You can tell the coaches who are chasing trophies...it’s not a good thing at your daughters age because winning becomes more important than development. Donovan Rickett’s came in and told parents straight up...I don’t care if we win a game, I want to make sure the boys improve their skill and learn to understand and love the game. And sure enough that’s exactly what happened. And if the coach is teaching the right things and the kids put their focus and effort into those things at practice AND can carry them to a game, the winning part takes care of itself without being the primary focus.
Youth soccer club
- Thread starter BasPlayr
- Start date
Our latest outdoor schedule:
August 17-18 Beat the Heat at Edmond Soccer Club 7v7
August 24th NOKC friendlies at NOKC Not sure if 7v7 or 9v9
August 31 weekend WSA Labor Day tourney. Will play up 9v9
League play starts Aug 7th No schedule yet. Assume we will play in the boys 7v7 or up in girls 9v9.
We're currently playing in the boys futsal league.
How about you guys?
August 17-18 Beat the Heat at Edmond Soccer Club 7v7
August 24th NOKC friendlies at NOKC Not sure if 7v7 or 9v9
August 31 weekend WSA Labor Day tourney. Will play up 9v9
League play starts Aug 7th No schedule yet. Assume we will play in the boys 7v7 or up in girls 9v9.
We're currently playing in the boys futsal league.
How about you guys?
Titan Friendlies this weekend. We have a couple scrimmages planned, one against one of the girls ECNL teams at TSC. Have no idea when the OPC schedule starts, presumably after Labor Day. I know we'll play Capital City Cup in Little Rock Oct. 5-6 and the Sam Shannon Showcase/Friendship Cup Nov. 23-24.
My son's coach now has 3 teams total including a girls 03 team and the NPL 06G team. We've scrimmaged the 03 girls a couple of times. They challenge the boys to be faster and more physical. Most of the girls play HS soccer in the Spring so this has really helped the boys up their level of play.
Last year in the Titan Friendlies there was a club from Nebraska that came down and brought about 8 teams. Our 06s played one of their 04 boys teams. Our boys lost but the game was better than I anticipated. There is a wide discrepancy in size just within the 06 group right now, so you can imagine what it was like between 04s and 06s. They held their own defensively but they struggled with the pace in trying to get past on the offensive end. Games like that are always good for the team to se where they're at early and what they need to work on.
So OPC schedules came out...sort of. OPC removed all of their operations from Prime Sports Mgmt in Dallas and will handle it all on their own now. Just to give you a glimpse of what a disaster it is...Sunday, August 25th...my son's team is scheduled to play 2 games against the same team, in 2 different locations (Tulsa and Bartlesville) with start times within an hour of each other. So we know that is jacked up.
But that's not the worst of it. Nov. 17th they are scheduled to play in Stillwater and Tulsa at the same time (4:00PM) against 2 different opponents. WTF. My wife caught the mistakes within seconds and yet the OPC people want us to do the rescheduling requests instead of fixing glaring and obvious errors.
But that's not the worst of it. Nov. 17th they are scheduled to play in Stillwater and Tulsa at the same time (4:00PM) against 2 different opponents. WTF. My wife caught the mistakes within seconds and yet the OPC people want us to do the rescheduling requests instead of fixing glaring and obvious errors.
That sounds like a mess. So the coaches have to get together and correct the schedule then call OPC and inform them of the changes? That makes absolutely no sense.
We started outdoor practices back up this week and it appears they will be working on 9v9 formations and positioning. Have a couple of scrimmages this weekend against 2010 boys squads and then Beat the Heat tourney in Edmond next weekend. Futsal on Sunday...I hate futsal btw. Looks like most of our out of state travel will be in November (which is rather odd). Dallas tournament mid-November then Nationals in Memphis beginning Nov 30th.
Our coach doesn't do any of the finagling, he leaves it up to the managers of the respective teams. He sticks to the soccer side of things. The number of reschedule requests we have gotten and the number I've had to submit to fix this mess is staggering. Usually there are 1 or 2 you need to fix or to reschedule to work around a tournament you are going to, but I'm looking at needing to reschedule 7 out of the 10 games. <SMDH>
My son's team has been practicing since June. My son is still doing 1 on 1 GK sessions with Ricketts. He started speed and agility training last Monday with his team. It never stops. They played in the friendlies last weekend. Freaking sauna out there. They went 1-1-1 against 2 07 teams and 1 05 team. Held their own in the 1st half against the 05s. My son allowed 1 goal in that one...a freaking rocket from 30 yds that pinged the crossbar then the post and in. Told him later not a keeper in the world was getting to that one. His coach brought in an extra keeper to let my son play at least a half of each game in the field for this set of games. My son had an assist and a goal. And he attempted a bicycle kick as well. Which was hilarious. If you hadn't watched any of his games and known he was a GK most of the time, that moment would have sealed it for you. I'm not sure either of the games against the 07s really helped, the game against the 05s did. It really pushed them to play faster and pick up the pace in making decisions.
