Author: Beau Dure

The guy who wrote a bunch of soccer books and now runs a Gen X-themed podcast while substitute teaching and continuing to write freelance stuff.
winter sports

Curling at the crossroads

Posted on by Beau Dure

Here’s why you should be paying attention to curling right now:

  1. The Challenge Round, to fill out the field for the national championships, is underway.
  2. The national championships this year are in the unlikely venue of Jacksonville, Fla., a sure sign that someone is bullish on the idea of curling expanding beyond the states that border Canada.
  3. USA Curling, responding to a couple of lackluster performances in the Olympics, now has a “High Performance” program that dominates discussion at CurlingZone.

The High Performance program is a major change in the way curling teams are formed. Curlers usually pick their own teammates, and it’s common to see siblings or people who live close to each other forming a foursome (or fivesome, with an alternate). The top teams may still resemble all-star teams, like the strong group of former Olympians Erika Brown assembled to win qualification to the 2014 Games.

But the Brown team, while taking a solid fourth place in the 2013 World Championships, flopped in Sochi, going 1-8. That was just the latest in a string of disappointing performances in international competition.

  • 2010 Olympics: Men 2-7, Women 2-7 (skips: John Shuster, Debbie McCormick)
  • 2010 Worlds: Men 4th place; Women 7-4/5th place (Pete Fenson, Erika Brown)
  • 2011 Worlds: Men 3-8, Women 6-5 (Pete Fenson, Patti Lank)
  • 2012 Worlds: Men 4-7, Women 7-4/5th (Heath McCormick, Allison Pottinger)
  • 2013 Worlds: Men 5-6, Women 4th place (Brady Clark, Erika Brown)
  • 2014 Olympics: Men 2-7, Women 1-8 (John Shuster, Erika Brown)
  • 2014 Worlds: Men 3-8, Women 6-5 (Pete Fenson, Allison Pottinger)

More results like this, and the USA could be in danger of missing out on future Olympics and World Championships. The USA is currently seventh in the world in men’s curling and eighth in women’s. Those rankings don’t exactly correspond to the selection criteria for the big tournaments, but they show that the USA’s position is far from guaranteed.

So the High Performance program changed things up, holding tryouts and putting together new teams under national coaches. The soccer analogue — going from House teams based on neighborhoods to Travel teams based on tryouts.

In the first year of this system (2014-15), USA Curling put together three men’s teams and three women’s teams, with one team of each gender reserved for juniors. This year, they added another men’s team — essentially, John Shuster’s team joined the program.

Other than adding Shuster’s team, the biggest change in the HP program was the return of 2006 bronze medalist skip Pete Fenson. In the shuffle, Heath McCormick went back to his old team. The program made a couple more changes on the men’s teams during the year.

On the women’s side, the HP roster barely changed, though the two non-junior teams were switched around.

Meanwhile, Erika Brown assembled an all-new all-star team with three 2010 Olympians — Allison Pottinger, Nicole Joraanstad, Natalie Nicholson. Their results have been better than those posted by the HP teams skipped by Jamie Sinclair and Nina Roth. The junior HP skip, Cory Christensen, has had a promising season.

But the Challenge Round this week is men-only. That’s because only seven teams (eight, if Christensen doesn’t win the U.S. junior championship) have entered nationals.

Four men’s teams got byes past the Challenge Round. All four are in the HP program.

That leaves 20 teams in the Challenge Round. In the following sheet, I’ve listed their World Curling Tour Order of Merit ranking — 2015-16 and overall and a few other numbers. The Order of Merit system gives points for each event, and I’ve given the top performances in from each team as well.

