOING PRO. You’re not even going D1. You’re gonna play at some NAIA school in Nebraska, blow out your ACL sophomore year, and end up selling congealed pizza at Albertsons. Fucking NONE of us are going pro. We're just a bunch of awkward teenagers, and maybe two of us MAX will play D3 soccer in college and warm the fucking bench before we blow up our ACLs and realize we peaked in high school. No one's getting scouted here. But hey, keep posting your stupid goal clips from LASC scrimmages on Instagram like you’re fucking Cavan Sullivan (don't get me started on that overrated bastard with an ego bigger than R9's stomach).

And don’t think I forgot about JV and the Freshman/Sophomore teams. JV is the undershit reserve filler fat just in case one of the Varsity Princes™ blows up his ankle on their pristine turf field during a game. And Fresh/Soph is just a daycare with soccer balls. It’s where dreams go to die on the shit grass field that smells like regret and dogshit piles. “But they're developmental teams!” Shut the fuck up. They're pity teams.


Final Thoughts (or Whatever):
FUCK TRYOUTS. Fuck this perverted gate-keeping darwinistic system. Fuck the Varsity-Club-Academy circle-jerk. And fuck those OVERPRICED, douchebag clubs that force you to PAY the GDP of a FUCKING MICRONATION to play in their fancy ass "PREMIUM !!!" league for a 3 months season. I’m not salty—I’m fucking FURIOUS. High school soccer is a corrupt, rigged, elitist, flaming pile of spirit-crushing SHITSHOW that sucks all the joy out of the game. And you know what? I’m done. I'm FUCKING DONE. I’ll stick to Sunday league games where the only drama is who brings the orange slices.

If you read this whole rant, congrats. You probably just wasted 10 minutes of your life, but hey, at least I feel better now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
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I don't feel like I wasted 10 minutes of my life reading your post, I feel like I just RE-lived four years of high school. Sorry, dude. And don't think the shit show stops at high school. You'll be fighting the privileged for scraps all the way until you've eventually fought long and hard enough that you find you're at the top. And at that point, DON'T FORGET how you felt at the bottom and give a hard-working nobody a chance. Keep fighting until then...... it seems like it will never get better - until it does.
 
You guys exaggerate. Don’t feed Franko’s rage. He sounds like someone who might shout up the school. A used Mercedes costs less than a used Toyota. Everyone driving a Mercedes in SoCal is not rich. The truth is a kid who is a 99 percentile player will make a team rich parents or poor.
 
Jamisfoes said:
You guys exaggerate. Don’t feed Franko’s rage. He sounds like someone who might shout up the school. A used Mercedes costs less than a used Toyota. Everyone driving a Mercedes in SoCal is not rich. The truth is a kid who is a 99 percentile player will make a team rich parents or poor.
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Franko came on here to "shout" from the rooftop. I do agree with you that not everyone who drives a Mercedes is rich. Many are actually in debt to have that car. Most club and high school teams don't have that many in the 99th percentile player. I think without exaggeration that the last half of the roster is filled with those who can pay to play. The Elite Club coach is trained to find those that can pay to play. One of the top Docs ever in OC once told me that many of the coaches look first at the watch, then the car they drive and then what the mom looks like on the girl's side.
 
crush said:
I think without exaggeration that the last half of the roster is filled with those who can pay to play. The Elite Club coach is trained to find those that can pay to play. One of the top Docs ever in OC once told me that many of the coaches look first at the watch, then the car they drive and then what the mom looks like on the girl's side.
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Although I think this might be happening, things typically don’t work out well for those coaches who give private lessons to players on the team. Words get out, good players won’t join a team like that. The team ends up breaking up.
I would discourage players from ever taking private lessons from their coach. They will be seen by others on the team as trying to buy playing time and access. Parents can be nasty when they talk.
 
crush said:
The top elite coaches work with elitiest parents. They come first because they got the money rolling in. I shared this story before but I think it's worth repeating for you Franko. I was at Great Park back in the day. Great Park has all the great club coaches in SoCal. Anyway, I was sitting in my car waiting for my dd to finish practice. I was parked by a very nice Mercedes. I kid you not, rich Papa Bear and kids coach looking for extra hustle cash come over next to me and I can hear the conversation, and it went something like this.

Elite Coach: Like I said, if Junior comes to my private trainings two days a week for extra training (so coach can get paid extra side cash), I don't see why in due time and extra privates that Junior will be in the starting line-up

Elite Father getting in his Mercedes: That's great advice coach. Junior will be at your privates.

Elite Coach: Awesome

Elite Father: Don't forget dads poker night on Friday coach. I'm bringing my buddy who has a son who wants to make your team next year.

Elite Coach: I will be there for sure, and I look forward to meeting your rich friend and his son. I can make anyone elite as long as they work hard, put in the work and daddy pays me to mke them elite.

It went something like that. I was tripping out on this convo and could see how this game is really played for some parents with money and access. Dude in Laguna Beach paid something like $500,000 to get his kid on the rowing team at SC.
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Reminds me of Dr. Dre bragging about his kid getting into USC 'all on her own' and forgetting about the $70,000,000 donation he made to the school previously.
 
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