socaldad10
BRONZE
wow, love this idea...
Sandbagging Fall League Teams
- Thread starter Rollonyoubears
- Start date
socaldad10
BRONZE
Rollonyoubears
SILVER
We pay a single ref $66 per game for 7v7, split between both teams. Half of them can't even walk at a brisk pace, let alone run to confirm offsides calls without an AR....
Rollonyoubears
SILVER
Then SoCal should review league applications more closely. If your team is playing in flight 2 in tournaments all summer and winning them, then you should not be approved to play in flight 3 for fall league. The problem is that SoCal doesn't take a stance on anything.
The big clubs sometimes have 100s of Socal teams. Nobody is going to tell them to stop playing teams down a level for wins.
I dont expect any different treatment. I think at the end of the day we all want the same thing. We just have strong opinions on certain things and for all you know we could be saying the same thing and our full intent is lost in text. As i said in previous posts in this chain i dont disagree with you. I have been around the block with soccer as a player, referee, parent and coach (Asia, Europe and NA)..... not much phases me at this point.everyone take it easy on MochaRulz..... i just noticed she's a new user, apologies i wouldn't have went so hard on you yesterday. welcome to the group
But i do appreciate the sentiment here and the welcome
....also He not she....lolHere is the issue that frequently happens with this scenario and some of the big downfalls:
(1) If a team is relegated to a lower flight, it is almost a guaranteed death sentence for them. Most players will be pulled and this is part of what i have mentioned earlier where parents arent willing take stock of their own precious child's ability.
(2) A team outright winning in Flight 2 if promoted, more often than not will get smashed in flight 1. Each flight is almost like a silo and quite frequently a huge gap. One of things that Grace and Socaldad have stated resonates here above a lot of my statements as well. Make sure the coaches actual coach your kids in winning and losing well and use the u7-10 (7v7) period purely for development. Yes it is a sport, yes we can have scores, yes we can be joyous and upset at the results/referee etc but the most important thing at this age is making sure the kids develop the joy of the game and want to keep playing. Sometimes that might mean changing teams, sometimes it might mean just practicing and not playing every tournament and league that you can get your hands on.
(3) Dont get sucked in to we have to join a club to get better. That is a very keeping up with Jones mentality.
100% correct. I think some people have not realised the amount of revenue the larger clubs generate. The massive ones in South OC, and most people know few of them with 100s of teams, generate close to 10 million a year in revenue and are still run by 2 to 5 individuals not counting the coaches.
It also isnt playing down for wins necessarily but more often than not they just have so many teams in an age group that are brand new they dont know where to flight them. Also the development curve for kids at these ages is highly variable.
A potential good solution would be not to necessarily move the teams between flight but for clubs to move their players between teams more often. Most clubs only re-evaluate a player and the team they are on with new offers once a year. If clubs adjusted their team every 3/4 months a lot of mis-flighting could be addressed, especially when these clubs have multiple teams in each flight of each age bracket.
In practice, however, the same issue presents itself that happens when you move an entire team down. Little Johnny's parents get upset and threaten to move Little Johnny. The club loses out on the income of Little Johnny and the other also rans that they need in any case to scholarship that U7 ace that's dribbling past all the players so the team can win. As a practical matter there are A LOT of MLSN bench players (including most of the alternate GKs) who should be playing at a lower level. The club can't move them so you have a few MLSN teams with 30+ players including several reserve players that aren't rostered (such as a 3rd gk). The point of MLS2 was to provide these player a place to play without forcing them out of the league, but we'll see if team are in fact able to move them. Your solution would be great if we also had club placement directors that would take that decision off of the coach's shoulders (so politics, protecting the team and relationships would matter less) and that would be responsible for moving players up and down including bio banding. We would also need a lot fewer clubs since it would require consolidation to work properly (in MLSN/MLSN2 in SoCal you are probably looking at ejecting/consolidating Santa Barbara, Murrieta, The Bulls, maybe LASC, maybe Ventura Fusion, Juventus, Laguna, and consolidating the Albion clubs away from the separate satellite branches including Riverside [when Albion LA moved some MLSN teams to Albion Santa Monica, boy did the families yell at the commute]).