You’ll notice something right away: Shuster is far ahead of the pack. If you look at the top 10 performances of the season, it’s overwhelming:

45.8 – John Shuster, 3rd, Grand Slam Challenge, Sept. 13
38.6 – Craig Brown, 2nd, U.S. Open, Jan. 4
34.4 – Shuster, 1st, Huron ReproGraphics, Nov. 1
29.6 – Shuster, 1st, Curl Mesabi, Dec. 20
26.8 – Shuster, 5th, Point Optical, Sept. 28
25.7 – Brown, 5th, Shorty Jenkins, Sept. 20
21.1 – Shuster, 5th, U.S. Open, Jan. 4
21.0 – Mike Farbelow, 3rd, Huron ReproGraphics, Nov. 1
20.9 – Shuster, 1st, Coors Light Cashspiel, Nov. 29
18.0 – Pete Fenson, 3rd, Curl Mesabi, Dec. 20
18.0 – Todd Birr, 3rd, Curl Mesabi, Dec. 20

The other numbers: USA Curling’s seeding for the Challenge Round (based on past nationals and the OOM) and how many times each team has earned less than 4 OOM points in a single event. (Basically, how often they haven’t been close to the top.)

Then I’ve made my own somewhat subjective ranking, taking all of these numbers into account without making a Nate Silver-style formula.

[gview file=”http://www.sportsmyriad.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/curling-2015-16-Mens-rankings.pdf”%5D

A couple of notes:

  • Lyle Sieg is the world senior champion.
  • Yes, Darryl Horsman is from Arizona. Told you the sport was spreading.
  • “NA” in the Challenge Round seedings means they got a bye. “NE” means Not Entered.

Let’s see how these rankings played out in the first Challenge Round games today:

#12 S. Dropkin 13, #25 Horsman 6
#17 Lilla 8, #21 Clawson 6
#10 Leichter 7, #26 Funk 6
#16 Sieg 11, #20 Sobering 8
#6 Farbelow 10, #19 E. Fenson 0
#3 Clark 6, #22 Workin 4
#13 Corbett 6, #11 Jackson 5
#24 Roe 12, #7 McCormick 5
#5 Birr 9, #23 Deeren 4
#14 Smith 7, #9 Bahr 5

So the only three upsets were #13 Corbett over #11 Jackson (which was not an upset if you’re going by the Challenge Round rankings that put Corbett fifth and Jackson 12th), Smith over Bahr, and the stunning win for Roe over McCormick.

The same games, by Challenge Round rankings (and re-sorted):

#1 Clark 6, #16 Workin 4
#15 Roe 12, #2 McCormick 5
#3 Birr 9, #15 Deeren 4
#4 Farbelow 10, #13 E. Fenson 0
#5 Corbett 6, #12 Jackson 5
#11 Smith 7, #6 Bahr 5

#7 Leichter 7, #20 Funk 6
#8 S. Dropkin 13, #19 Horsman 6
#9 Lilla 8, #18 Clawson 6
#10 Sieg 11, #17 Sobering 8

The bracket (basically a triple-elimination tournament) shows us how big Roe and Smith’s wins were. Like Clark, Birr, Farbelow and Corbett, they’re now two wins away from qualifying for nationals.

Clark, Birr and Farbelow should make it through. McCormick would be a favorite based on past years, but he’s looking shaky now.

0
medal projections, olympic sports

What happens when you search for Olympic sports

Posted on by Beau Dure

Yes, SportsMyriad will have medal projections in 2016, but we’re doing things a little differently. Note the “we.” Not “I.” I’m getting help.

As preparation for the projections, I did a few searches on every Summer Olympic sport today. It’s difficult. So many summer sports are also recreational, and it’s hard to find coverage of the ISATWHATEVER World Cup amid all the stuff geared toward the practitioner, not the fan. Other sports are far more popular outside the Olympics.

Here’s what you find for each sport:

Archery: “I killed a bear. Check out these photos.”

Badminton: China, China, China, hey, can we make England as good as China?

Basketball: 405 tips for your fantasy team.

Beach volleyball: Duhhhh … they don’t wear much. (FWIW, I will never understand the fascination with skimpy beach volleyball apparel. It’s not as if track and field athletes are wearing parkas and golf pants.)

Boxing: We hate Floyd Mayweather.

Canoe/kayak: 405 tips for whitewater.

Cycling, BMX: Buy our gnarly BMX gear.

