SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Pounding Theses Into the Red Door

But a quarter can still get you 2 thin chocolate mints or two medium gumballs at the checkout of a 7-11.

Striker...good point.I see this all to often with higher level coaches..Their competitiveness and need to win out weighs the satisfaction of teaching kids soccer no matter what level they play.I feel like alot of kids are missing out at being better players than they are...boys and girls.It has been my observation that WE are just trying to stack teams to win state and because of this..there is less parity among clubs

Consider this:
Is it better for a boys team to always have a male coach? Is it better that a girls team have a male or female coach? I agree with futbol that boys are more individualistic and technical, also usually more self-centered, selfish, etc. They look to be the individual star, rather than putting the team first, as girls generally do. Then you add a male coach (who also is usually individualistic) who has to control the boys attitudes, nurture their capacities to learn and grow as a player, and make them perform as a team. On the other hand, a girls team puts communication and team play before anything else.
They are more amenable to learn technical play, strategy, and team skills than are the boys. Within the past 10 yrs in Cola. club soccer, the best male coaches have always been with the boys teams. Had those same top coaches been assigned to girls teams, I venture to say that girls club teams in the midlands would have achieved significant success on the field, probably more than the boys have.
Conversely, the head coach of one the top boys club teams nationally is female:
http://www.fcdelco.com/Teams/Crunch/index_E.html (Also note where those guys are playing college)
Go figure how she done it!!

truth,
I think you meant to note that futbol made a good point, which he did. I usually don't make too many good points on here.

Missed that one...good posts futbol..and I like the last one striker..have not seen to many females coaching boys soccer

Sorry about the double post.

Chico and Striker

thanks for the good laugh I just got.

>>[thomaspietras] So much for not paraphrasing me.<<

Re: SparkNotes -- "It was a joke, son, a joke!" [Foghorn Leghorn]

>>I don't believe that I am insensitive to gender bias, nor do I fail to recognize that it exists. I just don't believe that we should perpetual the bias by treating girls differently than boys (when it comes to soccer).<<

After the state championships last year, it was publicized that your DOC had 11 state championships. How many of those were with girls teams? (I honestly don't know the answer here; but my guess is not many.)

It seems as if there's a long way to go to bring the girls program up to where the boys program is. Ignoring this fact doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

>>Mis-posting on my part. I meant part-time. They certainly are not looking to replace volunteers. If I may be more precise: My understanding is that they are trying to put into place the professional, full-time staff that will be necessary to manage the larger club.<<

Sounds great!

>>Obviously BS, since Chico is the only dog I know that can type.<<

Chico is a rare and wonderful dog, that's for sure [note: I like talking about myself in third-person.] Did you know that greyhounds are the only type of dog mentioned in the Bible? But enough about me...

>>Also, I think "relatively poor" is "relatively harsh" judgement. Could they do better? Sure. Our hopes for the new club are the same.<<

"Could they do better? Sure." Remember when I said earlier: "you tend to say things so generally that while they are hard to argue with, they also fail to shine much light on the subject at hand."? This falls into that category. Any program can do better.

The data near the beginning of this thread shows you specifically why I believe that the term "relatively poor" in relation to midlands-area girls youth club soccer is if anything too polite. Over the last four years, a female challenge/premier player in a midstate club appears to be significantly disadvantaged (-50%) in terms of playing and staying in D1 soccer. A NECSA female challenge/premier player has less chance than that (-73%). In 1998-2000, NECSA had 5, 3, and 6 teams placed as state finalists. Since that time, the average has been less than 1.5 with a maximum number of 2 (median 1). Please feel free to refute this with specifics that have been accomplished that I've missed. Or...as I said earlier...

What strategies? I'm not saying this in the sense of "clubs didn't have any" -- I'm saying this as a parent of a female soccer player who hasn't discerned any at most midlands clubs for years. For example, have there been good female teams at NECSA? Yes. Has there been any concerted effort to improve the women's program at NECSA? It isn't apparent to a midlands parent living in the area who tends to spend time reading and understanding youth soccer. Thus, I'm begging you to spell out precisely what the strategies were for improving women's soccer.

