“In order to continue our progress at the international level, it is critical that we are able to expose our team to competition at the highest level.”
Ya think?
I found this tidbit informative as well - we don’t have long to wait:
Gulati, along with two other representatives of USSF, has spoken with 13 individuals about the position. Four or five individuals are in advanced stages of discussions, but no offers have been extended.
He expects the formal announcement of a new coach to occur either in the second half of November or the first week of December.
Since my hubby blew out his ACL…he volunteered me to be the assistant coach for my daughter’s rec team. fair’s fair i guess since i volunteered him to start!!
today they played their third game of the season, i just wanted to tear my hair out!! while out of the game, one of them came to me every five minutes to ask how long until the game was over? she wanted to go home and get pretty!! two didn’t want to go in at all. one went in but just stared at the ball as they ran by her, again. this same girl wanted to play keeper but while warming up before the game, my daughter took a shot on goal and nailed her in her thigh. she no longer wanted to play keeper. then we had 6 that didn’t want to come out of the game. YEAH!!
so to every parent that has coached/coaches rec…..you must have the patience of a saint because…i thought i was a pretty patience person but i can’t put myself through this again!! it is painful!! LOL! can’t do it!!
edit: please don’t get me wrong..i never once lost my patience with any of them and do everything i can think of to motivate them! they are a great bunch of little girls!!
Man have we all been there. The trick is - the kids DO get better.
Thanks to a few down days when it was raining and the Challenge season took a pause for a weekend, I was able to read A Home on the Field by Paul Cuadros. Of course those down days were quickly followed by absolute chaos so I didn’t get a chance to finish this review when I wanted to. I should have had this posted weeks ago! ANYway…
Paul is an investigative reporter from Chicago who moves to rural North Carolina to write about the impacts of Latinos moving to many rural southern towns to work in food processing (chicken) plants. After seeing the kids playing soccer in parks on dirt fields, he gets involved in his new community and tries to get a soccer team formed at the local high school, only to be rejected time after time because football and other sports are ‘real sports’ and nobody wants to allow a soccer team to use the football field and facilities (or even the baseball field). The usual story. Except this story has more, much more.
You’ve just been handed the plum position of MLS Marketing Director.
Many of the tickets that your clubs sell or distribute go unused, creating unfilled stadiums that don’t look so good during national TV broadcasts, which will increase next year with new ESPN and Univision contracts. The growing number of intimate, soccer-specific stadiums, has not produced a significant attendance boost.
Your commissioner has said that your three target market groups are, in order of priority:
Youth soccer players and families
Hispanics
“Core soccer fans”
Without changes to the league structure or season (i.e. single table, no playoffs, etc. etc.), and with a reasonable but not unlimited marketing budget, what will you do to give MLS the “cool factor” that will ensure an attendance increase next season and beyond?
Having youth players at the top of the priority list is a smart move by the virtual commissioner. I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve which I’ll put together for #6. So get writing - the deadline is November 6th. Email Mr Fish with your article or submit it via BlogCarnival.
This week’s question revolves around leagues which allow players to play on a travel team and a recreational team during the same season. Our league allows it and so far it’s been a good experience for the kids. They get to do this whole new ‘travel’ thing when they hit U10, but can also still play with many of the kids they’ve known since U5 swarm ball. They obviously get more ball touches and they definitely serve as role models for the other kids. As they get older, however, the level of play in Rec levels off so you find the majority of multi-rostering in the younger ages around U10 and U12.
Now for some parents and players, dual rostering can be an overload and obviously each family has to decide if dual rostering is workable. Many state associations place limits on dual rostering to avoid this. In North Carolina, players can play for two teams, but they cannot play for both teams on the same day. However, if it IS workable, should travel players still play Rec?
I know some leagues don’t do concessions, but for those of you that do… If you’re having trouble getting volunteers, buy a space heater for the concession stand. Once the weather turns cold, they’ll flock to it in droves. Last night we had FIVE people behind the counter drinking coffee and huddling around the heater while their kids were practicing! Hmmm, maybe if you promise the coaches free coffee you’ll get more to signup. “Why freeze over on the parent sideline … we’ll keep a warm cup of coffee in your hand on the coaches sideline!”
In all seriousness, it sure seems to have turned colder here in NC a lot earlier than previous years. Maybe it’s just my imagination and my inability to stay in my nice warm house vs. being out on the fields.
