Club team tomfoolery
I’ll try to keep this long story short. My daughters (U11) club made a poor choice of having 4 teams at her age (one team was a combined U12 and U11) and as a result 3 of the teams were barely able to field a roster for game and had to constantly share players. All 4 teams struggled severely in their seasons. The coaches were newer and seemed to be put into a bad position by the club, leaving a lot of frustrated families. All in all, not a good year. My daughter still says she loves soccer and wants to play despite this. She’s been team one for a couple of years now and we do a lot of stuff outside of practice too (camps, shooting, etc).
So now the issue. Next year at U12 will be her last year before GA. This club is the only one in town that offers GA or ECNL. Like all clubs, our age group is shifting to school year, which will shake some things up for my daughter’s team. We’re going to have a new coach who is newer to the program, but seems to have developed some pretty good teams. This change was exciting to me. However, after having a brief conversation with him, I’m left wondering if there is just more club related BS to look forward to.
Tryouts are in a couple of weeks. As luck would have it, so is my daughter’s big 5th grade science field trip where they get to camp for two nights. She’s been looking forward to this for years so she’s definitely going. Fortunately, she will be able to make the second night of tryouts. I tracked down who the new coach would be so I could give him a heads up. He was nice enough to come to one of our team’s practices so he could meet the girls who would be trying out next year. I took the opportunity to speak with him and this is where things got strange.
The entire time he only talked about his team 2 and how they are treated equally. It felt like he was trying to sell the idea to me, even though he’s never seen my daughter play and tryouts have yet to happen. He also, perhaps inadvertently, mentioned his U12 team 1 roster was built out already. When I asked him to clarify he corrected and said that the girls who currently play for him and will be forced down to their age are guaranteed spots on team 1. The combined U12 and U11 team will also have many girls “playing down”. My theory is that these families have been appeased by being guaranteed team 1 spots ahead of tryouts, but that’s only a theory. My worry is that my daughter has already been determined to be on team 2 because she’s missing a tryout. It wouldn’t change our plans if that were the case though.
Sorry for the essay, but I’m curious if anyone has seen or heard anything about how players who are “playing down” next year are being handled or if this is as crazy as it sounds. If my suspicions are correct, then why have tryouts?