Youth soccer club
- Thread starter BasPlayr
- Start date
Yeah
Tulsa doesn’t have the size for all that, ECNL would
have to go. Honestly GA may be a better option on the girls side in Tulsa, and I think MLS next would scoop up all the top boys in the area.
Agree. Unfortunately, I believe that’s the direction we’re headed….at least on the boys side. I see GA as a tough sell with the girls in large part due to scheduling. ECNL has now scooped up almost all the good clubs in a 4 hour drive radius. GA would make for a lot of travel and soccer well below the ECNL level. Now will MLS mandate their local MLS Next club play GA on the girls side?
Who knows. TSC will be out if they lose NL status. As someone pointed out, they are the only ones that put people in top schools. Is that the result of them having NL? Maybe. But they are still doing it. The others aren't doing anything special.
Wilbert Maximore is getting older. It makes sense for him to make a buck. I don't know if he has kids to whom he wants to leave a legacy or kick it on the beach for a bit. Blitz has never been in a better position. They never were anything special. For a long time, they only had girls' teams. You can hype all the President's Cup world championships you can. Sell it and get some cash, while the perception is they got something special and are headed to winning MLS Next titles.
Spot on. Having a strong girls side and being affiliated with GA would be tough in Tulsa imo. Girls play for the patch and that patch in this part of the country is NL.
This was something Barry was trying to do back when he first bought TSC. He mentioned it to me in a couple of our 1 on 1 conversations and he thought it was actually going to happen pretty quickly back then. This is right after TSc had gotten the NEOFC Bartlesville side and he also thought the NEOFC folks were coming too. I think he even approached WSA, Highlanders, and the other Bixby club. I even thought the Bixby clubs were coming as several of their coaches actually were brought on at TSC. Obviously it all collapsed as none of them came, WSA grabbed a ton of the small clubs throughout the state and then took a bunch of TSC's girls' coaches.
I don't know what a merger between Blitz and TSC would mean and entail but it would push that club closer to having the dominant teams in the state, at least on the boys side. There's a lot of talent in both of those clubs to form 1 hell of a top team in each age group. Blitz has a lot of good coaches but they don't carry the cache the TSC coaches have in terms of printable credentials...and that doesn't mean they are not necessarily quality coaches because many of them are. It will be interesting to see how this might shake out. Wilbur is a very different person than Barry is when it comes to how he manages the club. He is super supportive of his coaches and their teams and he is frequently at games for a lot of different age groups whenever he can. Barry is not that guy.
The dominant girls side will be the club with NL. Doesn’t really matter which club at the end of the day. The top girls will play NL as that’s the only local platform putting girls in D1.
Ooooh....I completely misread that statement then. Still, Barry tried to get those mergers right after he bought TSC. If Blitz and FC Tulsa are merging that might/probably change the way things look in Tulsa, especially if FC Tulsa goes MLS Next (Next 2). Everything I've read about the proposed MLS Next 2 is that it would allow players to play HS ball out of season, so likely an OK thing here since it's a Spring season for soccer.
This would be a big middle finger from Jim Tindell to Barry. My only question is if the club would be obligated to use the new Hummel kits from FC Tulsa as their kits...as much as I love the Hummel stuff (Union HS soccer used Hummel kits and other gear), it is super expensive, way more so than adidas.
As for the Chicago expo, I have no idea what else is covered there, but USSF put out new rules/guidance on how to handle referee abuse and punishments for different levels. Anyone who strikes a referee is facing a lifetime ban. And minimum suspensions will start at 3 games. I've seen some different questions about it on another thread chat for referees (moderated by a high level referee/referee educator here in Tulsa)...my question will be will NFHS choose to adopt and apply these same rules to HS soccer b/c the level of ref abuse from parents, coaches, and players in HS is at another level and frequently goes unchecked and even unsupported by schools/districts. I've read that at a game in Ohio, 2 players and a coach were red carded in a game and the district said they will not enforce the additional game suspensions for being red carded and declared all 3 eligible to participate in their next game. Ref association was trying to organize a boycott of that schools games in all sports. Insane. Union had a blowup at the refs after a game last season and the AD sent an email, very strongly worded, and basically warned parents, players, and coaches that any card for any reason and the team would be ineligible for the state playoffs. Just know in HS, a kid in the game without shin guards, is an automatic yellow card for the coach. Wearing jewelry (earrings, necklace, rope bracelet, etc.) is an automatic yellow. But there are schools/districts that do not support treating the officials with respect at all. I think it's a good move for USSF because some of the insanity that comes from coaches/players/parents on the sidelines is insane. And the guidance is to card the coach for parent behavior now....coaches aren't going to want this BS on them so I am hoping they take a strong stand with their parents.
I wouldn’t be surprised if FC Tulsa picks up at least some of those costs for their MLS Next team. FC Dallas covers all expenses of their MLS Next players from dues down to kits. They don’t cover travel. They even cover some of the costs for their girls ECNL teams. A number of Texas based clubs give cover some of the costs for playing on their ECNL teams and use that as a recruiting tool
Until you do what Energy does and have every club on this side of the state roll up to you TS
If FC Tulsa covers the cost or even partial cost that’s a game changer for Tulsa. One thing that is noticeably different at OEFC is everything is much less expensive than TSC.
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Lol, I didn’t finish my statement and didn’t realize it went through. What I was saying was that most of the top clubs in the OKC area roll up to OEFC, that doesn’t happen on this side of the state. In order for any club to be dominant on this side of the state there would be need to be a single club that everyone rolls up too. At least as far as being competitive nationally.
