So I see TU is installing new turf at Skelly. My grandfather was in charge of the very first "Astro" turf installation at TU in the early 70's. It was about 1/4 inch think on concrete. (Seemed like). Little different than what we install now.
Youth soccer club
- Thread starter BasPlayr
- Start date
We were just talking about this on the Football board. I didn't get to TU until 1992 so after the original was replaced by the New Kids on the Block in '89. Even by then you could see the screen mesh below. It was basically painted green concrete. Just awful But at least the lines were sewn into that one. When I was in HS we did a halftime show at Foxboro Stadium for the Patriots when they still had the old turf. The lines were painted and they got slick as snot when it was wet or the field froze (which was almost always the case doing a halftime show the 3rd week of December).
I will say the parking at River Parks this weekend was atrocious. 150 teams, all playing most games on Sunday because of the Saturday storm PLUS a baseball tournament at the park cramming games in because they got rained out on Saturday too. PLUS most of the parking for tournament weekends is in the low grassy area next to the creek that had overflowed on Saturday. I wasn't putting my car in that. Some of the parking was extra creative (some might call it illegal). I got to speak with Roger Bush and mentioned he needed to have some dedicated referee parking and he said they were planning to do that at future events with a dedicated shuttle cart to ferry refs to their cars and the ref area. Honestly this is another idea most places need to implement, ESPECIALLY if a ref isn't starting with the first kick of the day (if I've got first kick, I'm there before most of the teams because that early I need some extra stretching with my 50+ year old knees and hammies).
It's funny that y'all were talking about when you knew you wanted to play in college, because my daughter just started talking about it seriously.
It's such a departure from how she has normally thought about things.
Kids are weird lol
It's such a departure from how she has normally thought about things.
Kids are weird lol
I’m assuming that TSC had made all the current RL players aware this was happening soon?
GA in this region of the country is a dumpster fire. They will struggle to attract any kind of talent until the regional league improves
Wonder what TSC boys will do next year without ECNL. Also wonder who wins the bid between WSA and FC Tulsa. Will be interesting to watch.
It makes sense to give to WSA because of the girls side already being there, but because of the resources I would rather FC Tulsa get it.
How has everyone’s tryouts going?. My daughter’s team had 8 current players not guaranteed spots. They’ve now signed 5 new players and will probably sign 1 more.
Dallas tryout week is just an insane experience. All ECNL clubs have weeklong tryouts. Some girls will go to 3 or more clubs during this week. See where the best offer and/or fit is and take that spot. These are girls who either weren’t guaranteed their spots with their current club or are looking to move up in terms of team quality.
Dallas tryout week is just an insane experience. All ECNL clubs have weeklong tryouts. Some girls will go to 3 or more clubs during this week. See where the best offer and/or fit is and take that spot. These are girls who either weren’t guaranteed their spots with their current club or are looking to move up in terms of team quality.
We added one girl last week and we haven’t even had tryouts. I think tryouts will be pretty lowkey, but I’m so glad we aren’t in Tulsa.
It went pretty well for us. Made NL again.
Lots of girls came out to the WSA tryouts. Including some out of staters and out of towners.
I'm so glad my son doesn't have to go through the farce of what they call tryouts any more.
I picked him up this past weekend in Boston. Weather sucked. Looks like the field his team plays on is getting new turf this Spring. I asked what his involvement will be for tryouts next Fall for any new players and he says he will have the say on who they take as his backup in goal. He thinks they will only take 4-5 players in tryouts to replace who they're losing and one will be a GK as the other one has now graduated.
