Another prickly point about implying that the quality of a team is based on its number of premier players is not so much on behalf of the coaches but for the players as well. The implication comes across that the premier players are the only ones valuable enough to be counted in an assessment of the team. High school soccer is not a "pay to play" sport in most schools; as ROH alluded, all of our players have varying paths to arrive at a point of self-respect and achievement. Some of our best athletes who put all of themselves into the game aren't the ones who have had the opportunities to become a "premier" player. The last thing most of us want to see is for those players to start feeling devalued because they don't have that label. Personally, I've always thought we damage our potential to develop soccer in this country by marketing it as an "elite" sport; players should be able to come out and represent their schools with pride no matter how many or how few outside opportunities they have access to without being directly (and unfavorably) compared to people who have had those chances. In the final analysis, it's all about performance as a team, not pedigree.
A couple of years ago, my club's U18 Classic girls shared a practice facility with the U18 Challenge team. Out of four scrimmages, the Classic team won three...the last one by a 4-1 margin. The difference, I think, was in effort, heart, and not setting too much stock in labels.