Yeah, I got the joke. I'm dense, but not that dense.

Did Tripp win any state championships with a girls team? I don't think so, but then, I'm not a student of Miller-history, so I could be wrong.

I won't argue with your statistics (although I must confess that I have not taken the time to study them in detail--preferring generalities).

I do have a question about your statistics--which I believe has been raised by someone else, but I don't remember the answer. How do your numbers factor in girls who started with a Midlands club and them moved to an upstate or lower state club for their last year or two? In the statistics, how does the Midlands club get credit for developing that player's basic skills, etc.? Seems like a difficult issue to deal with in the statistics.

I'm not saying this makes your statistics invalid, just asking the question.

Finally, "what strategies"? Since you are begging, a bad canine habit, I'll try to shed some light.

I certainly can't answer for ALL Midlands clubs. I can tell you what I know about NECSA's strategies while I was on that board. Also, keep in mind that there may have been other, more specific things that people were doing that I may not have been aware of or may not now remember. Finally, remember that I am talking about a tenure that ended three years ago. I really am not the right person to talk about what has happened since or what might happen going forward.

What we basically tried to do for the girls program included the following:

1. Provide the best facilities we could, made available on an equal basis with boys teams.

2. Provide the best coaches we could, at pay scales based on the same criteria as boys coaches--ie, if they had the same credentials, we paid them the same.

3. Provide occaisional, additional training opportunities with outside trainers.

4. Provide other fun and challenging opportunities, like scrimages against boys teams and international playing opportunities--against teams from Germany.

5. We had a board-level VP whose mission was to oversee and develop the girls program.

6. We tried to listen to coaches, parents and players to learn how we should improve things.

7. We tried to help smaller clubs around the Midlands to develop and grow by allowing them to play in our recreation league, thus increasing the number of girls overall in the Midlands.

8. We provided "scholarships" to girls that could not afford the fees--done at the recreation and classic levels--to the extent that we could afford to do so.

If anyone else can add to this list, I would appreciate the help.

How effective were we?

For thousands of recreation and classic girls, I think we did a very good job and they had very satisfying soccer experiences.

I think we were particularly successful at the recreation level. Not the "handful of elite players" mentioned in #4 of your theses. This success would only be measured indirectly by your statistics.

Clearly, for some girls, we did not do enough. Some girls--I don't know how many--went to play in the upstate or lower state. Others left NECSA to go to CFC or other Midlands clubs. We certainly were not "everything to everyone".

Whenever girls left, we would try to assess the "why" to determine whether we needed to make changes. I don't think we ever ignored departures.

The folks that started CFC thought they could do a better job for girls--and I applauded their efforts. I do not know what CFC's strategies were. You could, I believe, ask Heather. Also, I don't know why they did not survive. But they certainly did not.

I hope this gives you some of what you are looking for.

thomaspietras: I agree, begging is a bad habit I need to break! Please...I beg you to forgive me for doing...oh, never mind.

Regarding statistics measuring high-level developmental aspects of a club versus end-level results, I agree that clubs like CRSA get shafted on this data. That's why I never use this to evaluate developmental clubs. However, it does seem to be valuable as a tool for clubs that advertise themselves as "elite" or "premier" and compete in the challenge and premier league. This is really part of the "theses"; if clubs are going to advertise themselves to players and parents as "elite", it would seem that they might want to know and understand these types of statistics. If an "elite" club does great for kids up through U14 but then can't offer premier play that's a fact that not only players and parents should be aware of but I'd think that the club would want to know it as well.

Regarding generalities, my sincere problem with generalities is it's hard to get anywhere with them. Everyone has an opinion and typically that opinion is biased in the direction that a person has an investment with or history involving. It gets old when someone says "my x is better than your y" and you've heard it the thousandth time; it's interesting however when someone gives reasons behind their opinion, and it's fascinating when those reasons are measurable facts that can be confirmed by anyone bothering to look. Of course, that's just my opinion -- and that and a dollar won't buy you a good bowl of kibble.

Thank you tremendously for the list...I really appreciate it. I'm going to go off and do some more research so I can add more to this conversation. And as always, thanks for taking the time to engage in the dialogue.