I would have never thought the TSC 2013's would have got better after the club lost NL but we did, The team ,if you go by the App rankings is #34 today. We lost one girl who will drop age groups next year to Blitz because she didn't start enough for us. She's a good player just not a good teammate. We got a Blitz girl that most of us wanted last year. We picked up another incredible kid that wasn't playing locally. I don't think TSC or Blitz lost a top team girl to WSA. The 2014's didn't lose any players from the top team. The educated parents know that Tulsa teams can't compete with the top 8 clubs in ECNL Texas currently. I know some like to bash GA and you can't compare ECNL top teams in this market to GA. I love the WSA 2013's but they are the 3 or 4th best team in the Tulsa market. They lost 6-0 to Sting's 4th team in Pre ECNL. WSA didn't win a Spring game playing 4th division in Pre ECNL league, Just like you can't compare ECNL to GA you can''t compare ECNL in Tulsa to the rest of ECNL. The top talent is playing for Energy, Sting, FC Dallas, etc. Moving ECNL from one club to another didn't solve the problems we face. I would hate to be on the 08's, 12's and 13's to get crushed most weekends. I'm not a soccer guy so I don't know the answers. I just know Tulsa isn't large enough to be this divided.
I disagree. Tulsa teams can absolutely compete. That isn't very sensible. We have had teams reach the national finals before, even ECNL, NPL, and MLS Next, when clubs had only one team. Nationals '85 and Tulsa Pride '80 are two boys' teams that come to mind. There were other girls' teams that also won regionals. It wasn't always the case, but not everyone wins regionals all the time. There are only 4 in the United States.
We have recently reached the national ECNL finals in certain age groups. You can't divide up the talent; if we lose people to OKC, they will not compete effectively. Most of the TSC teams were not suffering from many close losses. WSA is going to get a stark wake-up call. I have watched WSA's RL teams. They pale in comparison to NL talent levels. I hope they have pulled in kids from all the clubs that hated TSC but love Sand Springs, ORU and supposed non-profits.
I really hope TSC does well in GA. It would be a lot of crow to eat if they didn’t after posting something like this.
This is 100% not a knock on WSA (So no crow to eat). It's a player/depth problem. We can't lose the top talent and compete at ECNL Texas. TSC in most age groups won't compete in the top of GA. I'm saying as good as the TSC 13's are they would be hard pressed to finish top 6 in Texas ECNL.
The 13's , which is the only age I really care about isn't even the highest ranked GA team in our conference.
My point for the 13's at WSA is..... they couldn't beat Blitz or TSC this year and didn't add any "top team talent" from any other club in the area. They are ranked #451. Is it fair to those kids (One is my daughter's best friend) who have been there since before they had NL, now have to (get to) compete in Texas ECNL? The cost of ECNL for the families? The losing games by 7+ goals? The travel? It won't be fun for those kids. Lawpoke says it's not supposed to be fun at this level but these kids just "aged" into this level of play at a club that didn't have this level when they started.
I don't know how we (If ever) get the top players to (A) stay, (B) play at one club (C) that club to have the coaches, facilities, financial backing required to compete. Honkv you can worry about the badge on the jersey. I worry about the kids and their love of the game and time the spend with friends they make along the way. If they get a college scholarship great but 99.99% of these girls won't make a living playing soccer.
TU went to the elite 8 in 2000. That doesn’t mean they belong in the ACC. Greenwood will be interesting if they can bring high level soccer to Tulsa for the long term. Financial backing, facilities, at least one great coach.
Well said, and where many of today's parents miss the mark. Very few of today's youth will go on to make a living playing sports, but so many parents get caught up with playing for this club, or in this league...because of their own ego's. Most kids won't look back and remember the time they played in ECNL, or GA, or won this or that tournament, what they will remember is the friendships they created and the memories they made along the way.
Someday, the parents, and players of today will realize that youth sports organization's only care about the financial transaction side of things. Our children are just business transactions for these organizations.....period, and that's because the parents allow it.
We left TSC so that my daughter wouldn’t quit soccer. That’s a fact. We didn’t leave because of a badge / league. She wanted to leave well before they lost NL. We spoke to the club about the issues and they didn’t really do anything to help.
