Chief your correct it doesn't matter what venue your participating in. College coaches are still going to come. College coaches were attending R3 premier events long before ECNL existed. We saw the same college coaches at R3 and ODP events that we saw at our ECNL events.If your looking for a club, find one that's more into development rather than in the travel agency business. If your child develops into a good soccer player a college will find your child.Coach DiCicco in his article I think was trying to point out that clubs should focus more on player development and practice than focus on how many high level games you can play accross the country. I found another article in the Columbus Dispatch that sheds some more light on this issue.
Report: Youth sports come at high cost
Participation pressures families to spend big bucks and chase glory
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A year-round, $5 billion youth sports industry is pushing some children too hard and pressuring families to spend big money traveling the country for games, specialized training and the pursuit of elusive college scholarships, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday. At a minimum, many youths are robbed of their childhood, the newspaper said in the first of a five-part series. Families easily can sink up to $50,000 a year in youth sports.
One Cleveland family spent $30,000 in six months to help their son pursue a soccer dream, the newspaper said. Another mother arranged to send her 11-year-old son to live with a trainer in Alabama to refine his football skills.
About 40 million children participate in youth sports — nearly six times as many who play high school sports and 100 times as many who play at an NCAA college.
To examine the sports culture, the Dispatch surveyed about 1,000 Ohio high school students and 213 coaches, along with 70 athletes and 33 coaches from Ohio State University. More than 40 percent said their parents pressured them to play, and 10 percent said their parents’ behavior during games embarrassed them.
“Too many parents today want to be agents instead of parents,” said Dave Klontz, head baseball coach at Heath High School.
Sandy Baum, an economics professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga, N.Y., and an expert on financial aid, said parents are making the wrong investment.“ Your kid is much better off studying and doing well academically than spending all the time on the soccer field .” In the past decade, the amount of money pouring into nonprofit youth sport organizations has doubled to nearly $70 million in Ohio, according to IRS tax data. Nationally, those groups are collecting $5 billion a year.
Some students feel caught between high school and youth sports coaches. About 25 percent of high school students said they felt pressed to play at a higher level of competition. As a consequence, nearly half of the high school coaches said some athletes have quit their teams to focus on playing with non-school teams. Coaches say youth sports need a governing body similar to the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
Colleges and schools also are required to examine the criminal backgrounds of coaches. Many youth sports leagues aren’t.