Last edited:
You are correct and all of this is valid. I should have prefaced my suggestion that its intent was for the 7 a side age groups, maybe the 9 a side non Academy teams. On the 11 a side i think it would be a lot harder (maybe impossible) to implement unless the system changes from the youngers and by the time they reach 11 a side they expect that kind of movement.
AT $60/hour, that's 1667 games a year to hit $100K. That's 32 games per week if you don't take a week a off. That's 6.4 games per day if work 5 days a week, or 4.5 games per day if you work 365 days.
Man, this person better be in amazing shape. I helped at a tournament where refs were only given a few minutes between games due to scheduling issues. After 4 games, they looked like they were going to pass out. Weather was in the high 60s too...I don't think they would have made it if it was 90 degrees. And these were young, fit guys in their 20s.
Now imagine doing that every single day for 5 hours a day (excluding breaks between games).
If you go to any any SoCal League game with a single CR you will see that these guys barely take a 100 steps during the full game. They are old, geriatric and hve vision impairments. Not being mean to these guys but they have a cushy gig that they are not willing to let go. Also the 1667 games is based on 60 an hr for socal league alone, however as i have mentioned there are other leagues that pay higher as well.
**sorry hit post reply byaccident and ran out of time to edit message**
If you go to any any SoCal League game with a single CR you will see that these guys barely take a 100 steps during the full game. They are old, geriatric and have vision impairments. Not being mean to these guys but they have a cushy gig that they are not willing to let go. Also the 1667 games is based on 60 an hr for socal league alone and if you want to make this a full time job. However as i have mentioned there are other leagues that pay higher as well and most people use this as a side gig. 100k also in SoCal will not take you very far, you barely make it over the poverty line in areas like Irvine, Newport, Laguna etc. That is another reason a lot of people dont flock to this job in SoCal even at $60 an hour. Working min wage at McD or something else at $20/hr is a better option for youths as there is more stability and safety in place along with a better long term resume builder.
Also your statement of "now imagine doing this for 5 hours a day" only sounds naive. 5 hours a day is less than a regular work day. also given that you can split those 5 hours at multiple times during the day also means you probably never work more than 3 hours straight and could still get in multiple, multi hour naps in a day. There are refs that work 10 to 16 games a weekend and then work M/W/F from 730pm to 930pm doing adult games at 90 a piece. That is on the low end $660 for the 10 games on sat/sun and $540 for the 6 games through the week. A total of $1200 for 16 actual working hours (20 if you add time in between games). Even with time in between that is still 1200/20=$60/hour. Now dont forget $660 of that is tax free as it is paid in cash. As such at the end of the day your take home is potentially higher as it is unreported.
The economics of siloing and why there’s a huge disparity in flights at the Youngers. Let’s assume a flight 3 7v7 team. Team a has that one player that can dribble and outrun everyone else. Team b doesn’t. Gks aren’t a factor at this age since they don’t have the skills or body the do much. Team a can easily run up a 6-9 goal lead. Let’s move team a up now to flight 2 where it will face team c. Team c has been in flight 2 for a while and advertised it so they’ve recruited players and cut or turn away a bunch of others. They have 3-4 of those outstanding kids on their team v team a which only has 1. The issue stems that at the younger ages you only need that one special kid
Just reffed a girls u10 game where 1 team was dominant including a club player that was doing double duty at ayso. Coach kept shifting that player from striker to defender to maintain that 5 goal lead since she could basically score at will. Other team hasn’t scored all season but had 1 little girl who somehow found her inner beast this game who pulled out a hat trick. It was funny having the coach on the dominant team having to move his marquis player back and forth whenever this girl who has found her inner beast put it up a notch and scored.
Just reffed a girls u10 game where 1 team was dominant including a club player that was doing double duty at ayso. Coach kept shifting that player from striker to defender to maintain that 5 goal lead since she could basically score at will. Other team hasn’t scored all season but had 1 little girl who somehow found her inner beast this game who pulled out a hat trick. It was funny having the coach on the dominant team having to move his marquis player back and forth whenever this girl who has found her inner beast put it up a notch and scored.
You yourself stated you can’t get the $60 per hour gig because those are taken by older refs who don’t have the physicality or credentials to letter league and get the cushy gig where they don’t have to move from the center circle. The new ar is doing the u14 games at $20/hour. The older ref won’t be able to keep the line either so the system encourages parking them in u10 anyways.