SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer Does High School soccer impede the development of top players?

High School teams practice 5-6 days a week.
Clubs practice 2 maybe 3 times a week.
How can more touches on the ball impede someones development??

It depends. If you have a coach whose idea of soccer is kick it long out of the back and let a fast guy run on to it, yes...it can impede their progress. Tons of practice doesn't mean jack if your tons of practice are incorrect technique. It could mean you are doing it tons of times the wrong way

That's because their club coach or a coach from the club coaches the High school team. Rare to find a HS coach that isn't a club coach but it is common to find some good club coaches that don't coach HS.

HeTakes, you personally don't know one kid that plays for a higher level club that doesn't also have a quality High School coach? Seriously? I can name a dozen without really thinking about it. And practicing 5 days a week vs 2 or 3 might be better in general, if ALL things were equal.

Except for probably 4 or 5 high schools in this state, I'd say that high school season impedes the top players, but helps the remainder. The area between the two groups is a gray one.

and again i grew up in a place where if you were one of those kids that would play barefooted in the streets with jeans short but knew how to move la minga, you were brough to a club where you had south americans and sometimes european coaches teaching you how to play the proper game, the right equipments were given to you.

high school soccer has a few positive things, the best would be freshmen kids playing with and vs seniors.

the level is the one that is terrible and is sad that nobody think it should be fixed so kids can have a better competition, high school going elite should not even be an argument, it should be reality in the next few years.

about this season, you think nw and irmo are going to go back to the championship with perfect records or they gone lose 1 or 2 games? haha

i can see irmo losing a game when a team score a lucky goal out of a long ball, then puttin 11 men on defense the whole game.

thats what high school soccer is all about, top programs have like 4 real games out of 16? meh..

wish some of you would realize how much better and fun would be to have the real deal programs going at each other... different level of soccer.

omg - on the girl's side its all a step back playing hs. coaching, speed of play, fitness, lack of talent/competition. many teams have players that don’t even play club soccer. but it is fun.

If you mean that instead of a spring school season there was just a spring club season (or fall in NC or elsewhere). Then I think the answer is obviously a yes.

However if you want to grow the sport you need to get people involved and watching the games and build a better understanding of the sport in the public. High school programs are building a fan base for a better future for the sport, hell when I was a kid (will leave the decade out) many high schools (even the big ones) did not even have soccer as a sport now most do.

I think the school programs with solid club support are still going to improve players (unless we move to the aforementioned club season twice a year). If anything I would like to see the rules set up to allow/encourage club play by schools based teams, not official school team of course but one whose coach and players could be mostly from a school if they wanted to. After all football has an officially approved spring/summer training season, really all year for top programs, yet we hamstring are players by making a hard line separation between club and school.

Yes I know there are $$$$ and other problems with this approach but I think that given a goal to achieve it some of the bright people here and around the state could come up with answers to the problems.
In the end the benefit would be to the players and the sport and of course the answer to the question would then be "Of Course Not!"