Once the season gets going, I think things will be pretty good. This team has a lot of potential and while they are stepping up a division in competition (moving from div. 2 to div. 1), they've beaten all of the teams in the division as recently as May and June.
I know in the younger age groups there is a huge difference between the Gold and Silver divisions. Is there a big difference between Div 1 and Div 2 in the older groups?
Depends. You see a lot more sandbagging in the older age groups. I pushed our coach into being top division for the Fall as I knew most of the teams we would be playing would be fairly comparable to us. Heck, I don't know that we are that far below TSC's NPL team. Maybe just a tad but when we scrimmaged with them for about 30 minutes it was a dead stalemate.
I can say for certain that there is a big gap between my son's team and the TSC team below it and they're playing Div. 2. I know there is also a pretty significant gap between us and the WSA 2nd team. 2 years ago, my son's team was considered TSC's 3rd tier team and they pretty much destroyed the top teams at WSA, Apex (Stillwater), NEOFC. The only OPC clubs that we couldn't beat their top teams were Celtic and SLSC, who were both considered pre-ECNL. Celtic has a very good top team in each age group but then there is a significant drop off after that. SLSC has 1 excellent team and 1 good team in the age group before you see the drop off.
If I had to guess since we never play them, my son's team is probably the same level as the top 06 team at Energy (most of the top team kids left and went to Athletic).
BTW, I think there are 3 kids from the '08 Energy side that John Michael was coaching who have now moved on to the '08 Sporting KC DA. One of their mom's posted their official SKC Team Picture with the coaches in Children's Mercy Park. What a tremendous opportunity!
My son's team scrimmage the reigning US Club Soccer '06 girls national champion yesterday. They beat the boys 2-1. They're damn good and understand space well. I was surprised at how physical the boys played against them b/c the typical reaction is for the boys to back off just a bit from the contact. They didn't. And the girls don't shy away a bit. Knocked one of the more physical and solid boys to his ass yesterday. My son's team actually played pretty well when it was their core of players in (coach brought in 4-5 girls from his other '06 girls team in). Both goals for the girls team were scored off of corners. My son's team is terrible in defending them mostly because they take a statue approach until the ball hits the ground.
Fun to watch though. My son's team is a lot like the TU men's soccer team. Raise their level against good teams and forget to show up against perceived lesser teams.
Fun to watch though. My son's team is a lot like the TU men's soccer team. Raise their level against good teams and forget to show up against perceived lesser teams.
Love the updates. We played the boys on Sunday in Futsal. Won one lost one. Travel to Edmond this upcoming weekend for Beat the Heat. Main competition will be the team from Edmond Soccer Club and the Midwest City Barcelona squads. Will be the girls first time wearing the Energy jerseys. They're pretty pumped.
Do you know anything about the U.S. Soccer Development Academy? Energy girls were accepted into the program last year beginning at U14. Looks like the top Energy girls teams will participate and play other academy clubs. Also looks like a lot of travel.
Looks like we will start in the 3-3-2 for 9v9. Have been going over assignments and responsibilities the last week or so.
I don't know much about the development academy program but I would assume it's a differently branded version of TSC's ECNL series. Both will claim to be the best development and most competitive youth soccer program. As TSC is US Club Soccer and I think Energy is US Youth Soccer.
Beat the Heat just sounds awful. I always worry about the strain on the kids that young when you can pretty well predict 110 degree heat indices all weekend. And it's a struggle to get kids to understand that hydration begins 2-3 days before they play. I always send out Team Snap reminders to hydrate. Yesterday was brutal. 80 degree dew point plus 95 degree air temp makes for a pretty brutal 2 hours outside.
Most teams play that 3-3-2 but sometimes kids miss that the 3 in the middle actually have to play defense as well. Donovan always had the kids in a 3-1-3-1 with the defensive holding MF and the attacking MF forming a very Klinsmann-like diamond in the MF. It also encourages your target player to remain a target up top w/o sacrificing numbers on the defensive end. The player in the holding MF role has to be really smart and really disciplined not to get too caught up in attacking.
