Several years ago, I started a travel soccer club after our triplet sons, who had been on an undefeated U 12 (under 12) travel soccer team in the Massachusetts town where we live, were not offered the chance to continue playing travel soccer that fall when they moved up to U-14.
My immediate goal was to give them, and about sixty other kids who were also cut from the existing program, a chance to keep playing travel soccer.
My long-term goal was to bring about changes in the existing club so that all of the kids playing for our three teams would be offered spots on the existing club's teams the following spring season, at which point we would discontinue operation of a separate club.
When the club was formed, the president of the existing club sent a letter to all "soccer families" in town explaining the club's position about my renegade club.
As things turned out, every player on the three teams (all of which had successful seasons and more than held their own, even against teams from the established club), was offered a spot in the existing club's program that spring, so we were pleased to discontinue operations. Many of our players, branded by the existing club as not being good enough to play travel soccer, ending up playing on high school varsity teams!
The following is the letter I sent to him after receiving his letter:
President
No-Name Soccer Club
Anytown, USA
Dear President ____________:
Thank you for sending a copy of your letter to "soccer families". This letter is in response to a number of statements made in that letter and to make some constructive suggestions, as the closing paragraph of your letter requests.
Like you, I have also been fielding a large number of telephone calls in recent weeks from parents. The vast majority share my disenchantment with the manner in which the No-Name Soccer Club runs its travel soccer program. By sharing the concerns of these families with you and your Board of Directors, we hope to initiate a constructive dialogue that will result in changes being made in travel soccer.
The statement in your letter that we ( a number of parents later joined me) started our own soccer club because we were unhappy with the speed of "growth" of your travel soccer program in the Fall is inaccurate. The primary reason that we formed a new soccer program was to allow our sons, and those of sixty plus other families with boys who played Spring travel soccer, to continue to develop their soccer skills on a travel soccer team during the fall season. As we told you on a number of occasions, we believed that their development as soccer players would have been retarded had they been forced to return to playing recreational soccer on a mixed sex team, with untrained, unlicensed coaches and uncertified referees. Indeed, one member of your Board admitted to us that once a child had played travel soccer, he or she should not be forced to return to rec soccer. Yet nowhere in your letter do you acknowledge the desires of those parents whose children played travel soccer in the Spring to continue to play travel soccer in the Fall. Our philosophy is two-fold: soccer should be fun, and it should be developmental. Playing at a level that is below our sons' ability would neither be fun nor developmental.
Indeed, if, as the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association ("MYSA") suggests, Fall travel soccer is "developmental" and Spring travel soccer is "competitive," the Fall travel soccer program should be at least as large as the Spring program. That just the opposite is true suggests that the player development is not the real reason why the No-Name Soccer Club has chosen to artificially limit the size of its Fall program. Your statement that you have doubled the size of the travel soccer program, is, as we pointed out to you at the August lst meeting of the Middlesex Youth Soccer League, totally misleading and misses the point.
The fact is that the Fall program is considerably smaller than the program was in the Spring. By shrinking the program, the No-Name Soccer Club eliminated the opportunity to continue playing travel soccer for scores of children who played in the Spring. That your letter does not even address the concerns of those parents whose children were shut out, or in the case of 65 children playing on our teams, almost shut out of the Fall travel soccer program, strongly suggests a complete lack of responsiveness to their legitimate concerns. Thus, it was not our unhappiness with the "growth" of the No-Name travel soccer club that prompted us to form three new boys' travel soccer teams. It was our unhappiness with the reduction in the size of the travel soccer program from the Spring to the Fall which prompted our action.
None of the reasons which you have advanced thus far for shrinking the travel soccer program and not at least maintaining it at the size of the Spring program withstand even minimal scrutiny. When you told us that there were not enough fields, we offered to sit down with you and show you how additional fields could be striped so as to accommodate more teams. (We note in your letter that you do not rely on the lack of fields as a reason for a smaller Fall program).
