soccer soccer soccer

[Derwood]

My kid did travel softball in high school and the team and coach were atrocious

[WrigleyField 22]

2 hours ago, bukie said:

Yes, as a parent of a college kid who did 10 years of travel ball and an 8u kid now, you just can't develop effectively in a rec league anymore. Rec leagues are effectively sports tourism. Give something a try in your free time to get out and see if you like the sport, then if you want to get good at it you have to jump to a travel organization, at least at some level.

Unfortunately, even with that truth, some travel programs are effectively money printing factories, where they have 5+ teams per age level, focusing on the development of the top team at the cost of everyone else, where if you're the parent of the kid on the bottom tier, you pay the same (or more, those top team kids get benefits sometimes too!) but just don't get the same level of attention and spotlight as the top tier kids.

Then you get into the organizations that run the tournaments and leagues, and those get ridiculous as well. Leagues effectively run for the lower-end travel programs so you can get mid week games in between weekly tournaments. Tournaments run usually 4 days a week, where Saturday and Sunday you can play 2+ games per day, up to as many as 4 that I've been a part of. Just to get in the door at these tournaments a team is paying upwards of $700 a team, with some of the more prestigious tournaments going for over $1k a pop. That just gets the team in, though, as then to see your kid play that's another $10 a day, and maybe even an extra $10-$15 to park in the parking lot.

That's just the games, though. Training is another beast all together. If you are fortunate to latch onto a travel program with their own facility for training, that's great, but that all costs extra on top of the tournament and team fees usually (or it's rolled in with the team fees, and team fees are $1k more for those programs). Depending on the team, then you get 1-2 days a week of training in the off season. Then you can augment that with private lessons for hitting, pitching, catching, or fielding for an extra $50 a session.

All told, at a high end program with their own training facility, playing 10 tournaments a year, you're easily out at least $2k per year plus about $500 for private training if you're extra serious about it. The younger the player, the more they benefit from training compared to game environments, so it's a better focus (like at a 3:1 level for 8u up to about even for 17-18u). That's before equipment, too, where bats run up to $500 for even little kids at the high end, and gloves can run $100+ easy (and if you're a catcher, that's a good $500 purchase new as well, hoping it lasts a few seasons)

And we were up in the northern US for all of this, so you could really only play games April-July, trying to fit 50+ games into the spring. Down in places like Texas, Arizona, Florida, or California, you could easily play year-round, 100+ games a year.

Is it all worth it? It shouldn't have nearly that large of a barrier for entry for anyone, but so many people see dollar signs in it, everybody gets their cut, and parents are left footing the bill. You can't go into it thinking you'll get it back in scholarships, though, for college, that's maybe 1% of everyone that plays. Everyone else ends up spending a cool $25k over 10 years just to help your kid succeed and enjoy sports.

What's the fix for it? I don't know, really, it'd have to be scorched earth and rebuilt from the ground up. Public programs for training and team building, community organization for games and tournaments, shared incentives for equipment and gear, objective evaluation and team placement, separate education from sports, more similar to a European sports academy than an American pay-to-play club (though the Euro academies have their own wild problems with how much they take advantage of players' effort and labor time).

I still don't have kids old enough to see the lasting efforts of rec league, but it's got to be quite a bit longer than U8 that kids can develop in rec leagues, even once their carved out from travel. Even with pretty clueless volunteer coaches like me in soccer I saw U7 kids make big progress from fall to spring.  They technically did supplement my coaching with a hour of a paid trainer for about 16 sessions accross fall and spring, but it was a single coach running a session for 20-30 kids at once and half the time was like "were playing sharks and minnows". Now I actually think that's great because it was a fun play based way of learning. But it's not rocket science at young ages. For really young kids, they just need to get out and play. My goal for my son is to just try and push him getting out with friends and messing around more in the neighborhood with pickup stuff. They'll develop skills just fine. The potential payoff of more formal developmemt just isn't worth it so I'll be in no rush to do travel team sports.

 

The only semi travel thing we may end up doing any time soon is a swim team. He's been in swim lessons since a baby, initially for safety/water acclimation reasons, but he's taken to it and likes it, recently graduating out of all the swim school levels. So we'll try out for the swim team in a few weeks, but the competetions are optional so it's basically just weekly-ish swim training where he can continue to develop his stroke, skip when he needs to, and if he still likes it by age 11 or so can decide to specialize more and compete and stuff. Leaves plenty of time to try lots of rec league sports and develop at them at that age cohort.