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 25th 2006, 9:23 am | Email
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Filed under: Coaching
I find one of the more difficult things you encounter as a recreational youth soccer coach is to know how you and your team are doing compared to teams outside your league. I don’t mean that as ‘Yeah Man! My team ROCKS!’ Rather, just to know what other coaches encounter, how they deal with common situations, etc. So it was neat to read the Journal of a U7 Coach over at BigSoccer:
I got the idea for this thread from a thread regarding an article by Andrea Canalas of observations at the youth soccer level, which thread turned somewhat into the specific rants/musings, etc. of certain U7 coaches, myself included. So I decided to start this thread as a forum for simply stories, anecdotes, rants, problems, etc., from your current coaching sessions as they happen. No general philosophizing on what’s right/wrong with youth development, or youth clubs, etc., just the sort of talk a few youth coaches might have over a beer following practice. There might me some good ideas offered, or funny stories, or just “been there, done that” moments.
It has turned into a decent thread and is well worth the read, especially some of the commentary from other readers. Gee - sounds just like a blog ;)
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 23rd 2006, 10:17 pm | Email
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Filed under: Ramblings
Sometimes my niche of youth soccer blogging can seem awfully lonely! So I was happy to find another soccer parent has joined the fray to try and share some of their soccer parent experiences and advice. The aptly named Soccer Parents blog came online this month hoping to help soccer parents avoid common mistakes.
We’ve been a soccer family since Dec. 2003 - boy, I wish I could have found a “Soccer for Dummy Parents"? book way back then. It took us forever to learn all the ends and outs. We didn’t even know the rules of the game other than you were supposed to get the ball into the other goal. So I’m going to try and remember all the things that we learned along the way and share them with you. I hope this will help other soccer parents.
Wow. This puts the equitable playing time rules common in youth soccer leagues into a whole new perspective.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A father pulled a gun on a youth football coach because his son wasn’t getting enough playing time, police said.
Wayne Derkotch, 40, was arguing with the coach Sunday morning during a game of 6- and 7-year-olds in northeast Philadelphia when he pulled out the gun, police said.
No shots were fired and no one required medical treatment, authorities said. Derkotch was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment.
Oh. My. God. You’re upset because your kid is on the bench so you pull a gun on the coach in front of a team full of 6 and 7 year olds?!?!?!?! All hell must have broken loose at this game because a referee got arrested for throwing a punch at someone. And parents wonder why police cruisers are such a common sight at youth sporting events these days. Sigh…
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 23rd 2006, 7:40 am | Email
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Filed under: Parents
Joanna over at Secondhand Sun sent me an interesting article from the Washington Post that talks about the friendships we form through our children’s activities and what happens when they all leave home. Sociologists call these “contingent communities” and they often are a rock in your world even if the friendships aren’t much beyond the time you spend during your children’s activities.
They’re not your best friends. You may or may not agree with them politically, and you probably don’t return their phone calls right away. But they provide, at least, continuity to your life, as well as a certain level of caring, and what you do with them gives some form to your otherwise frenzied weeks. When the baritone moves out of the area or the clerk gets promoted to another department, the loss can be palpable.
Losing acquaintances formed through your children can be especially poignant, because there’s a good chance that as you scrambled your way up from bank teller to head of securities, those other parents you saw on game days were really the only community you had.
An odd thing happens to middle-class managers, lawyers, consultants and other professionals who organize their children’s social lives with the same diligence they apply to their jobs. They are convinced they are the quarterback when in fact it’s the kids who, by the time they’re in middle school at least, are calling the plays. Parents used to organize their children’s social lives. Now children organize their parents’ social lives.
You really don’t realize what you’ve lost, in terms of the friends made at the soccer fields, until things change and you aren’t shivering on the sidelines at 8:30AM together anymore. You don’t have to be an empty nester to experience this either. If your team splits as often happens every couple of years in recreational soccer, you may keep a small core together, but the rest come and go. It can be hard. I know we had built up many friendships that started when our kids were 4 and 5. We coached them up through U8 and the bulk of the group stayed together. However my U10 team didn’t have nearly enough room to absorb the U8’s moving up so they formed a new team and we suddenly found ourselves broken up. It was very hard, even though we try to stay in touch and see many of them on match days. But clearly something was lost.
The bonds are even stronger on travel teams which can stick together from the time kids are 9 up through high school. Are you really prepared for what happens after all the kids graduate? If you really want those friendships to last, it can’t hurt to try and get them held together by more than just the weekly soccer matches.