Almost have our schedule squared away. Ended up rescheduling all 10 of our games (thanks OPC). All the managers in our league want to send a nice note to OPC along with an invoice for our services for doing their job. Our schedule is really weird now...6 games in September, 4 games in November. We have NO league games in October.
We play another scrimmage on Thursday against the ECRL 06 girls team this Thursday to help them prep for their weekend in Shreveport. Talk about a need to hydrate.
The 1-3-2-3 looks interesting. I assume we started with the 3-3-2 due to simplicity. My daughter is playing the center mid position and really likes it so far. Beat the Heat will be awful. Thankfully we only have 3 games and then the finals should we qualify. Looking forward to some real soccer again after a summer full of 3v3 and Futsal. We added two girls from the BA league for the fall. They are both very talented but going from BA Soccer to the Academy Gold division is quite the jump. This weekend will be their first exposure to the speed and physicality of that level. Interested to see how they react.
It is quite the jump. Before last season my son's team added 4 players from rec+ in BA. They were talented but they didn't all adjust to the increased talent level they were playing with nor the intensity of practices, nor the level of coaching. One kid who was big and fast and very skilled flamed out after the Fall season. He was no longer the big dog and he didn't adjust to the physical nature of competitive soccer. He picked up 2-3 yellow cards for dissent. He was also used to being the best player on the team and playing in rec, he could dribble through 3-4 defenders. He didn't at this level and had never learned to pass. He struggled. The other 3 all turned in to pretty good players and one was converted from the #10 role to the #4 role and did quite well at it.
They will need their decision making process to speed up quite a bit quickly.
I did t even know they were playing but for the TU women to draw OSU is a pretty significant eye opener that the TU women have significantly raised their level in the last 4-5 yrs.
It’s a taboo subject in women’s sports, even though they jawbone on equality, but there’s some conditioning issues on that team. And its not the body types I’m talking about. There’s some failure to finish plays and waiting for the sub to come. They know who they are and it will get fixed. They lost some field leadership but this could be a special year.
I've followed on and off for years. Randy's last couple of teams in the 90s were full of freaking beasts. Glenda Moore ran me over in a flag football game that I was reffing.
Prior to Kyle taking over, Rena really set the program back a number of years. She was extremely disorganized. It was so bad Tom had to take the girls' summer camps under his program because the bad taste they would have left in kids' mouths if left to Rena would be extremely bad.
I like Kyle. He's a good coach and a great person. He and his wife Misty are just good people to be around (Misty is head women's bball coach at ORU). I don't know Mike Schwarz well, but I am familiar with Jim Rhein (believe his brother John is in charge of a competitive group at TSC plus field director for Titan). I've also noticed that Kyle is getting a lot of players from outside OK. If that's because his OK targets are all choosing OSU, OU, and Arkansas, that's fine. Don't settle for local players because they're local. I'm hoping they can cause some havoc. 2-2 with OSU is a good start against a program that will be on the edge of the top 20 all season.
Very good turnout this past weekend at Beat the Heat in Edmond. Nice to see the top Dallas and KC clubs coming to Oklahoma to play youth soccer. This was my first time seeing the Solar academy out of Dallas. They were outstanding across the board.
Solar is a good club. Our coach's 06G NPL team played 3 games in Louisiana this weekend and lost 2-0 to a Solar side. And a Solar side beat the crap out of a TSC boys ECNL team at Dallas Cup last Spring.
Funny thing is...with all of the quality youth soccer clubs in North Texas and specifically in the metroplex, they have relatively few quality soccer complexes. NPL is having a difficult time finding space and time to host a couple of North Texas weekends. Fields have to meet certain criteria so there are probably only 2-3 complexes they'll consider playing at and usually because of the number of teams they'll need a minimum of 2 of those complexes and all the 11v11 fields and none of the home clubs are willing to give them up for 2 weekends over the rest of their competitive schedules.
No. We've never had a coach where he wanted to go to the Dallas area. We are playing in Little Rock in October and so far there are teams from Tulsa, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee in our age group. I'm sure there will be a few Arkansas teams before it is all said and done. Our first league game is next Tuesday and it will tell me a lot about the team moving forward. Right now they're creating chances but finishing them is a struggle.