Next, you told us that the reason that the Fall program was smaller was because of a shortage of licensed coaches. When [Concerned Mother] told you she was licensed and could coach, you said you would get back to her. (You never did). While you mention in your letter that one of your biggest challenges is "keeping our pool of coaches up with the growing pool of players", you don't rely on a shortage of coaches as a reason for a smaller Fall program either. That there were enough qualified coaches in the Spring, when there were far more teams, and that we had no problem in recruiting several highly qualified coaches for our three teams (one of whom has a "C" license) is proof positive that there is no coaching shortage.
The next excuse you proffered was that there weren't enough kids to fill more teams. This is the most far-fetched excuse of all. For you to even suggest that there were not enough kids to fill more teams when the number of boys' teams, for instance, was reduced from 16 in the Spring to 10 in the Fall, was disingenuous. Again, the fact that, without access to your data base and relying only on word of mouth, telephone calls and two newspaper notices, we were able to put together three teams in the space of a week and had to place players on a waitlist demolishes the idea that there was no demand for more teams.
The final reason that you advanced, both at the August 1 meeting of the Middlesex League and in your letter was that you didn't want to destroy the rec program by growing the travel soccer program too rapidly. Your letter speaks of phasing in the travel program in the Fall in order to determine the "appropriate' equilibrium between travel and rec. This statement, unfortunately, suggests that you believe it is up to the No-Name Soccer Club to determine the relative sizes of the two programs. We submit that the sizes of the two programs should be determined not by you and a small group of self-appointed experts, but by the parents whose children are the "consumers' of those two programs. If there is consumer demand for a larger travel soccer program, it seems to us that the No-Name Soccer Club should do everything within its power to meet that demand. To suggest otherwise is to leave your club open to charges that the desire to preserve the rec program, and the other so-called reasons advanced for cutting the size of the Fall program, are really just a smokescreen, and that your organization's real goal is to make travel soccer something it should not be: an exclusive, by invitation only, club for only those deemed by your organization to be "talented" enough to "represent" our Town1.
In any event, the fear that travel soccer will lead to the demise of rec soccer has no basis in fact. You yourself conceded at the August 1 meeting that the rec program was not threatened by the large size of the Spring travel soccer program. There is no reason to believe that a program of equal size in the Fall would have any deleterious effect on the rec soccer program. Chances are that there will always be some children who do not want to play travel soccer for who the rec program will be ideal. In any event, the rec program will continue to have a role in introducing younger children to the game and providing older children not interested in travel soccer an opportunity to continue playing for the fun of it.
As we have told you on a number of occasions, our goal is not to run a competing travel club, but to give all of the children who want to play travel soccer the chance to do so. We want nothing more than to have our concerns addressed by the No-Name Soccer Club. If we can work together, then we will disband our club.
The following are some of the changes we would like to see:
Establish A Parents Advisory Council ("PAC").
We contemplate a group consisting of parents with children currently
playing travel soccer who would provide the Board of Directors with
feedback (both negative and positive) from other parents. Many other
town clubs have successfully set up PACs; their value is in providing
parents a way to voice concerns without going to the Board of
Directors. They also provide the Board with important input to insure
that its decisions are reflective of, and responsive to, a broad
cross-section of the soccer community. I have attached an article from
the MYSA newsletter about the success that a club in Weymouth has had
with a PAC.
Publish the dates and times of Board meetings and the names and phone numbers of Board members.
The club should be run in the open; anyone who wants to attend a Board
meeting should be able to do so (even if only to observe). Also, you
should invite all of your coaches to at least one meeting a year. The
high school and middle school soccer coaches should also be invited to
your meetings and, perhaps, added to your Board (as Youth Baseball
does). You should know that we have heard from a number of No-Name
Soccer Club coaches that they are unhappy with the secretive and
arbitrary manner in which the No-Name Soccer Club is run.