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 22nd 2006, 6:23 pm | Email
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Filed under: Parents, Referees
I can’t help but think that while the vast majority of youth soccer referees make honest mistakes, some just relish being jerks about it. While this has been, in my experience, far and away the exception, it’s still causing parents heartburn. Referees tolerate a LOT of abuse from fans/parents which is uncalled for. But sometimes they do things that leave you scratching your head. Lisa at LDSM Soccer Mom had a few choice words for an official at her son’s recent high school match:
Note to High School Refs: Y’all pretty much suck for the most part and would be better off handing out smilie faces to snot-nosed toddlers at the Wal-Mart entrance. And it is NOT all about you. Let the kids play, please. Giving a player a second yellow 20 minutes into the game for scoring a sweet goal against his rival high school team, during his senior year, and then getting excited about it, is ridiculous. And you know it. I bet most refs were the kids who got picked last for sports in school.
PS: We WON, and I still feel like this.
Her son got his 2nd yellow after an unassisted goal against his school’s rivals at an away match. After the goal, he ran along the sideline by the home bleachers, with his arms spread out, celebrating. Bang - yellow card.
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 21st 2006, 8:22 pm | Email
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Filed under: Coaching
As many of you know, late October is a busy time for soccer teams. Seasons are winding down, team are jostling for position in the standings, and getting ready for end of season tournaments, etc. Coaches are working their teams hard trying to get them hitting on all cylinders. Needless to say, the coaches can be a bit stressed out. So we wouldn’t be doing our civic duty if we made it any easier for them.
Case in point. My son’s U10 travel team is doing well this season and they’re getting ready for their end of season tournament. They lost a squeaker this afternoon 3-2 thanks to some amazing corner kicking by their opponent. No joke, this is U10 - one of this team’s corners ROLLED along the cross bar before our keeper swatted it away. Anyway, after the game, one of the players had a birthday party. At a BMX bike track. Um yeah, lets take a bunch of energetic boys, strap helmets on their heads, and get them cycling over ramps, berms, jumps and around sharp 45 degree banked turns at breakneck speed. No worries right? Their coach was nervously rocking back and forth on his feet trying to make conversation. Then a couple of them, living up to their “Hey y’all - watch this!” roots, decide to LIE DOWN on one of the ramp plateaus for their teammates to jump over them. This is why I drink. I thought we were going to have to get their coach some oxygen.
The good news is they escaped the event with only a few bumps and bruises and their coach only lost consciousness twice. All in all a fun day.
This is for all the coaches out there. Many of us cart around sports bags filled with a variety of things to practices, matches, pickup games, etc. Well, I know I do. Just off the top of my head I know I have the following in there:
Cleats, first aid kit, sleeve of water cups, cones, pinnies, whistles (at least 3 - I lose them all the time), clipboard, scoresheets, pens, stopwatch, ankle brace, agility ladder, referee jersey, linesman flags, ball pump, match ball (on match days), tissues, ace bandages that won’t fit in the first aid kit, Sharpie, sunscreen, and probably some other things I can’t remember (or won’t find until I clean out the bag after the season)
Come on. Admit to your pack-rat tendencies and fess up. What’s in your bag? As for our Question of the Week:
What is the most unusual thing in your coaching bag?
Beyond that, do you have an uncommon item that you’ve found to be a must have?
Thrown in by: Soccer Dad on October 18th 2006, 1:33 pm | Email
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Filed under: Parents
You know that line that separates the sensible protections of our children from the absolutely insane, our kids should walk around in armored bubbles, protections? Well it has been crossed in a BIG way.
Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable.
Recess is “a time when accidents can happen,” said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.
Are you KIDDING? TAG?!?!?!? You ban a childhood game played since we crawled out of the ocean because someone might fall down and scrape their knee? Is it any wonder that our children are obese? I can see it now - recess will be a time when you sit outdoors and do…. nothing. Except gain weight.
Some parents are just as incredulous as I am, but it doesn’t seem to have mattered much.
“I think that it’s unfortunate that kids’ lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they’ll never develop on their own,” said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. “Playing tag is just part of being a kid.”
So is playing any other type of game or sport. Accidents happen. Kids get hurt which is a terrible thing. But at what point do we say enough is enough? Are we really willing to ban activities millions of kids love in order to prevent a handful of injuries? That may sound crass when talking about kids because any kid that is hurt is a tragedy. However, when we stop being rational about things, we lose something. Like childhood games.
And just to be clear - I partially blame our lawsuit happy society for this along with the over protective parents and school administrators since you know this grew out of some lawsuit somewhere where a school got sued because Johnny fell down and broke his arm playing tag.
How sad. And this is coming from a kid who usually got plastered during dodge-ball. It was still fun trying to out fox the jocks throwing the balls at Mach 3. My kids play soccer, football, tag, and many other games during recess. I can’t imagine how bored and hyper they would be in class in the afternoons if they didn’t.