Let me know how they fair. Your son's team has become my second favorite youth soccer team
Our season update thus far:
We won Beat the Heat in Edmond a week ago Sunday. Very competitive tournament. The OKC area has a number of very good 2010 girls teams.
We're playing in the WSA Labor Day tourney this weekend. Playing in the Boys U10 division. Interested to see how the girls compete with the higher level U10 boys teams from the area.
We won Beat the Heat in Edmond a week ago Sunday. Very competitive tournament. The OKC area has a number of very good 2010 girls teams.
We're playing in the WSA Labor Day tourney this weekend. Playing in the Boys U10 division. Interested to see how the girls compete with the higher level U10 boys teams from the area.
Good luck. My son's team has been scrimmaging some upper level and older girls' teams within TSC to help them all get ready for their seasons. Goal scoring is an issue for his coach's teams...not sure why. Plenty of good technical and tactical understanding from the players but the end is just a struggle. My son's first official game is tomorrow against a team from Bartlesville. We'll see how it goes. The roster is in turmoil right now because another coach within TSC (or TSC in general) is pissing players off and they're leaving. 06 NPL team is down to 14 players, 05 NPL team is down to 12 on the active roster after they took an 06 player off of our roster (he's a good player who was going to help). But for some reason TSC director of coaching and player development can't convince one or two of the 18 kids on the 05 OPC (3rd team roster) to move up to a higher level team and the parents threatened to pull the kids. It's a mess right now.
Hope the club gets those things in order. Is it unusual to have parents not wanting kids to move to higher level teams? Blitz/Energy has four 2010 girls teams. Every parent I know wants their kid to move to the top team as long as they get playing time there.
There's a TSC Boys team in our pool. Hopefully we can be competitive.
Which team is in your pool?
The issue is there hasn't been a very smooth transition to the new owner. He's very hands on and somewhat a micromanager. It's also painfully clear that the leadership of the club just don't care about players below the NPL level. They're chasing trophies which contradicts their "Players First" mantra. I thought it was hilarious that this past weekend the TSC boys NPL teams went a combined 0-6 from '07, '06, '05' '04, '03, '02/'01 teams in Arkansas and they scored 1 goal combined in all the games. But protect the team dynamic and not move anyone up so you don't hurt a kid's feelings. They've already had one of the boys ECNL coaches quit.
And TSC would rather leave kids where they are if that means keeping them (their $) in the club and not leaving. They need x number of kids playing OPC in order to properly subsidize the ECNL teams and their ridiculous travel.
1st league game last night...4-2 loss. 1st half a complete struggle as it looked like the majority of the team was in "I ate too much for dinner mode". At one point in the 1st half, down 3-1, my son screamed at his team to go and fight and win the ball after he hammered about a 55 yd punt (that's not bad for a 13 y.o.)
2nd half was much better from my son's team. They found a combo that worked and created quite a few chances and opportunities along with better defense. Finishing is still the problem (and actually has been on most of the teams my son has played on). They scored with about 5 minutes left to pull within 4-2 and then all of a sudden a light switch went on and the attack became very dangerous. Opposing GK had to make one phenomenal save to keep it 4-2 and then 3-4 add'l good chances just missed the net. The team they played won the OPC State Cup for this age group last year. The two are about even outside of finishing. We should be OK the rest of the season as the boys get into more game action.
2nd half was much better from my son's team. They found a combo that worked and created quite a few chances and opportunities along with better defense. Finishing is still the problem (and actually has been on most of the teams my son has played on). They scored with about 5 minutes left to pull within 4-2 and then all of a sudden a light switch went on and the attack became very dangerous. Opposing GK had to make one phenomenal save to keep it 4-2 and then 3-4 add'l good chances just missed the net. The team they played won the OPC State Cup for this age group last year. The two are about even outside of finishing. We should be OK the rest of the season as the boys get into more game action.
In my limited experience most clubs hate moving kids down for the very reasons you stated. Sounds like a pretty positive opening game for you guys. Nice to go into every game knowing you have a chance to win.
We open with the Blitz #2 team Saturday am then play WSA's #1 squad that afternoon. We play TSC Pore at 7:30am Sunday am to complete pool play. I think the TSC team is a 2011 squad. I always find it interesting to compare a club's #1 team to their #2 team which is a year older as to which one is better. It's been a mixed bag thus far from my experience. We played Edmond White's 2010 boys team this past Saturday. They were awful (won 5-1) Surprised me. They were their #1 squad. No idea what's going on with that club and 2010 boys.