Make available in a public place the Program Mission Statement [1] and by-laws.
Encourage "Term Limits" for the board of Directors.
Directors, administrators and coaches who become entrenched in a
program for years on end tend to put the "blinders" on and may become
too comfortable with the status quo. New "eyes and ears" keep a program
fresh and strong.
Eliminate "tryouts" and "cutting."
We suggest that you implement the model followed by another
Massachusetts town of having evaluations, not tryouts, and not cutting
kids, even at the high school level (some of their best players only
blossomed as seniors). Kids should not be "cut." It is well established
that kids develop at different rates and that cutting kids often has
adverse, and totally unnecessary, psychological effects. We also
suggest that, to ensure fairness, an unbiased group of evaluators be
employed to conduct the evaluations (i.e. parents should not evaluate
their own children). An effort should be made to construct the
evaluations so that they are not as heavily weighted to identifying
forwards (there are, after all, different skill sets for midfielders,
defenders and goalies).
Give family discounts.
For some families with several children playing soccer, $75 per child
represents a financial burden. Adopt the policy used by Youth Baseball
of setting a per-family cap of, say, $150. Scholarships should also be
made available.
Eliminate the requirement that a child play soccer in the Spring to be eligible to play travel soccer in the Fall and visa versa.
Some children are denied the opportunity to play travel in the Fall
simply because they choose to concentrate on another sport (baseball,
lacrosse) in the Spring. If Fall soccer is developmental, why prevent
them from playing? We believe it is unfair to say to a child that he or
she can't play travel soccer in the Fall unless that child plays in the
Spring. Again, families with a tight budget and a couple of kids may
not be able to afford to pay for them to play two sports in the Spring.
Forcing kids to play soccer year round can also result in burnout and
exposes them to overuse injuries [2].
Your present policy basically requires that kids play soccer
year-round. Believe it or not, soccer is not the only sport around, and
a desire of a child to play a number of different sports does not mean
that he or she is any less skilled a soccer player.
Work to foster a stronger bond between the club and the community.
In our opinion, more families would have a positive attitude towards
the club, and be more willing to donate money and time, if they thought
that you were responsive to their concerns and represented the entire
community, not some small, elite, secretive group. Among the steps we
suggest you take are holding an Opening Day in the Fall and Spring
(like Youth Baseball), with clinics, exhibitions, team photos etc..
Holding Opening Days can't but help to improve town spirit and get
everyone feeling like they are involved.
Run coaches clinics in the Fall and Spring. Obviously, the certification program run by MYSA is important, but it should not end there.
In closing, please know that, as we have said before, we will do anything to advance soccer in the town for all children. We hope that we can work out our differences so that our sons can rejoin the No-Name Soccer Club for the Spring season. (In the meantime, they are, your letter notwithstanding, most definitely representing our town in the Middlesex Youth Soccer League and enjoying the experience immensely.)
Please let us know when we can sit down to discuss our concerns. If you feel that it would be helpful, a number of members of the Board of Directors of the Middlesex Youth Soccer League have offered to serve as mediators to facilitate our discussions. Since we need to know soon whether it is going to possible to go forward together instead of separately, we would appreciate your prompt response.
I know that many of the views expressed in this letter are shared by others in our town and throughout the nation. If we can talk about our ideas and start a dialogue, I am confident that changes can be made which will be beneficial to all children who want to play. All that it will take is for the No-Name Soccer Club to strive toward inclusion, rather than tolerate a policy of exclusion.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Brooke deLench
1 The statement in your letter that our teams do not "represent" our Town is not only totally presumptuous on your part but confirms our suspicion that you do not deem our players up to your arbitrary "standards" and, for that reason, should be denied the opportunity to play travel soccer. That our BU-10 and BU-12 teams are, after two games, undefeated in the same league in which your teams play debunks this argument.
Links:
[1] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/709
[2] https://mail.momsteam.com/node/796