Quote:
Originally Posted by Cocktooth
Here is the thing, you are making it sound like your whole feeder program is only one travel team. That is great for top tear 10 year olds, but that's also leaving a ton of kids out. It's crazy how much kids mature, so alienating them away from the sport at that young of age is making the talent pool slim. The same thing is happening to the basketball talent over there. Their coach walked into talent, but spent no time with the program. He is now paying the price, and will be getting his walking papers in 3 years or less. That community continues to grow. Start up soccer leagues like they have here. One in the spring, one in the fall. 5-12 year old age groups. Run games twice a week.
Edit: When I was in Warsaw, we played games on Saturday's. It was a 7 week season and then a playoff. It's easy money, and keeps kids interest in the sport, even if they don't make their travel team. If you put enough time in the community, you sir, could have a field named after you! Beebs Memorial Field
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Well there are different, less competitive rec leagues that also feed into the system, one is across the street from me.
The Magic is pretty well represented at most age groups and at different levels of competition. Also if a kid is particularly talented they are encouraged to play at the highest level available, Indiana Invaders works with some of our high schoolers; I played for South Bend Jr Irish once I started to come into my own as a goalkeeper. Basically I knew at least a couple of players on every team I played in high school, because I had worked with them either on a Magic team, an indoor team, or one of a few Jr Irish teams. One or two kids usually end up in the state Olympic Development Program. One of the kids I played with went on to play in a second tier pro league.
I do really agree with you though, that up until about 14-15, getting raw numbers playing and interested is key. There is a summer league system at Goshen College that mixes high schoolers and adults, which has always worked well since Northridge and GC have pretty close ties. There is an informal system of forming indoor teams during the off season, and in the last few years reaching out into the futsal games in elkhart, which are almost 100% mexican.
Eventually though, the main on the field product for the program, is going to be the 20 or so kids who play varsity at the high school. So yes you want as many people involved as you can, but you also want to start forming that group a few years out, getting them familiar with the varsity system, starting to move kids into a position (I sort of dislike this part of it, as really I think we should be thinking more of universal players, because of their age, because having only 1 position limits their options, and because modern tactics are demanding more hybrid players rather than cogs in a machine).