My son played club soccer and one weekend in December we went to a tournament in Memphis and played three teams from Ohio. My “what are we doing???” moment.
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I coached rec league for eight years and kept most of the same kids together through eighth grade. My co-coach and I told parents that if they wanted a more competitive experience or even thought their kid would be good enough to play varsity at [REDACTED] (perennial Maryland power), they should skip us and find some other arrangement because we were going to focus on teamwork, skills development, and sportsmanship without worrying too much about wins and losses. That helped us self-select parents who understood that they live in [REDACTED] despite their athletic ability rather than because of it and that genetics generally work.
Net result: We had a great experience with some fantastic, wonderfully bright kids, most of whom went on to run HS cross country together and many of whom matriculated at various US News top 20 schools. I still see some of them when they are home to visit their parents. Oh, and they still won about two-thirds of their games while enjoying themselves.
What I tend to remind younger parents is that travel sports can be great if your kids are really passionate about it. But it shouldn’t feel like work, and it will almost never pay off as an “investment” in a future scholarship or college admissions process. That tends to work out better if you save the travel sports fees and reallocate them to some combination of 529 plan and other enrichment experiences (academic summer camps, international travel, etc.).
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Here in Cincy, just prior to Covid a group of knowledgeable and experienced soccer coaches were tired of the same old club shtick and created a new club… one that wouldn’t travel (they even talk about how great it is to drive to Tennessee to play 2 teams from Cincinnati) and also would keep the club smallish (max 3 teams per age level). Well whadda you know, they became super popular and have been dominating the area recently.
I started my daughter in club (where I knew the coaching directors) at U7 and it was a bad experience with the other girls. So for U8 she played local rec and I coached (I spent 10 years coaching club and girls high school). We kept the same core group of girls together the next 5 years and it was wonderful. Terrific kids and parents, and some very good athletes. We won every end of season tournament except the 1st where we lost in PKs. Graduated several girls to club teams, including one at U12 to the aforementioned club and the girl told us her new club teammates couldn’t believe she came from rec due to her skill set and the drills she already knew. I’d been coaching them with club-like drills and games as much as possible. Believe it or not, we didn’t have one fight or argument among the team in those 5 years.
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My youngest is still in travel soccer, but he is in a great program and we keep travel mostly in state, or one state away and it is select tournaments, not this ridiculous every weekend thing.
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Per Field of 68, only 10 of their top 100 are left. And here is where all the others have gone as well:
Appreciate people sharing their experiences and love hearing success stories at the rec level. I have younger kids, but starting to reach the ages where we have to start navigating the youth sports industrial complex.
In my town, this is how the landscape breaks down:
Rec - play against teams within your own town. This is what everyone does until 2nd/3rd grade. At that point, most kids move up to Travel and the rec leagues are decimated and left with very few kids, not much talent and spotty coaching because the parents are either too busy to coach or never played the sport. Cost is about $75 and $150 for little league baseball (grades 3-6). Our town runs a really cool little league baseball program and most kids play through 6th grade.
Travel - The term “travel” is a bit of a misnomer to me because these are just town teams where you play against neighboring towns. I played at this level as a kid, but we never used the term “travel.” You have to tryout and there is generally an A and a B team. A couple kids get cut depending on numbers, but not many. Most games are within 20 minutes of home with an occasional tournament that is 45-60 minutes away. Cost is $300 for hoops, $350 for soccer and $400+ for baseball.
Club/AAU - “Elite” sports where you often travel out of town for tournaments. The best kids on the travel teams sometimes matriculate up to this level. I don’t know what this costs exactly, but imagine it’s $1000+. I have no interest in my kids ever being apart of this level.
When I played rec soccer by the time we got to middle and high school there were only 1-2 teams in each rec league so they formed pretty much a mini travel league with other rec league teams.
My relative in high school likes to play soccer, is on the JV team and wants to make it to varsity, so she is joining a winter indoor league with similar high school kids. She has a 0.001% chance of playing competitively after she graduates in 2.5 years, just wants to play and be on a team.
I’m not a great athlete, I played public rec league baseball my entire childhood and even in middle school I knew I wasn’t meant for travel ball. Also I was scarred from watching my brother try competitive baseball for a season on a team with a delusional coach that should’ve been nowhere near that level and got killed almost every game.
This was one of the players Miami may have been considering:
Some additional thoughts on the “Five in Five” model:
"The current best hope? A dramatic refresh of current eligibility rules. If NCAA President Charlie Baker gets his way, “five to play four unless you get a waiver” would become a flat “five in five” eligibility system. That means athletes would get five years to play five seasons. No redshirts, (almost) no waivers.
Baker threw his full-throated support behind a move to the so-called “five-in-five” standard for student-athlete eligibility to eliminate the current restriction in Division I of playing four seasons within a five-year span that features numerous waivers and redshirts. Under the concept, athletes both domestically and internationally would fall under an age-based window of five years to compete beginning upon high-school graduation or when they turn 19 years old.
“The goal here was to come up with something that was a lot simpler and sort of familiar,” Baker says. “If you think about it, we all grow up playing sports and our kids grow up playing sports and it’s U-10, U-12, U-15, U-18, U-20, U-22 leagues, right? The idea of an age-based dynamic or parameter is pretty familiar. That’s the way most of amateur sports is organized in who gets to participate.”
On Thursday, the National Association of Basketball Coaches [released the following statement] about the potential shift to a “five in five” model:
The NABC shares the NCAA’s urgency to stabilize college sports eligibility, and coaches have expressed general support for an age-based model during initial discussions with NCAA leaders. However, this rapid shift requires diligent implementation — especially given the active recruiting and transfer cycles. Coach perspective is vital to any legislative reform — on matters of eligibility that immediately impact roster management, the NABC views collaboration and communication with coaches as non-negotiable. As the NCAA expedites this review, the NABC urges that all stakeholders be brought to the table — coaches included — to identify potential unintended consequences and to ensure these generational changes are structured correctly."
Sooooo, with no more redshirts, freshmen who lose a year buried on the bench may not like it too much. How many coaches will choose harmony over numbers and only have 12 or so scholarship kids every year?
Most is my guess. Or a lot of scholarships with $0 NIL payment from the school
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A lot of schools also let the coaches keep the money from unused scholarships to use as they see fit.
A lot of coaches keep the 13th scholarship open so they have one if an opportunity comes up. For example, if Suder gets a fifth year of eligibility, Steele will at least want the option to see if he’d rather come back to Oxford.
=>See the academy. IYKYK.
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of course this exists in Florida.. poor job by Stetson’s social team to not include any reference
Earnest goes to Stetson.
Jim Varney would approve.
Prestige Worldwide provides boats and hoes to all athletes
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What are your thoughts if his NIL was around $500k per year?