SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Is ODP worth it???

Can anyone name a quality 92 girl player who decided not to do ODP. Their might be one or two, but this notion that lots of elite SC players skip ODP is just not true. All one has to do is attend a coaches choice game to see the quality of players.

Who were the 10 pool players?

sweet feet,

I don't know if any players made a conscious decision to "not do ODP", but I do know there are some very good players who are not in Alabama this week.

I don't know what year Stephanie Sosa (rising junior from Hilton Head) was born, but if it was in 1992, she's in my Top 18. Heck, she's in my starting line up.

As for the 91 SC Girls, I heard that not all of their ODP players made the trip to region camp?

I'll post the complete list when I get it. Maybe later today.

Some teams practice more than others..They get more out of it. You have to look at it from age group to age group to say whether it is worth it or not..My child said there was to much idle time at camp last year..One game a day and a short practice session left alot of idle time. Am i going to say it's not worth it..No but for some it's not all that it's cracked up to be..Are all the best players there? I would say a majority are but there are some who choose not to play..It comes down to player to player.They have to choose whether it's worthwhile are not

It does seem like the experience can vary from age to age.
I guess my question is...organizationally how this can happen and why would it be allowed to continue?

Does anyone ever sit down and do best practices, lessons learned, benchmark other states, etc?

This is a process....if you want a certain outcome then you need to do what is necessary to produce the outcome. Training and playing together as a unit helps to build that and the lack of it......hurts the individual player's ability to play to the best of his/her ability.

My sons comparable age group in NC played 2 subregionals, not one. They practiced at least once a month from December on. They paid $10 per player per session to help cover training costs.

NC in this age group put about 7 kids in pool play last night and we had 1. Coincidence?

One difficulty that is faced by SC...and not by NC and several other states (at least on the boys side)...is the timing of the high school season, which is often overlooked. It is extrememly difficult to organize multiple training sessions and scrimmages during the spring due to high school season conflicts and club conflicts, especially for the older, varsity aged athletes. Often, kids cannot make training sessions for various reasons, which makes it hard for any coach to run a quality training session. Also, I know for a fact that some high school coaches FORBID their players from attending ODP training...out of fear of injuries...which, again, keep kids from attending training sessions during the spring. Until ALL of the club and high school coaches buy into, support and encourage their players to participate in ODP, SC will continue to struggle to consistently compete with the "best" states. That being said...don't forget that we had 2 teams participate in the Region Championship Finals this January in Texas, and had several players held over for the Region Pool last summer, and also selected for the Region Team Showcase at Disney...so we have shown that we can compete with the best!!!

we need to have one of those round table discussion on this subject and pass on to the powers that be our ideas.everyone has good points and thoughts no matter how different or alike they are to others. the longer the thread gets the more we go over the same things and other ideas get lost in the shuffle.i think we all see there should be changes.

This year the 92 Boys played sub-regionals and started weekly Sunday practices after tryouts in May. They are 2-0 so far at region camp.

My daughter is one of the 2 GK's on the 91 team, and they only had 12 players at the beginning of camp. I think that another player arrived a day later due to a school commitment. They were so short the first game on Mon. that they had GK's playing field. I know that several of the team did not come to camp this year for various reasons. It may have something to do with several of the girls already verbally committing to colleges, I am not sure, although several that are in attendance are also already verbally committed. Contrasted to last year when they went undefeated and unscored on and went to Houston in Jan. for the ODP Southern Regionals, they lost this year to No. TX and Oklahoma. With the heat and no subs, and at least one injury (my GK daughter - hamstring) they did the best they could.
Also, Hurst, in response to your query about Stephanie Sosa, I believe she is a 91. She was on my daughters Bridge FA 89 Gold team last Fall. She and my daughter and 3 others were playing up an age grp.