Like I said: I hope TSC does well. Im friends with a couple of the parents from the 13s. I want to see the kids succeed.
If that's a GotSoccer ranking, it's complete garbage. It is such a flawed system of ranking teams which is easy to manipulate. Coaches can withhold scores from the GotSoccer ranking matrix so if they don't like the fact they got beat by a lower ranked team 5-0, they can simply not have the score included...plus, GotSoccer also doesn't take into account which team they're actually talking about. I remember looking at them for my son's U13 team and they were ranked like #2 in OK despite the fact it wasn't the same team, different coach, and maybe 3 players on the team from the year before. All the results they were looking at were U11/U12s which also were completely different teams, some of them were from a team that none of the current players played on. I wouldn't put too much stock in any GotSoccer ranking
They've got more than 1 great coach. We know JMW is there and how good he is as a developer of technical talent but I am hearing that Ciaran Winters may be the next coaching star in the area.
This is par for the course for TSC. Barry and Eric listen, I will give them, that but the lack of follow up was extremely frustrating.
All I’m going to say: my daughter was having a terrible time with a person on her team, getting called a “hoe” during training, etc., and we told the club about it. Nothing really happened.
But boy when I posted a factual story here about a thing that happened at a tourney, and that kids parent threw a fit, TSC was QUICK to address it. Despite me not naming anyone, etc.
The kids parents are going to read this, too. That’s fine.
You know, lemme say this, too:
The point that talent in our small market is watered down is a valid point. TSC losing NL was a blessing in disguise. It facilitated a change that we all, in one way or another, know needed to happen: it provided an opportunity for the top players to all coalesce around a single idea. We could've all put aside egos, club loyalty, whatever, and truly tried to build these super competitive teams.
But not everyone saw it that way. So instead of taking the opportunity to build out these (hopefully) more competitive teams, the talent pool stayed splintered and diluted.
Hell yeah. That's definitely the solution Tulsa youth soccer needed.
The point that talent in our small market is watered down is a valid point. TSC losing NL was a blessing in disguise. It facilitated a change that we all, in one way or another, know needed to happen: it provided an opportunity for the top players to all coalesce around a single idea. We could've all put aside egos, club loyalty, whatever, and truly tried to build these super competitive teams.
But not everyone saw it that way. So instead of taking the opportunity to build out these (hopefully) more competitive teams, the talent pool stayed splintered and diluted.
Hell yeah. That's definitely the solution Tulsa youth soccer needed.
It sucks when parents of kids on a team are infighting. It makes for an awful experience. We've been lucky. I don't think my son was ever on a team where the parents as a whole didn't get along. We did have a bad manager experience...they just weren't great communicators and if I learned one thing about being a team manager...over communicate logistics like game locations, arrival times, which uniform to wear (and be sure to always state "bring both jerseys"). Heck, even when my son would guest play up my son always felt included with the team and the parents were never like "who's that" (except for the other GK's mom who was sort of an odd duck). And with Blitz, the parents were absolutely great. That team was super tight knit and the parents frequently hung out together.
From what you're relating, that's another issue as to why the team didn't function. Too many times the club and coaches focus on technical development and are looking at results but if the kids are infighting and tearing each other down, they will NEVER achieve anything as a team.
An
And this is where it is apparent that the focus is on business and $ and not talent development and competition. It's about the club director egos who all think they can offer something better for your kid but in the end your kid is a number on a balance sheet to the club.
I would argue this has been a significant issue in the competitive ages in Tulsa for sometime now. Clubs feel the need to make as many parents happy as possible due to revenue concerns. Their focus is on the business side. Larger market clubs demand performance and development from their teams once they hit competitive. If a coach isn’t developing his players he is looking for work. If players aren’t developing they are looking for another team.
TSC academy teams almost always do well. Then competitive hits and the larger market clubs concentrate talent in the top team and Tulsa parents are left wondering why did we drop off. When in fact the other clubs just develop their kids better and have high expectations from their coaches….and have larger talent pools in which to draw
I want to be clear: There was no infighting. We tried our best to be cordial and mind our own business.
