Quote:



Coach Chass....regarding your proposal.....how do you expect to roster a team when kids may be there and they may not be there? Its like Boris Yeltsin said of Mikhail Gorbachev...he called him his old friend, a lover of half measures. You end up satisfying no one with plans like that.




Actually, BD, I did consider that particular issue as a matter of concern, but not one that would be prohibitive. First of all, I would never suggest a model in which kids "may be there and may not be there." I would expect players to commit at the beginning of the seasonal year to their choice of model, either half or full 10-month season, hold them to it, and plan accordingly for each group. I mean, under the current system, what's to stop a player from taking the first months of training, then deciding HS ball is important and dropping out to play, except for the threat of not being allowed back into the DA? You can put the same restrictions on those who commit to 10 months, and by giving the half-season option to those who may be torn between choices, it's actually easier to plan around them.

Since it seems likely that the half-year group would be larger than the 10-month, it might be necessary to consolidate two first-half teams into one for the extended part of the season, but that doesn't seem too unreasonable. If they have been receiving the same quality training they should mesh fairly seamlessly, and the concept of mixing and matching players into consolidation teams is far from new; it seems to be the norm, at least at higher levels.

Also, if I have been reading carefully, the primary focus of the DA seems not to be so much on forming competitive teams as on "fewer games and an extended season [which will] will allow for the addition of a substantial number of extra training sessions, which are the primary vehicle for player development.”

If we agree that the primary purpose of the DA is player development (hence the name), and that the primary vehicle for player development is training sessions, not games, then it would seem that the primary objective of the DA would be not so much "rostering teams" as getting as many elite players as possible into as many elite-level training sessions as possible. If you can get 40 players to commit to a half-year of elite training and only 20 of those are willing to extend to a full 10-month season, then you've still done a lot more player development than by just having the 20 from the start. If the price of that is that you have to move beyond the concept of 10-month permanently-rostered teams only for competition purposes, then maybe that's not too steep, especially if inter-team competition isn't the primary focus of the DA.

Quote:

How about this?

Soccer will get better in this country when more kids play at any level...and when the elite player gets elite levels and quantities of training.



I absolutely agree with this. While there is a lot of debate about the mechanism by which to achieve them, I think you've nailed the objectives there. I think the idea of the DA is fantastic for those elite who will best benefit from it--and I can even say that while wearing my HS coaching hat.

In the interest of those common objectives, I think that in order to build up the sport of soccer, we are going to have to tear down any perceptions that the different levels of soccer are working against each other and build up the idea of all levels of soccer working toward the same over-arching goals. Pulling off THAT little trick is going to require a lot of maturity and sensitivity on all sides, a reasonable amount of compromise, a mutual respect for different approaches to the same unselfish goals, and a willingness to provide choices and options that aren't always either/or in nature. Yes, it might take a little more effort and will certainly require a certain amount of sacrifice (and maybe a little swallowing of pride) on all sides, but if our sport and our players are really as important as we all say they are, I guess they might be worth it.

Last edited by Coach Chass; 02/13/12 04:20 AM.
I've got good news and bad news...