Cycling, mountain bike: Buy our gnarly mountain bike gear.

Cycling, road: Buy this $7,278 piece of equipment that will make you go slightly faster.

Cycling, track: … you wanna do what? ….

Diving: My latest vacation photos from the Great Barrier Reef.

Equestrian: 405 tales from veterinary research.

Fencing: Take the stuff you get at Home Depot and build this!

Golf: (A) 405 tips for your short game or (B) will Tiger Woods ever regain his form?

Gymnastics, artistic: My 405-part series on the scoring system and how it affects the way we teach 5-year-olds.

Gymnastics, rhythmic: “noun, a form of gymnastics emphasizing dancelike rhythmic routines …”

Gymnastics, trampoline: Please take our trampoline. Free to anyone who can take it.

Handball: “Oh, you mean team handball? No one who writes about it actually calls it by that name.”

Hockey: “Oh, you mean field hockey? No one who writes about it actually calls it by that name.”

Judo: 405 tips for improving … oh, wait, Ronda Rousey’s mom just tweeted …

Modern pentathlon: 404 not found

Rowing: Anything with the word “row” (Front Row, Back Row) or even “Rowe.”

Rugby: 405 reasons England will never be as good as Australia or New Zealand.

Sailing: 405 tips for sailing the Chesapeake.

Shooting: “From my cold, dead hands …”

Soccer: Will Mourinho replace Van Gaal? And why didn’t Carli Lloyd win goal of the year?

Swimming: 405 tips for improving your lap time

Synchronized swimming: … um … what?

Table tennis: Wanna buy our table?

Taekwondo: Your dojo is a joke, dude.

Tennis: (A) 405 tips for improving your backhand or (B) how ridiculously awesome is Serena?

Track and field: We really love this sport in Oregon.

Triathlon: 405 tips for improving your transition from swim to bike.

Volleyball: “VolleyBall Girl Asses.” I wish I was kidding.

Water polo: “Water-Polo Hunks.” Turnabout is fair play?

Weightlifting: 405 ways to pick things up and put them down.

Wrestling: “JOHN CENA! WHOOOOOO!!!”

0
soccer

U.S. women’s soccer: The fight for 18 in 2016

Posted on by Beau Dure

You would think the shrinking of the national team roster from the Women’s World Cup (23 players) to the Olympics (18) means some veterans get left home and less experienced players have trouble breaking through.

But a rash of retirements has changed all that. Jill Ellis is looking at new players among the 26 called into camp in January. She didn’t have much choice.

That’s actually not unusual. Let’s look at the past first, then size up the competition for 2016:

1999-2000: The WWC roster was only 20 in those days. That opened the competition a bit, as did the change in coach, with April Heinrichs replacing Tony DiCicco.

  • Carryovers (14): Scurry, Fair, Pearce (Rampone), Overbeck, Chastain, Whalen, MacMillan, Hamm, Foudy, Parlow, Lilly, Fawcett, Milbrett, Sobrero.
  • Dropped (6): Akers (was named but withdrew), Roberts, Venturini, Fotopoulos, Webber, Ducar
  • Added (4): Serlenga, French, Slaton, Mullinix

2003-04: Still only 20 for the WWC. Heinrichs was the coach for both tournaments but still tinkered a bit. (LA Times story)

  • Carryovers (14): Scurry, Pearce/Rampone, Reddick (Whitehill), Chastain, Boxx, Hamm, Wagner, Foudy, Parlow, Lilly, Fawcett, Sobrero/Markgraf, Hucles, Wambach
  • Dropped (6): Bivens, Roberts, MacMillan, Milbrett, Slaton, Mullinix
  • Added (4): Mitts, Tarpley, O’Reilly, Luckenbill

2007-08: The WWC roster was up to 21. Pia Sundhage replaced Greg Ryan after the 2007 debacle, and a rash of injuries forced many changes.

