I also pay for High School with property taxes, vehicle taxes, and sales taxes to the tune of approximately $5500 per year. All four colleges that my daughter wants to attend are at the ECNL/showcase event, and none at a preseason HS event. Pretty easy to figure out which one to go to, because you pay to go to ECNL/showcase events whether you go and play or stay home. I realize that many of you are very attached to HS sports, but the reality is for the level of player we are talking about is HS has nothing to offer the top players but fun and hopefully an injury free season. What you want is the bragging rights of a victory for your own purposes at the expense of what is best for the player with 10 years of hard work. For HS coaches to punish kids for making this decision is the dumbest most selfish idiotic thing I have ever heard of.
ECNL is expanding and the clubs are going to keep the teams so busy that the players discussed here will not have the choice much to play both, and it will be the HS teams that will lose this level of player. So this issue will be solved for you in the near future.
I saw in another thread that someone couldn't believe I hadn't responded in a few days. I'm sorry, but I do have to work sometimes too.
Titan brings up two points here that I agree with. (I'm done talking money. Everybody has their own figure. I got upset at someone for telling me how much I spent. Who am I to tell anyone else?)
The first point being that schools may lose some of these players to club and ECNL. I'm not sure what all the scores were at Viking Cup, but they looked fairly close without the ECNL players involved. With everyone playing thier full rosters, I've seen scores in week 2 and 3 that were: 6-0 (5 times) 7-1, 7-0 (4 times), 8-1, 8-0, 9-0 (3 times), 10-1, 10-0, 11-1, 11-0 (twice) 12-0 and 14-0. These are not the games that the top level players should be in. Furthermore, I saw names on the Viking Cup All Tournament teams that may not have been there if other players were there. Please don't get me wrong, they are all good players. (at least the ones I know) The fact is that there are seniors on the All Tournament team that may or may not have been there if the 45 girls that went to San Antonio were in the tournament. I'll bet those kids deserved to be on the list and I'll bet they were happy to be there. I'll bet there were at least 2-3 kids who were not in the starting line-up before VC, but used that weekend to earn a spot. The point being, maybe there are benifits of the highest level player not playing high school.
The other point Titan brings up is that the punishment that has gone on in the last few weeks is exactly as Titan described it above: dumb, selfish and idiotic. In a season where players are going to play 30 games (give or take) in less than 3 months, to make a kid do extra fitness as punishment for honoring a commitment she made months before joining her hs team is absolutely ridiculous. To tell kids they are suspended for a full game, then go back on your word because you are losing at halftime is completely self-centered and sends a horrible message to the rest of the team. To play a game on Friday, then Monday, then Wednesday, then have your players run for punishment after losing at another school's field, then play on Thursday shows that you have anything but the players' best interests at heart.
I would like to state for the record that I know of some coaches in the high school ranks that have handled all of this with the players' best interest in mind. I have no problem with the coach setting rules and sticking by them. But the rules have to make sense.