But you're right: The team didn't function well under the TSC direction.
One thing I immediately noticed at the WSA stuff was how tight knit the girls seemed to be. They were immediately welcoming and warm to my daughter and several others. That makes me super hopeful.
Because at a club like FC Dallas or Solar, they move kids up or down depending on their development and skill level...if a kid gets moved down and goes to a new club, no big deal, you lose 1 kid out of 1000. TSC can't afford to lose 1 kid right now. If you look at TSC's last few years, rarely were players moved up from within the club or a player dropped to a lower team unless they requested to do so for more playing time. The only new additions, for the most part, came from new players to the club.
I would like to point out that for all the faults over half of the last two TSC NL classes (06 and 07) did end up signing D1 scholarships. Now we can debate whether TSC is to credit or playing ECNL. Truth is probably mostly the latter. Both those TSC classes were competitive in ECNL as well.
Which brings me to GA. The area GA league is lower rated based on average team rankings than Texas league RL. If you have a team ranked in the top 40 why do you want to play in such a league? Do you not want to play against teams of comparable talent? Do you not believe elite kids maximize their development by playing against other elite kids? Do you not want the exposure playing in the Texas league NL provides? Now if you’re in the 08 class I completely agree that you should be playing in a league like Texas RL or local GA. But if you’re a top 50 type of squad, I would argue playing that lower level of soccer is doing those kids who want to maximize their talent and play D1 a massive disservice. Just look at the college signings from TSC the last two years and those teams weren’t even top 50 teams.
Which brings me to GA. The area GA league is lower rated based on average team rankings than Texas league RL. If you have a team ranked in the top 40 why do you want to play in such a league? Do you not want to play against teams of comparable talent? Do you not believe elite kids maximize their development by playing against other elite kids? Do you not want the exposure playing in the Texas league NL provides? Now if you’re in the 08 class I completely agree that you should be playing in a league like Texas RL or local GA. But if you’re a top 50 type of squad, I would argue playing that lower level of soccer is doing those kids who want to maximize their talent and play D1 a massive disservice. Just look at the college signings from TSC the last two years and those teams weren’t even top 50 teams.
You’re not wrong except very few kids get moved up from RL to NL after the age of 13 at those two clubs. The gap in play is just too big. It’s extremely difficult to train and play against RL level kids and teams and then jump to NL and be able to compete with girls who have been training and playing against top level girls for several years. Coaching is obviously better at the NL level as well. The difference at clubs like TSC is there aren’t NL girls from other teams calling asking to join.
I think that, if a kid wants to move from RL to NL, the progress they make will have to be made outside of team training.
I 100% believe that whatever technical prowess my daughter may have comes from all the work she's done outside of the club.
There are several factors that played into our team's decision. I can say a HUGE factor was Nathan Doll. There will be at least 3 really strong teams in the conference. Lou Fusz (ranked 2nd in MO), HTX (Ranked 3rd inTX) and BVB (Which beat both us and Energy to win Pre Ecnl top division). A lot of our parents have an issue with ECNL. For instance why does the Blitz 2013's who are better than WSA's now have to play WSA's 3rd team next season because ECNL decides who plays where? ECNL is a money grab which is why they have so many RL's. If you look more at the mission of GA it aligns more with my daughter's values as she wants to coach. It's a single sex league ran by women. We will also be placed against the other top GA teams at showcases and not against other bad teams at an ECNL showcase. We have some players who will be "Discovery" players for other ECNL clubs. If anyone believes ECNL cares about the kids we will just have to disagree. I will continue to support all the local teams as we have may friends on them. I just don't believe which club wears the patch solves the problems. We had a wonderful experience at WSA and TSC has been great also. Many issues teams have are with parents and not the kids.
Similar threads
