Kid's sports go on and on. Time out, please
There once were three scholastic seasons: football, basketball and baseball. Each happily owned a three-month segment of the school year. And it was good - for the kids. Sports were under the umbrella and protection of the educational system. There were rules about a schedule cap. Professionally trained educators ran the programs. Then there came soccer.
Soccer is an import. Here was a game that relied on the feet. Minimal contact made it appealing to moms. But four sports in three seasons made it impossible to play them all. At first, few schools incorporated it into their sports program. There were few qualified coaches and football schools weren't going to let soccer get on the field in the fall. Then someone somewhere had the idea to play in the spring, like they do in Europe. Then someone somewhere wondered why kid's couldn't play baseball well into the fall. All hell broke loose and a kid's nightmare began.
Because schools were slow to embrace soccer as part of the scholastic program, parents decided to organize, coach, and manage soccer teams for their kids. There were a few foreign-born parents around who had played soccer before coming to the states. Soccer is an international sport and American football is not. Football is a rough sport where size matters. Helmets, shoulder pads, and all that other equipment required to be worn by a football player is expensive. In comparison, soccer is dirt cheap. And parents, not school administrators, are running the whole show.
Even as schools began to add soccer to their athletic programs it was initially treated at most places as a second-class, minor sport. Football coaches were reluctant to allow soccer on their fields, even in the spring. Passionate soccer parents quickly labeled football as the enemy. And soccer in the US quickly became a cult rather than a sport.
We now have basically four levels of soccer: scholastic, recreational, travel, and premier. The latter three are now playing year round and the leaders strongly encourage kids to specialize in soccer. Travel and premier teams play in tournaments all around the country. They are not restricted to a schedule cap as are school teams. Club teams - the non-scolastic teams - now have parents funding coaches and travel. The birth of the ODP, Olympic Development Program, has become the center stage of American soccer.
Travel teams require kids as early as nine years old (and their parents) to visit other towns, often hours away, to play against regional teams from other places.
"We have no weekends," complains Jack R., a Connecticut father whose son plays on a travel team in the fall. The family shuttles from playing field to playing field, carrying a complicated assortment of Gatorade, Dunkin Munchkins and changes of clothing. Jack wonders what happened to the simple pleasures of leisurely Sundays and fallow seasons. It's not as if his generation did not play ball year-round. But their games consisted of stickball or whiffle-ball or even pickup baseball without the pressure of teams, leagues and coaches. Instead of being in Sunday school and church on Sundays, parents and kids are on a soccer field miles and miles from home. Soccer is the religion. Families suffer. Kids are abused. Parent egos runs the show.
But let's don't just blame the soccer fanatics. There are kids as young as nine years old who play 60+ baseball or softball games in the summer. There are now personal trainers - pitching coaches and hitting coaches who charge big bucks to give kids personal instruction between games.
While baseball tries to accommodate soccer's schedule in the fall and soccer tries to accommodate baseball's in the spring, conflicts inevitably arise that prevent kids from playing both sports at the same time. And while nothing prevents a child from trying out for a travel soccer team in one season after playing baseball in the other, his skills probably won't keep pace with his peers who are in soccer year-round. The cult is not prone to share with anyone.
High school soccer teams suffer as well. Travel and premier leagues can draw kids who otherwise might be on their school varsity squad. This obviously draws ire from school coaches and peers who play for the school team. As the prestige of travel teams run by parents and not educators grows, scholastic sports become trivial with the best athletes opting out of the school program. Soccer is a cult, not a sport. Kids lose another one. Defeated my adult egos. For what?
Comments from a reader:
High school soccer and college soccer are a farce. Club soccer adheres to the established rules of the game around the world. The NCAA and NFHS alter the rules of the game willy nilly in order to 'Americanize' the game. Scholastic soccer limits the amount of games players can play during the years in which it is most crucial for developing players to play as much as possible. Specifically in Kansas, the Kansas High School Activities Association limits high school boys players from participating in club soccer with its 'six player rule' which bans more than six members of the same high school team from playing on the same club team. The result is that high school teams in small towns in rural areas are severely limited in their ability to compete with schools from the large urban and suburban areas since those players simply cannot form club teams without running afoul of the six player rule. Therefore the overall development of the gam e is stifled in areas where most people are very protective of the 'traditional sports', especially football. Curiously, the Kansas association has no six player rule for girls...who don't threaten football's popularity. Scholastic/collegiate associations place these restrictions on soccer NOT to keep the games in the "proper educational perspective" but rather to prevent soccer from receiving equivalent exposure to that of the 'revenue' or 'traditional' sports of Football/Basketball/Baseball. If that's not the case, explain the continued expansion of the Bowl Championship Series and the NCAA Basketball tournaments in addition to more regular season games in both football and basketball. The NCAA has actually used Title IX to decrease the number of men's college soccer programs available, while the USSF, which is not legally bound by Title IX has greatly expanded the opportunities for women and girls to play soccer without decreasing opportunitie s for men and boys. If scholastic/collegiate athletic associations don't want the USSF to encourage its players not to play scholastic/collegiate soccer, maybe those associations should think about cooperating with soccer's true governing body instead of trying to undermine it. Soccer is a superior activity to american football and anyone who can't understand why is proof of why.
JAMES COMPTON
jamesc96485@earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
Charlie's reply:
Hello, James. Well you are talking to the wrong guy here.
Any child psychologist will tell you that specializing in a sport in middle school/high school is not good for the physical or emotional development of the child.
Club soccer is all about the individual and not the team concept.
Club soccer has no academic rules for participation. In fact the ODP manual states that missing an ODP practice because of a school event is an unexcused absense.
High school athletic associations have a desire to protect young athletes from exploitation by folks who drain kids physically and emotionally by playing far too many soccer matches or baseball and softball games a year. Frankly, club soccer is all about the adults, not the kids.
Club coaches lie like Hell to parents. "If Johnny plays for me year-round, he will get a college scholarship". Bull Shit! ODP is a lying joke...reel those parents in and make some money.
And club soccer "develops" players for who / what?? An advanced CLUB travel team, where parents have to spent $5,000 instead of $3,000 for their kid to get abused. I've never wittnessed as much verbal abuse anywhere else in sports than at a Club soccer match.
What is the mission of the USSF? ...
Why have a USSF? Why isn't school participation enough? ... because there are folks out there making money through USSF by preying on the hopes of parents.
When college soccer programs start putting 80,000 folks in the stands for a match, then I'm sure soccer will take its proper place in AMERICAN sports. Nobody needs to "protect" football.
At least schools don't play any sport year round.
Sorry, James. You ranted to the wrong guy on this subject. See Youth Sports
