Youth soccer club
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Update: Tufts Blue and Boston U tied 0-0 yesterday. They came back and beat RIT 2-0. Tufts and BU had to go to a PK tie breaker to see which one would go to the knockout stage as the group winner and which would go in as the wild card. They were tied in every category as they each beat the Rochester schools 2-0 and tied 0-0. They were the only two schools to not concede a goal in the group stage of play out of 24 teams.
BU won PKs 4-3. Tufts GK made a save in the 1st PK but my son said two of his teammates shanked their tries and missed the goal completely.
Tufts played Delaware in the quarters and lost 1-0 on a late counter. My son likened the way they played to the way Jenks and BA played the state championship last year not sending anyone forward and kicking it long to see if they could get a forward to run onto it. He said his team started pressing an attack late trying to find a goal not wanting to leave it to PKs. They got caught in a counter and Delaware scored on its only SOG of the game. Tough break. I think he gets a break for a bit before they pick it up for a Spring season.
BU won PKs 4-3. Tufts GK made a save in the 1st PK but my son said two of his teammates shanked their tries and missed the goal completely.
Tufts played Delaware in the quarters and lost 1-0 on a late counter. My son likened the way they played to the way Jenks and BA played the state championship last year not sending anyone forward and kicking it long to see if they could get a forward to run onto it. He said his team started pressing an attack late trying to find a goal not wanting to leave it to PKs. They got caught in a counter and Delaware scored on its only SOG of the game. Tough break. I think he gets a break for a bit before they pick it up for a Spring season.
My kids team played well this weekend in Austin in the Texas Cup Final Four. We played #6 Real Colorado to a scoreless draw in regulation then won in PKs 8-7. The girls made 8 of their 9 PKs against on of the best U15 keepers in the country.
That win set us up in the finals against #4 Solar. The girls played well but fell 1-0 on a header which floated just under the crossbar. The positive was one goal allowed in two games against two of the top ten teams in the country. The negative is we still can’t score.
That win set us up in the finals against #4 Solar. The girls played well but fell 1-0 on a header which floated just under the crossbar. The positive was one goal allowed in two games against two of the top ten teams in the country. The negative is we still can’t score.
I refereed some games at MTSC this weekend. Handed out 2 yellows, 1 in a U12 game for SPA (Stopping a promising attack), and 1 in a U14 game for SPA. The U14 game was interesting because I went in with the mindset that one team was just not going to be competitive at all but was wrong, sort of. Team lost 5-0 still but missed a number of chances on goal and also missed 2 PKs they were awarded. 1st was for a handball in the box, pretty clear and even the coach of the defending team told his player to move past it, those things happen. 2nd one was a hard foul in the box by the keeper. Came out to clear a ball and whiffed and cracked the attacker in the shin. Everyone saw it and everyone heard it....luckily in rec the kids aren't trying to wear the micro shin guards so the contact was with the shin guard but it still hurt...kid went down.
1st game was a u12 girls game and one team had some players who, with proper coaching, could probably play at one of the competitive clubs and be really good.
1st game was a u12 girls game and one team had some players who, with proper coaching, could probably play at one of the competitive clubs and be really good.
They tried a couple of years ago but it never caught on. They had a couple of good people running that program too. Unlike BASC, they didn't force their best U11 and up teams into the BA Express competitive program to help build/sustain it.
I know they hired Simba from WSA several years ago to get it up and running. I would consider having something like the BA Express has done to be a success for Metro.
An academy/competitive set of teams like you would find at TSC and Blitz and competing in OPL. BASC has used the BA Express as a natural lure to keep kids from leaving their rec programs to go to the other clubs in town once those players felt they outgrew the rec level. My entire U9 team in BA left to move to different competitive clubs after that season. With Express, BA can now say stay here, play at those same competitive levels as those other clubs and pay a fraction of the cost in addition to playing at the best complex in OK. (It's still the best complex in the state although I suspect Scheel's will be on par or pass it in the next couple of years with the rapid improvements they are making). Both BASC and MTSC sort of were feeder programs into TSC prior to that and Barry somehow undid those relationships.
BA Express has been growing there base as well. And they've got a couple of pretty good teams. They aren't on the level to be playing ECNL, ECNL-RL, or even NPL yet but they aren't completely overmatched in their OPL games any more. Simba was trying to create the same thing at MTSC but they could never convince enough of the good players at Metro to make that extra monetary and time commitment for that level and they couldn't convince enough kids from other programs to come over either. I do know some TSc kids who did go over...but the problem eventually was having combined age group teams to make a team. I think my son's group there was combined 06/05/04 the first year so you have 16 year olds playing against U18/19 teams because you have 1 or 2 04s. Don't get me wrong, Simba is a great coach and soccer mind. He was just tasked with something that was unsustainable without a significant investment by MTSC into pushing or forcing certain teams and kids into that level.
This year's tryouts with the impending birth date change (not official but official) is going to be wild. I wasn't around in 2017ish when it went to birth year. Try outs will be crazy...... What will clubs let kids do? It's all the talk at practices, texts, etc.......
The following is the policy of a certain Dallas based club.
U16 and above will have the option of staying with current team
My daughter is an August 2010 birthday but is a freshman. For players with August birthdays who are in the older grade they will have the option to play for with the older team or play correct age grouping. So she can play with either the 2009-2010 or 2010-2011 group.
The have always been players who play up. My understanding is the change won’t affect this option for players.
Just made that drive this past weekend. I’ve never made it through Dallas and Waco without issues.
Or US soccer just says no changes.
It seems like The ECNL director has a real hardon for this change.
Club soccer is not for friendship teams. There are always "trapped players"
Lots of other sports do birth year. Why is this so hard?
ECNL does not like that the player’s final year of club soccer is a pieced together team of kids who haven’t played together. They also don’t like all the “opt outs” and believe kids would be more likely to continue to play in club if they were playing for their “team”. The change would also make it easier for colleges to scout as the players would all be in the same graduating class. The recruiting argument is probably the most persuasive to me
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