  • Carryovers (13): Solo, Rampone, Tarpley, Kai, Boxx, O’Reilly, Wagner, Lloyd, Lopez/Cox, Markgraf, Hucles, Chalupny, Barnhart
  • Dropped (8): Scurry, Dalmy, Whitehill (injured), Ellertson, Osborne (injured), Lilly (pregnant), Jobson, Wambach (injured)
  • Added (5): Mitts, Buehler, Rodriguez, Cheney, Heath

2011-12: Rosters still at 21, and Sundhage stuck with her favorites.

  • Carryovers (17): Solo, Mitts, Rampone, Sauerbrunn, O’Hara, LePeilbet, Boxx, Rodriguez, O’Reilly, Lloyd, Cheney, Morgan, Wambach, Rapinoe, Buehler, Heath, Barnhart
  • Dropped (4): Krieger (injured), Cox, Lindsey, Loyden
  • Added (1): Leroux

So as the team heads from Vancouver to Rio, they’ll have the same coach (as in 2004 and 2012) but a lot of people who won’t be available (as in 2008).

The training camp has 26 players, but just 16 of them played in the World Cup. Four (Wambach, Boxx, Chalupny, Holiday) have retired. Rodriguez is pregnant and probably a safe bet not to play. Even if Christie Rampone and Megan Rapinoe can come back from injuries and no one else is hurt, bringing the number of available WWC 2015 players up to 18, we’d still see at least one new player on the roster unless Ellis makes the unusual decision to take three goalkeepers.

Position-by-position:

Goalkeepers: Hope Solo is still the starter for the foreseeable future, pending court appearances this year. The assault charges against her were reinstated in October. The most recent action in the case is an “order for change of judge.”

Ashlyn Harris played 270 minutes in 2015. Alyssa Naeher played 90. Adrianna Franch, getting her first call since 2013, is the other goalkeeper in camp. They’re competing for one spot, two if Solo can’t go.

Defenders: Six WWC carryovers are in camp, and with each of the last two Olympic rosters carrying six defenders, they’ll be tough to dislodge. Especially the starters: the fearsome center-back duo of Becky Sauerbrunn and Julie Johnston, left back Meghan Klingenberg, and right back Ali Krieger.

Kelley O’Hara’s versatility is a plus on a small roster. Whitney Engen will face a challenge, but the team will need a reserve center back unless Rampone returns.

The newcomers are Jaelene Hinkle (Western New York) and Emily Sonnett (UVA). Sonnett could challenge Engen and Rampone at center back. Hinkle is primarily a left back, normally a tough position to fill but one in which the USWNT is unusually deep with Klingenberg and O’Hara.

Center midfielders: This was a sore spot early in the World Cup, with Lauren Holiday miscast as a defensive-ish midfielder. Ellis adjusted by adding Morgan Brian along with Holiday and Carli Lloyd, at the expense of a second forward. It worked. Holiday and backup Shannon Boxx are gone, but Lloyd and Brian are sure to make the roster.

That leaves a couple of open spots. Danielle Colaprico (Chicago) is in camp with a chance to be a holding midfielder to free up or back up Brian and Lloyd. Or Ellis could opt for a midfield playmaker, something the USA rarely has, which would keep Lloyd in a box-to-box role and Brian behind them. The options there include Samantha Mewis (Western New York), Rose Lavelle (Wisconsin), and Mallory Pugh (Real Colorado/Mountain View HS).

But the leader for one of these slots might be Lindsey Horan (PSG), usually a forward but slotted into center mid on the Victory Tour.

Wing midfielders: The wings are where WoSo fans start to argue. The training camp roster only lists two — WWC holdovers Tobin Heath and Heather O’Reilly — but a lot of WoSo fans don’t want to write them onto the Oly roster with a Sharpie just yet.

Rapinoe goes here if she’s healthy. Then Ellis could use one of the players listed at forward — Stephanie McCaffrey (Boston) looked sharp on the Victory Tour, and Crystal Dunn (Washington) was the best player in the NWSL last season. Dunn can literally play anywhere on the field from defender to striker.