Edited yesterday at 12:26 AM by WrigleyField 22

[WrigleyField 22]

1 hour ago, entbird79 said:

Now a lot of the travel teams are just average or even sub-average level players, so they make tiers in the tournaments, so they can make sure they make money off everyone. The level of play often isn't any better than rec league. Rec league gets further watered down, and parents with the means move their kids to travel because they "have to."

Coaching 8-year-olds in baseball isn't rocket science. Could parents take the time that they spend running to private lessons and use it to take their kids and some of their friends to the diamond? A bucket of baseballs and some other baseball gear can be bought from savings from lessons. I'm not saying private lessons are bad, but could a parent go on YouTube and basically parrot the same thing? I've taught many parents things to work on with their kids, and for those who take the time to spend with them, the results often come quickly.

I don't know what the solution is, and I feel fortunate that in my area we still have somewhat of a rec league to go along with travel. I've coached all of my kids (rec and travel) with my last one being 8 as well, and I run into parents all the time who hate the idea, and the practice, of travel ball, but feel pressured from coaches to participate. I know many either don't have the means or shouldn't be spending it on travel, but they do it anyway.

Agreed it's not rocket science for young kids.  Honestly the biggest thing I've found is just learning when not to coach anything. Especially during games. Parents and coaches need to all just shut up and let them play. Literally it's play.

 

I don't know when that cutoff happens that more serious coaching is actually beneficial, but I'm certain we've started it way too soon.

Edited yesterday at 12:37 AM by WrigleyField 22

[bukie]

1 hour ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

I still don't have kids old enough to see the lasting efforts of rec league, but it's got to be quite a bit longer than U8 that kids can develop in rec leagues, even once their carved out from travel. Even with pretty clueless volunteer coaches like me in soccer I saw U7 kids make big progress from fall to spring.  They technically did supplement my coaching with a hour of a paid trainer for about 16 sessions accross fall and spring, but it was a single coach running a session for 20-30 kids at once and half the time was like "were playing sharks and minnows". Now I actually think that's great because it was a fun play based way of learning. But it's not rocket science at young ages. For really young kids, they just need to get out and play. My goal for my son is to just try and push him getting out with friends and messing around more in the neighborhood with pickup stuff. They'll develop skills just fine. The potential payoff of more formal developmemt just isn't worth it so I'll be in no rush to do travel team sports.

 

The only semi travel thing we may end up doing any time soon is a swim team. He's been in swim lessons since a baby, initially for safety/water acclimation reasons, but he's taken to it and likes it, recently graduating out of all the swim school levels. So we'll try out for the swim team in a few weeks, but the competetions are optional so it's basically just weekly-ish swim training where he can continue to develop his stroke, skip when he needs to, and if he still likes it by age 11 or so can decide to specialize more and compete and stuff. Leaves plenty of time to try lots of rec league sports and develop at them at that age cohort.

Even 10 years ago, rec baseball was more organized and had more participation, but most of even the base level kids who aren't really travel but just enjoy baseball get cannibalized by various travel programs. I've coached both rec and travel for 13 years now, and there is surprisingly little difference in terms of parent behavior at games and towards coaches and umpires, so in some senses going travel at least gets you parents that are invested somewhat, so they have something to lose if they get penalized.

Soccer was an entirely different beast. For my older, I had to get a class C license to coach his rec league team (so, like, this was a serious rec league). I set the team's goal every season to try to get every player a goal, or at least a shot on goal. Parents were largely on board, up until the last season I coached, where one family demanded their child start and never play defense because they were a big contributor to the program, even though every time I tried to put the child in to play they didn't want to even go on the field. I had another coach threaten to fight during a game because their kid lost a 50-50 ball (that wasn't even called as a foul). That's when I decided I was done at that league.

For the youngest, I joined another nearby rec league and coached because they were short. This was much less organized, and in the two years I coached there, I had kids not show up for any of the practices and half the games, kids sit down on the field while in the game and do nothing, and kids not come off the field when I subbed them off, and then not come back to the bench at all (they'd just go sit on the other end of the field by their parents). The kids that were interested in playing and could actually do things were bored out of their minds because they could just score at will whenever they liked. Nobody was learning anything, so the league was pointless.

So, in my experience, rec is no less stressful than travel, except families aren't as invested so they can no-show at will and treat everyone badly with fewer consequences. I think most of what's needed to fix this is on parents and families, because there needs to be some kind of investment in the kids enjoyment and participation, but not to the level that you ruin the experience for everyone involved.

