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Originally Posted by studbucket |
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Wow, that's fascinating, thanks for the details. It's really cool to see your daughter improve like that, which is cool. I'm really glad you are focusing on a good coaching situation - it is probably the single most important thing.
My daughter plays for the somewhat-famous Crossfire club up here in the Seattle area. She's on the U15 Select A team, which is theoretically a step down from RCL or ECNL. However, when we've played RCL teams, we've always won (to their embarassment) and the club won't let us play the premier teams from the same age group (I can't remember if we've played ECNL teams or not). This team is fantastic. When they were 12 we had parents of 16 year old boys come and watch and say "they play better than our teams do". We generally control 80-90% of the possession each game, never allow more than 1 goal, and mostly are fun to watch.
My daughter went straight from recreational soccer right to this team, so she was out of her depth in year 1, but the coaches learned that she played much more confidently out of the back than she did at wing/FW. So now that's she's settled into a CDM/CB hybrid role (they run a sort of strange 3-5-2/4-4-2 hybrid) she's consistently starting and playing much more confidently.
The coach is a 60+ year old woman with multiple sclerosis and her husband. She played college soccer but can barely move now. But this is her 3rd select team that she's taken from age ~8 through 18 (and probably her last). She's such a good coach and the girls are so loyal to her. It's a fantastic situation to land in. None of the families want to take the step to premier because the coach and team are so good and the extra cost, pressure, and time commitment don't really seem worth it.
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That's absolutely crazy, man. They're amazing and probably SHOULD move up a level as a unit, lol. 80% to 90%? Do you have to console opponents and their parents after the match? WOW. We've had the occasional game like that over the year, usually early in a tournament, but not often.
Their coach sounds like an amazing teacher if she can teach them to play like that in her condition. Happy for your daughter to land in such a great situation. On the one hand running a system like that sounds so crazy, but on the other, little girls are VERY smart and if they're really into the game, you can teach them virtually anything. I think that may be where my daughter's team falls short right now and why a lot of them might get cut is, they don't take it super serious. The new coach, who doesn't let them cuss or even say the "clean" variants of cuss words or they have to run laps, was talking to them about requirements for team captain and I think what he doesn't know is none of them really want it. My daughter is probably the best candidate but she's the type to pick a "bestie" on the team and hibernate, having a lot less contact with the other girls. On the pitch she's the ringleader of the back 5 and very much in command, but you really can't give out a captainship to a player like that unless you have no better options. As for your daughter's team, I hope you'll give some updates here about their exploits over the coming years.
My daughter had an interesting weekend in Davis, she was asked to play with their 09 team because they didn't have enough players, so, being an October 30 2010 kid that's a decent challenge. She started the first game but they took her out I don't know, maybe 25 minutes in because they were getting everybody in and out with unlimited subs, then she never came off the field again until getting injured late in the last game of the weekend. She played great, made so many line-breaking passes and played lockdown D, but in that last game, a player that didn't look too spectacular early on (from PNW SC actually) just wore all of them down with her strength and pace and my daughter somehow landed on her shoulder and neck trying to keep her from scoring after she ran through another couple of their 09 girls. And she didn't succeed, so she got hurt physically and in pride at the same time, lol. She's alright, but what a humbling game. It got ugly after that as they scored 3 times late on us.