Yes the friendships and relationships you can cultivate in a small club is great. I’ve met and gotten to know great people from being a part of a small club. The downside is that it can become more about keeping things the way they have always been and making progress. Players stay on the team and start even though they don’t make much effort. Competitiveness and friendliness is hard to combine.You have hit the nail in the head. I think the key to keeping the team together is to form friendships among the core players. Small clubs/parents need to facilitate team building by having activities outside soccer. One advantage of small club is the family feel you get when you interact with coaches and DOC. You feel like you know everyone.
This is a very good point. That being said, it can be an issue at any club, small or large.Yes the friendships and relationships you can cultivate in a small club is great. I’ve met and gotten to know great people from being a part of a small club. The downside is that it can become more about keeping things the way they have always been and making progress. Players stay on the team and start even though they don’t make much effort. Competitiveness and friendliness is hard to combine.
I think you falling behind times a little......AYSO United is playing in SoCalThe best coach my kid ever had was with a small local club. The problem, as you note, is that unless you get a group of really good players that become friends and are capable of lifting the team to a new level (and there are plenty of examples where this does happen, but it has to happen early on in the process), you'll have the promotion/relegation issue. The team won't advance. After a season or two the best players become frustrated (particularly with the weaker or less dedicated players that aren't putting in the time)...will be ready for more challenges....will leave....you'll have to recruit new players. What's worse, in the younger ages they are probably playing in the key positions down the center line of striker/CM/CB/GK. so their departure is a particular blow. The middle tier has now been playing for 2 years and is ready to move on, but you have to bring in new players up from AYSO to fill in the gaps of the players that left and it takes them a season or two to get up to speed so that middle tier now wants to move on....rinse and repeat and you find yourself perpetually stuck in bronze. Works the same even without pro/rel since if you move too fast your team will be kicked 12-0 and the parents will complain and go elsewhere. If you are lucky enough to actually achieve promotion, that first year in the new tier is a bear because all your players are adjusting to the new level of play and you are playing teams that survived that level of play last year...you not only have to avoid relegation, but you got to be good enough to hit the middle of the table. That's why many coaches will upgrade using the promoted level to recruit better players instead of developing the ones that brought you to promotion.
It's a perpetual cycle for the smaller clubs. The only thing that really holds some of them in place is the field space access, particularly in the suburb towns, since school districts and parks and recs tend to give preference to the smaller local orgs. My son played for a heavily latino team that practiced in the public park....bear of a time recruiting any nonLatino players....every single anglo player that showed up looked at the park situation and said no thanks.
The other big factor is Coast v. SoCal League. Not a whole lot of local clubs in SoCal League, unless they've somehow affiliated themselves with some other club as a franchise. In Coast, if you get promotion early enough, you can get teams from small clubs that thrive. A lot of those Coast teams are heavily ethnic too from local barrios and not just Latino. And AYSO United has become a recruiting machine (being able to get first dibs on players coming out of Extras or Core) and plays in Coast, but increasingly, I think their membership in Coast is going to hold them back if they don't make the hop to SoCal League.
I have faith in our coach to develope our players. I have seen flight 1 players from the big clubs. Our core kids are just as good as theirs. My concern is just the club is not bringing in kids fast enough to have backups if people leave.Yes the friendships and relationships you can cultivate in a small club is great. I’ve met and gotten to know great people from being a part of a small club. The downside is that it can become more about keeping things the way they have always been and making progress. Players stay on the team and start even though they don’t make much effort. Competitiveness and friendliness is hard to combine.
I think you falling behind times a little......AYSO United is playing in SoCal
Sounds like you have a good situation. I wouldn't worry too much about people leaving until they do. If people do leave and you think the team is not as competitive as you want, then look around. 1 or 2 seasons of less than ideal play isn't going to harm your kid in the long scheme of things. You never know, sometimes players leave and then 1 or 2 come in and things are good again.I have faith in our coach to develope our players. I have seen flight 1 players from the big clubs. Our core kids are just as good as theirs. My concern is just the club is not bringing in kids fast enough to have backups if people leave.
Ideally I would like to see our second team beefed up. That's the strength of the big clubs, endless stream of replacement players. We are telling kids in school about our club and try to help with recruiting. We want to see our club succeed.Sounds like you have a good situation. I wouldn't worry too much about people leaving until they do. If people do leave and you think the team is not as competitive as you want, then look around. 1 or 2 seasons of less than ideal play isn't going to harm your kid in the long scheme of things. You never know, sometimes players leave and then 1 or 2 come in and things are good again.
Some teams might be. Our local is playing exclusively Coast.
7 hubs (of the 10 in socal) switched to Socal. I'm told the 3 stayed because if they switched the travel would be too onerous in the Socal flights they would have been slotted in with no noticeable change in competition level. But sure, use your local hub to generalize and be misinformed. Also, unless you believe the marketing CSL vs. Socal is largely irrelevant until you start comparing Discovery vs. Premier. It's the other leagues that lock small (and large) clubs out.
Covid along with the formation of the various letter leagues and the collapse of Presidio/SDDA accelerated the downfall of these clubs. I agree with consolidation, I just would have rather seen the East County clubs join forces with each other than have Liverpool go to Surf and United go to Albion. I suspect personalities prevented a merger of EC clubs.Consolidation within the San Diego club scene isn’t a terrible thing , there are way too many clubs
I do wonder how much Covid accelerated this
The bottom line is winning keeps the team together and attracts players.
This is exactly why I like my club. The coach is not taking any short cuts.Yeah, but that's one of the big problems with soccer in the US, particularly at the younger ages. Soccer is a game about mistakes. If neither team makes any the ideal score should be zero to zero. But mistakes are how kids learn....they don't learn by getting yelled at, or by lecture, or by running around during practice in lap circles, or even with rondos rondos and more rondos....they learn by making mistakes during the game and small sided scrimmages, yet by the kids taking chances and making the mistakes that they need to learn, they lose the actual game. That leads a lot of coaches (because they want to keep the team together) to take short cuts instead of taking the years it might happen to develop a player (so they can earn that win, that promotion and keep the team together). We've all seen them: recruit the super tall kid and teach him how to outrun the defenders back line, have the big kid goalkick the the ball long and have everyone lock into a 50/50 scrum, teach the strikers to kick the ball over the goalkeeper's head (which won't work in years to come as they fill out the goal), have the goalkeeper punt the ball into a 50/50 scrum, kick the ball over the back line and have everyone run it down, get the big legged kid to power it into the goal on a DFK (instead of learning the finesse shot they'll need later), push the other players off the ball instead of true comprehensive defense, and never kick it backwards only forward. I'm frankly surprised we haven't seen more coaches adopt the Ted Lasso: kicking it football style into the scrum on kickoffs and having all the players run over the line of scrimmage.
Looking at the Club Directory for Coast Soccer League there are no AYSO teamsSome teams might be. Our local is playing exclusively Coast.
Looking at the Club Directory for Coast Soccer League there are no AYSO teams
You aren’t looking in the right place. They are listed under their hub names. For example: Channel Islands United or rancho conejo United.Looking at the Club Directory for Coast Soccer League there are no AYSO teams
Ah ha, I see. ThanksYou aren’t looking in the right place. They are listed under their hub names. For example: Channel Islands United or rancho conejo United.