[bukie]

Great article on the youth soccer landscape in the US and how it compares to Europe:

 

 

[mul21]

This is pretty spot on.

https://danpatrick.com/2026/07/09/kevin-frazier-sounds-off-on-another-usmnt-letdown/

[WrigleyField 22]

55 minutes ago, bukie said:

Great article on the youth soccer landscape in the US and how it compares to Europe:

 

 

Very good summary. It's absolutely crazy to have tournaments where parents need to travel and pay for overnight lodging at 11 or 12 years old. And the joke is often that you're playing a team from 3 towns over.

 

But parents are also doing it to ourselves. At some point we're all complicit and the reasons we give are admittedly weak.  Often times these clubs are incredibly socially driven (even after you get past the competetion layer).

[jersey cubs fan]

It’s crazy to me that this is a thing in soccer, a sport that can be played anywhere at any time for absolutely zero money. 
 

my kids play ice hockey and this is the norm, but hockey is inherently an expensive sport even if you live in an area where ponds and lakes routinely freeze for extended periods of time. Bare bones equipment alone (used skates/helmet/stick) is gonna be $100 and realistically you need to spends 100s just to get started. Skating well is also such a unique skill that you can only acquire while doing it on ice for years and years. And ice rinks are limited. 
 

the fact that people spend more on some travel soccer teams than hockey is completely insane. 

[bukie]

25 minutes ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

Very good summary. It's absolutely crazy to have tournaments where parents need to travel and pay for overnight lodging at 11 or 12 years old. And the joke is often that you're playing a team from 3 towns over.

 

But parents are also doing it to ourselves. At some point we're all complicit and the reasons we give are admittedly weak.  Often times these clubs are incredibly socially driven (even after you get past the competetion layer).

In my experiences, I'd say the problems are about 50% the parents, and 50% the layers of capitalism set up to take money from people for what should be rather affordable services. It shouldn't be that hard to set up soccer games for kids with proper training and skill development. But parents get ultra competitive, wanting every advantage they can afford for their kids, whether it be paying extra for every little amenity, or threatening every authority figure within earshot so nobody will dare confront or challenge their child in any way.

But the many layers of horsefeathers on top of what should be basic is insanity. What should be doable with just a ball, a set of cleats, a set of shinguards, and some basic clothes for maybe $50 total turns into insanity when you have to pay a club to join a team, pay coaches to train, pay a middle man for rights to play on a field they lease out, pay a middle man for an officiating finder, pay a software vendor for the official scorekeeping app, pay a tournament business for the right to play in their tournament, pay the park itself for the right to watch your kid, pay the parking lot operator for the right to park at the field, pay to travel 1000 miles to get to the field, pay the official tournament hotel for the right to stay near the field to play, and pay the catering company for refreshments when you can't bring in your own drinks or food.

[WrigleyField 22]

20 minutes ago, bukie said:

In my experiences, I'd say the problems are about 50% the parents, and 50% the layers of capitalism set up to take money from people for what should be rather affordable services. It shouldn't be that hard to set up soccer games for kids with proper training and skill development. But parents get ultra competitive, wanting every advantage they can afford for their kids, whether it be paying extra for every little amenity, or threatening every authority figure within earshot so nobody will dare confront or challenge their child in any way.

But the many layers of horsefeathers on top of what should be basic is insanity. What should be doable with just a ball, a set of cleats, a set of shinguards, and some basic clothes for maybe $50 total turns into insanity when you have to pay a club to join a team, pay coaches to train, pay a middle man for rights to play on a field they lease out, pay a middle man for an officiating finder, pay a software vendor for the official scorekeeping app, pay a tournament business for the right to play in their tournament, pay the park itself for the right to watch your kid, pay the parking lot operator for the right to park at the field, pay to travel 1000 miles to get to the field, pay the official tournament hotel for the right to stay near the field to play, and pay the catering company for refreshments when you can't bring in your own drinks or food.

I think for up to u-10 you shouldn't even need that great of coaching.  I'd have gladly taken a few clinics to gather better skills and be prepared and it would probably fully suitable for what you actually need up to that point.  But my local AYSO is constantly desperate for parent volunteers as is where the only real requirement is showing up twice a week and passing a background check.  So priveleged area and all, but parents by me will just pay 3k to offload the entirety of that to someone who will also conveniently stroke their egos. I'm pretty interested to see how U8 goes with my son this year, but I'm still absolutely resistant to going travel route. So I've already started to research some nearby towns that aren't as wealthy to see if there's still places doing decent rec leagues just because the parents can't as easily drop the rec league in favor of expensive club teams.  But it's been difficult to find much online - probably need to get out and talk to people.

