Back before the Premier League option was initiated, most clubs, HNISA in particular, fielded multiple Challenge and/or Classic teams.
I know we did an A/B team scenario when I started playing Select (back when U11's played 11v11 still) and due to numbers, the club organised two U12 teams: the A team, Lady Ice, and the B team, the Renegades. Aside from the knowledge that the Lady Ice had been playing together since rec and stayed mostly unchanged, very few people complained that their daughter was a Renegade and not on the Ice (and many moved onto Ice in later years as it lost players and they got better).
From my standpoint as a player, after I got over the initial disappointment, I was just happy to be on a select team on which I earned a spot. Knowing we were the B team was mostly incentive to get better and get more experience so that I could some day make it onto the A team or play up. Sometimes when we had a hopeless day or half, it was frustrating, but overall, I had much more room to improve and make a statement with the team that I wouldn't have had on the Ice.
I think most of the complaints are voiced just to complain. There will always be people who are better than you are and just because you run into some of them doesn't mean you suck at life or its the end of the world. Tiered teams, from my experience, give people more room to grow, make their statement on the field and lets them play with people of closer skill levels. If you pool everyone on even teams, the very good people can often showboat or get so bored with their teammates that it ends up detrimental to their team and themselves and the less skilled people may lose hope and feel so out of place that they never get the chance to work on being a better player because the good ones get play time and they don't or they never get the ball. The problem is compounded when the equal teams play tiered teams.
Also, just because you have an A and a B team doesn't mean that there has to be a huge separation in ability levels; it just depends on the quality of players trying out for the team. As someone mentioned before, some clubs have B teams who play RIIIPL. So just because you're a B team doesn't mean you have to necessarily sacrifice a great amount of success.
Last edited by adidaskitten86; 01/29/08 07:29 PM.