We open with the Blitz #2 team Saturday am then play WSA's #1 squad that afternoon. We play TSC Pore at 7:30am Sunday am to complete pool play. I think the TSC team is a 2011 squad. I always find it interesting to compare a club's #1 team to their #2 team which is a year older as to which one is better. It's been a mixed bag thus far from my experience. We played Edmond White's 2010 boys team this past Saturday. They were awful (won 5-1) Surprised me. They were their #1 squad. No idea what's going on with that club and 2010 boys.
That TSC team is a 2011 squad and coached by former TU Hermann Trophy Finalist Ryan Pore. Ryan's son is on that side as well. I actually caught some of their practice last Wednesday. They've got some really talented 8 year olds. Ryan does a good job with them. It's funny at TSc how the younger age groups are sort of coached by all the coaches in that age group and not segmented out. I know a couple of the other coaches in that age group and they all train together so the kids get a lot of different input on a lot of different things. I know a big thing right now is how to correctly receive passes and opening up. Kids like to let the ball pass and then chase it thinking they can go faster.
Good luck this weekend. We don't have any games until 9/7 and 9/8 when we'll play a home and home with the South Lakes Cosmos side.
Thank you. I figured that TSC team was probably the class of the field. Hopefully we can be competitive. Our girls better get used to playing with the boys. Looks like we only have boys games scheduled for the next month. Really wish we would have committed to playing up (9v9) this fall instead of playing in the boys league.
Good weekend of soccer at the WSA Labor Day Tourney. The girls handled the Blitz and WSA boys fairly easily. We played TSC's Pore's 2011 team in the finals and lost 4-3. Really good game. Pore has some boys who can flat out play.
I heard the tournament overall lacked from some friends whose daughter played in it. She's an '10 but they almost always play up with the '09s. Unfortunately, there weren't enough teams in a couple of divisions so they were combining age groups into a single division so they ended up playing an '08 U12 team that really cleaned their clock.
The 2010 girls division was really weak. Three WSA teams and the Blirz third team. WSA's 2010 girls' teams just aren't very competitive. The Blitz team ended up winning that division. Does your friend's daughter play for Jason Burrows or Todd Pemberton?
She used to play with Todd but most of his team got pulled up to Jessie Williams' team (they call it pre-ECNL). She got left off that group and is playing for Amanda Carreno (from Fortuna Tulsa, really good coach). She might be an '09. I just know they usually play up an age group. I think they mentioned that the 3 best teams were in the same group bracket and they think WSA rigged it to get their 2nd '09 girls team into the knockout stage (where they got hammered).
I'm convinced WSA is shady as hell right now. They continue to trot out kids as part of their '06 team that no one can find rostered on any of their teams online.
We played Todd's team in the spring and he told me afterwards that he had a few 2010 girls playing for him. Jessie is suppose to coach TSC's top 2010 team next spring. I've heard really good things about him.
We played WSA's top boys 2010 team this past weekend. They had two boys show up as the game started to get them to 7 players. No idea if they were actually on the roster as no one checked. I wasn't impressed with them.
We played WSA's top boys 2010 team this past weekend. They had two boys show up as the game started to get them to 7 players. No idea if they were actually on the roster as no one checked. I wasn't impressed with them.
Yeah, that's the shady side of WSA. Plus, now that they've pulled in Tornadoes, a mostly Hispanic club on the west side of Tulsa, they can share players. Tornadoes have always had "registration" issues as in, no one has ever seen a birth certificate for some of the kids but they'll get rostered with an age group that most parents can tell is a little bit younger than said player. My kid is tall for his age group...but he is gangly and awkward like a lot of kids who experience a 6-7 inch growth spurt in a year. WSA has a kid purportedly born in 2006 who is a full grown man and drives himself to games. Do the math. The "kid" would make most of TUs players look small. I'm not saying you can't have tall 13 year olds. I played baseball with a 12 year old who was 6'2" and his mom carried his birth certificate to every tournament we played in. This "kid" at WSA is not on a roster anywhere in their system. Plus, you can look at the way they manipulate their tournament brackets to try and give their teams the best chances to advance and play in the knockout rounds...where they end up getting hammered most of the time.
As I said before, Ryan is really good with the younger age group in his style of coaching and getting them to understand some tactical stuff that is usually reserved for slightly older age groups. I think that 2011 group from what I've seen has a chance to be very special.
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