[Thurman Merman]

I've coached my daughters rec league the last three years (ages 9-11). And yes, while the league has been hollowed out by people leaving for travel (we can really only field 5 teams), there's definitely still some talent there. And I find the reduced pressure really helps to not only work on general concepts to make them better players, but also to let them just have fun. 

One of the nicest things in our league is that since its non-competitive, it basically allows you to pick your own teams. While this could back fire with significant talent disparities that make games essentially pointless, we got lucky and most teams are pretty evenly matched. But the best part of this is that we've basically had the same team for three years in a row. This allows them to develop a chemistry with each other, and allows us to build on concepts year over year. 

Which is important, because to me, after doing this for the last several years, the biggest impediment to these kids getting better is time. We get one hour long practice a week, and one game, and seasons are basically 8 weeks in the summer, and 8 weeks in the fall. It's just not enough time to teach these kids all we want.  If we even had one extra hour long practice a week, or hell, even making that one practice 1.5 hours, it would make a big difference.  Yeah, travel teams probably have more talent, but they are better because they play a lot more. 

[WrigleyField 22]

1 hour ago, Thurman Merman said:

I've coached my daughters rec league the last three years (ages 9-11). And yes, while the league has been hollowed out by people leaving for travel (we can really only field 5 teams), there's definitely still some talent there. And I find the reduced pressure really helps to not only work on general concepts to make them better players, but also to let them just have fun. 

One of the nicest things in our league is that since its non-competitive, it basically allows you to pick your own teams. While this could back fire with significant talent disparities that make games essentially pointless, we got lucky and most teams are pretty evenly matched. But the best part of this is that we've basically had the same team for three years in a row. This allows them to develop a chemistry with each other, and allows us to build on concepts year over year. 

Which is important, because to me, after doing this for the last several years, the biggest impediment to these kids getting better is time. We get one hour long practice a week, and one game, and seasons are basically 8 weeks in the summer, and 8 weeks in the fall. It's just not enough time to teach these kids all we want.  If we even had one extra hour long practice a week, or hell, even making that one practice 1.5 hours, it would make a big difference.  Yeah, travel teams probably have more talent, but they are better because they play a lot more. 

Honestly I think that extra hour or two just needs to be pickup ball and stuff on their own and not structured. I'm obviously not talking about developing future premier leaguers, but just healthy age appropriate development. By age 12, I think that conversation changes slowly, but not before then.

 

That time description sounds like what my league is. So hopefully it stays meaningfully fun and competetive. It just doesn't seem realistic to me that 8 or 9 year olds are sorting themselves into primary sports already that require extensive formal development.

[Thurman Merman]

Part of the reason that even an extra half hour for practice would be helpful is that we try to end each practice with some sort of scrimmage or game to kind of just let them play/utilize the skills. Fitting a warm up plus skills practice plus strategy plus scrimmage into one hour is basically impossible. 

And I would love if the kids developed skills by just playing on their own with their friends but most of the time they have other things they would rather be doing (hanging with friends, video games, pool, etc).  I've actually been surprised that my son and some of the neighbor kids have been regularly going to the park and playing pick up baseball.  To them it's just fun, but they are going to be better players because of it. 

[WrigleyField 22]

17 minutes ago, Thurman Merman said:

Part of the reason that even an extra half hour for practice would be helpful is that we try to end each practice with some sort of scrimmage or game to kind of just let them play/utilize the skills. Fitting a warm up plus skills practice plus strategy plus scrimmage into one hour is basically impossible. 

And I would love if the kids developed skills by just playing on their own with their friends but most of the time they have other things they would rather be doing (hanging with friends, video games, pool, etc).  I've actually been surprised that my son and some of the neighbor kids have been regularly going to the park and playing pick up baseball.  To them it's just fun, but they are going to be better players because of it. 

I think a lot of kids want to do stuff like that still, even though they surely also want screen time and stuff. But kids also lack the freedom to do a lot of that stuff too compare to 30 years ago. Whether right or wrong, kids are a lot more restricted to just go off on their own like that and play ball

[soccer10k]

Man that's too bad for Belgium, probably going out because your starting goalie gets hurt and the backup makes an error.