High school vs. club team

Could go in the soccer thread, but found this to be an interesting read while visiting my mother over the weekend. It was the A-1 Sunday centerpiece. To sum it up, a lot of U.S. Soccer academies are extending their seasons, making players choose between their club or the school teams:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_18585985

 

More and more, club teams are completely wiping out school teams.

With public school budgets getting cut and cut and cut, it's only going to get worse.

So if your kid wants to play a particular sport, you better have the money to pay for him or her on a club team. If you don't, well, tough shit for you.

 

You already have AAU basketball and select baseball and softball. Those are where the blue-chip recruits are discovered. (Sorry, granny with newspaper-clipping scissors.)

Those sports are relevant enough to generate school pride still, however. In soccer, except for a very few school sides (North Texas is a hotbed), it does not do the same.

 

If the US wants to establish consistent world class soccer talent, it isn't going to do it by having the english teacher roll out the balls and coach soccer after school.

 

Who gives a shit if the United States develops 'world-class soccer talent' or not?

 

We are having a push right now of actually adding boys lacrosse to the school division. I might as well just start toissing c-notes out my window.

Basketball and football will always be at the high school level because they make money at the gate and in consessions.

Everything else, with the exception of soccer in some areas, loses money.

One thing though, athletics at the school level is not meant to develop future NBA players, it's to develop young people socially and emotionally.

 

I don't think it's a stretch to say football is the last true high school sport left.

 

Ask any college baseball coach at any level where he looks for recruits. It's travel baseball, not high school.

I'd much prefer our daughter, who's a better-than-average goalkeeper, play club soccer than on the middle school team next spring. Her club coach has won varsity state H.S. championships at the highest level; the middle school school is a P.E. instructor who played football in college.

 

The people involved in soccer in this country.

 

I want to say to all these parents who spend big bucks on travel and club teams that they're better off putting the money in a college fund, rather than spending an enormous amount of money and time on travel ball. The justification is always that it'll pay off in a scholarship, but given the small chance a kid will get one, and that even if he or she gets one it'll be a partial deal, the cost-benefit doesn't seem to add up. If you and your kid enjoy it, great, but otherwise, forget it.

Also, it seems to me that in many cases, starting travel at a young age leads only to physical and mental breakdown. I can see it in travel teammates of my 12-year-old softball-playing daughter, particularly the pitchers, who are pitching multiple games per week in house and travel. The top pitcher on my daughter's house team, in the league championship, complained after the first inning of arm pain, but she was sent back out there for three more innings. She gutted through, but I get the feeling she's going to be dead-armed by 15.

 

These academies serve the .001 percent of youth soccer players who grow up playing for the US National team. High school soccer serves the other 99.999 who will not play in college at any level and who generally benefit from the program, whether its coached by the school English teacher or not.

In my area, most of the high schol coaches are well-versed in their sport, especially the ones who are off-staff. Eliminating high school athletics that serve the masses with the rationale that "the best kids play in clubs anyways" would be a national tragedy.

 

Oh, but it's happening. Nobody wants to pay more for schools, so extracurriculars get cut, or pay-for-play fees come in. And nobody is going broke underestimating how much some parents will spend to give their kid a leg up.