It varies by company and year. All have come out with some wild colored cleats, but they come and go with each year. The H*Spots I mention above ended production a year or two ago. Kelme had some wild cleats as did Brine IIRC. Eurosport’s catalog is always a great way to check out the latest cleats out there, but they don’t necessarily carry every style.

Thanks!
J

So definitely keep that in mind - ’starting’ a match means something to the kids and can be used in many ways as a coach to give a pat on the back.

Those that show up and hustle in practice, get rewarded by starting.

I give the same advice to my team about this as you gave Soccer Dad. I tell them that they are the only ones that can win or lose the game. If the referee is bad, or the other team fouls a lot, it just means that they have to play that much harder to make up for it.

On the flip side, I’m not sure it sends the best message to kids to have them pull out of a tournament (which kids usually love to go to) simply because of who they might face. As a coach I always try to get my players to think about using better skills to nullify any foul play they might encounter. Adjust how they play to make it harder for the other team to foul. Doesn’t mean they won’t, but it gets the kids to focus on something other than being fouled.

No point letting a bully team scare off teams who just want to play. At some point they’re going to get beaten by teams who figure out how to handle them and then they’re fouling will get them little benefit!

I always get puzzled by coaches who are upset because it’ll be ‘too hard’ to track playing time. it’s really not, but if you’d rather not be distracted, have an assistant do it for you.

I’m with you about the committed players at the younger competitive level. Even if a committed player isn’t a top sill player - if they’re out there busting tail to get better, they should play a sizable amount.

Personally, I play my more committed players more than those who don’t come and practice. I figure that if they are more committed to practice and working at their game, they should be rewarded with playing time. That being said, any player in a rec league should get to play 50% of the game at minimum.

Thanks for the comments about players playing football, I’ll have to keep those things in mind this fall.

Other sports are a bit different. We have plenty of competitive players who play basketball and softball/baseball because they usually overlap little and they can at least make on practice each when they do. I have a number of dancers on my girls team and have players who come to practice a little late. That’s fine because they work hard when they are there. I’ve found most players try 100% overlapping sports for about a year then realize they need to make a choice to stay sane.

I absolutely don’t believe coaches should force kids to choose a sport when they are younger - let the kids decide that. One of my daughter’s non-soccer coaches told her that once - that she couldn’t miss or be late to practice due to any other activity. I told him flat out that was crazy - she’s 8. If he felt she needed to sit more because she was too late, so be it (she was usually 15 minutes late once a week) She played plenty.

But football is the exception in my mind because of the practice demands on the players when they get older. So while I have no problem with competitive players who play baseball, basketball, softball, swim, dance, etc - football is too much of a conflict. But again - we don’t force it, but it’s considered.

While my post was primarily about Recreation - we see playing time issues on our competitive teams too. Let’s face it - U10-U12 competitive teams are still about development and while we don’t necessarily ensure 50% playing time, I try to play all my player significant minutes. And in a close match where they didn’t play much or just had an off day - guess who starts the next match? They love the idea of ’starting’ even if they sub out five minutes later - so that can help balance things.

As a coach in a growing league, our #1 focus is player development and retaining as many players as we can to ensure we can field teams as the players grow older and roster sizes jump. So sometimes you make accommodations that some coaches in larger established leagues may not. I think it’s the right thing to do anyway. Develop them at U10-U12 and the wins will come later. Sit the mid level players to win it all in U10 and you’re just hurting yourself in the long run.

Thanks again,

David at SoccerHelp

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