Yeah.
I've thought for a while that the people in Tulsa are more interested in joining something great than building something great. It's wild.
TSC sort of had that in place for kids wanting to go from rec to competitive. They had a partnership in place with both BASC and MTSC, 2 of the larger rec soccer orgs around...and then all of a sudden those fell apart. MTSC tried to do their own competitive thing...didn't work. BASC basically took over Sheffield and then rebranded them BA Express. Further muddying the waters and adding just another competitive club to the mix in the area. And there are some good players there and they've got a model in place that parents like because it's way less $ than playing at TSC or even Blitz/WSA.
And I understand what you're saying about Energy but they've got their issues too which is why you keep seeing small competitive groups pop up like Sporting OK (branch of Sporting KC youth academy) and the OKC Crew. You've also got the OK 405 group and then of course Edmond SC, Southlakes Cosmos, and Celtic. The Crew group has put together some feisty teams over the years. Not sure how they started but I know they played their home games at one of the Putnam City HS. I get the feeling that a lot of those players were players who got disgruntled by the Energy politics, maybe it was one of the coaches who left Energy and started the club. They didn't always have the best talent at all spots but they were a well coached group (except the coach always insisted on playing one kid back in goal when he had an '07 girl as a backup on that team who was a far better GK than the '06 boy playing the majority of minutes). One state cup game, the girl started, gave up 1 goal in the 1st half and I suspect she played the 1st half because the team had the benefit of the 25+ mph wind at their backs. Second half starts and my son's team scores 4 goals in the first 8 minutes against the other kid who made several mistakes and he got yanked for the other keeper. She gave up 1 add'l goal late and my son's team hung on for a 6-4 win (the defending was brutal in this game). Celtic and Cosmos always have some solid top teams as well and good coaches (except for the one guy who likes to chase referees off the field when his team was losing). The Sporting team had some good players but never enough good players to be a problem and the club overall lacked depth within the older age groups.
Honestly, I always trace the splitting up of the 06 age group in Tulsa to the pissing match between Levi Coleman and Donny Carreno back when USSF switched the age groups to birth year. Donny had some good 06 players as part of his 07 group then and Levi was the 06 age group director at TSC and was looking forward to getting those players in the mix and Donny said he was keeping his teams intact. TSC mgmt didn't want to piss him off and Levi quit on the spot taking about 15 06 players with him to Blitz (OSA passed a rule shortly thereafter about this type of movement). Anyway, TSC had the vast majority of good 06 players at that time and then they scattered so instead of having 1 really great 06 team in Tulsa, you ended up with 3 avg. teams spread between TSC, WSA, and Blitz. Barry never was able to fix that and actually may have done some stuff to further fracture the boys side in Tulsa.
I think that could change if the top club here was better managed. If the coaching staff was better and didn’t turn over every year. At least I can hope
This would be true. I remember when Sonny Dalessandro tried to build the Tulsa Athletic youth academy and started with Levi. They could never attract enough players to sustain things there and parents/ids weren't willing to be part of the building process. It's too bad, Levi is a good coach and good soccer mind that I'd never want my kid to play for because I don't agree with his approach to younger players when they make a mistake.
And I think it's also a tell on the bigger problem in youth soccer in that it isn't about player development and about winning and parent egos.
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. Good management and some sort of consistency with a coaching staff will keep kids at the club. Coaching philosophy from the top down should be consistent and a priority on teaching at the academy level. Wins will come.
Oh man, don’t even get me started on the coach thing. My daughter has had like 6 different coaches while at TSC.
To quote Bob Marley: “you can’t blame the youth.”
Parents have definitely broken soccer in Tulsa. I really think that there is a huge swath of parents in Tulsa that don’t truly grasp what ECNL actually is…and maybe that’s due to their club downplaying it, etc.
But it’s like: if your club keeps saying TSC is gonna lose NL and your club is going to get it, then NL must be pretty important. So why wouldn’t you go play at the club with NL?
Because many of them already know that the environment surrounding ECNL in Tulsa right now is toxic because of the politics at play regarding which players make the team and which don't and it's not always based on playing ability or even potential to develop into a great player. Most of the kids at Blitz and WSA who would have the chance of being part of the NL programs in their age group at TSC have already left TSC for one reason or another. Plus, and this is true on the boys side, the boys at WSA who would have that chance would have to find some money to pay TSC for registration, monthly dues/fees, etc. Many of them were lured to WSA with the promise that they would not have to pay those things and only contribute to travel plus participate in fundraising. One thing I know for sure is WSA and Blitz both help set up a bunch of fundraisers for their teams/programs. TSC does not do a ton of fundraisers and much of it's left to the teams themselves and at that, most kids, even the ones who did receive a need based discount, didn't participate in them. I just know at Blitz, when they did fundraisers, you'd frequently see 14 out of 18 kids and their parents participating. Just a different culture. WSA also as I was always getting hit up by WSA players for donations or to buy something or to go out to a meal fundraiser at a restaurant. But the participation levels at those events also shows the level of buy in to the teams/clubs.
Didn't someone on here mention how hard it was to get a full squad to training at their kid's TSC team? If you can't get the kids and parents who are already there to buy in to the club's direction and philosophy, how are you going to get kids and parents from the outside to buy in? And trust me, the parents on the outside know parents on the inside...and they talk.
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