Forwards: The roster lists six, and the USA hasn’t taken more than four to either of the previous two Olympics. But that list includes Pugh, McCaffrey, and Dunn. (But not Horan.)

That leaves three holdovers. Alex Morgan wasn’t quite herself in 2015 but is still one of the world’s best. Christen Press frequently makes a good case for more time. Sydney Leroux has alternately thrilled and frustrated fans over the past couple of years.

THE WILD GUESS (in decreasing order of confidence per position)

Goalkeepers (2, both holdovers): Solo, Harris

Defenders (6, all holdovers): Sauerbrunn, Johnston, Klingenberg, Krieger, O’Hara, Engen

Midfielders (6, four holdovers): Lloyd, Brian, Heath, O’Reilly, Horan, Mewis

Forwards (4, three holdovers): Morgan, Press, Dunn, Leroux

If Rapinoe is healthy, any midfielder other than Lloyd or Brian could be bumped. I see Dunn as a starter on the wing, so either Heath or O’Reilly could be bumped.

So that’s all of the possible holdovers — 15 from the 16 in camp, with the only one missing out being the No. 3 goalkeeper. If Rapinoe bumps a midfield newcomer, that makes it 16. (Rampone would bump one of the holdover defenders.)

Dunn and Horan have to be considered the leaders to gain the open spots. The 18th spot, which I’ve given to Mewis, could be wide open, especially if Rapinoe can’t go.

But all of the players in camp have a chance. Unfortunately, there’s a big chance that someone will be injured between now and August. And we’ve seen the occasional surprise before.

 

0
soccer, sports culture

Single-Digit Soccer: The elite-industrial complex crushes all

Posted on by Beau Dure

Why do we play youth sports?

We’re here because you’re looking for the BEST of the BEST of the BEST, SIR!

“Your boy Captain America here … to find the BEST of the BEST of the BEST, SIR! … with honors.”

But a funny thing is happening with the race to the top. A lot of people are dropping out.

ESPN’s Tim Keown has a good spleen-venting piece about this phenomenon:

This is the age of the youth-sports industrial complex, where men make a living putting on tournaments for 7-year-olds, and parents subject their children to tryouts and pay good money for the right to enter into it.

And if they don’t hit the “next level,” they drop out. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal came up with numbers that bear this out. Baseball is in particularly bad shape, with towns having to pool together for Little League while numbers decline (or players just opt for “travel” baseball instead). But soccer wasn’t doing well in their figuring, either.

Other popular sports, including soccer and basketball, have suffered as youth sports participation in general has declined and become more specialized. A pervasive emphasis on performance over mere fun and exercise has driven many children to focus exclusively on one sport from an early age, making it harder for all sports to attract casual participants.

You can tell me this is OK, that we needed to make our youth sports more “serious” and specialized so we’ll have better athletes. Be prepared to keep arguing against a lot of us parents and writers who want our neighborhood kids to have sports options and haven’t seen elitism in youth soccer produce any players better than the scraggly-haired high school and college kids the USA used to send to World Cups.

Single-Digit Soccer: Keeping Sanity in the Earliest Ages of the Beautiful Game addresses a lot of these issues. Read more about it, then read it.

0
soccer

A quick word on pro/rel

Posted on by Beau Dure

Yes, I know. We should be done with this topic for another few years at least.

But every once in a while, I come across some sincere conversation about this, picked out from the ritual abuse and accusations that I’m part of the Cabal from The Blacklist, and The Director and I are censoring message boards and making people disappear so we’ll never have promotion and relegation in our lifetime.

And a quick post will be better than 100 tweets that send my unfollower count soaring.

So here goes …

This is what Minneapolis City SC is trying to do. Supporter ownership, building up from the grass roots.

We have to say at the outset that this isn’t what we see in the league everyone touts as the anti-MLS — the English Premier League. That league has grown through megabillionaires coming in and pouring money into clubs as vanity projects. In Germany as well, Hoffenheim leaped through the ranks when one of its former youth players struck it rich in software and decided to put his money back into his football club.

The good news is that U.S. clubs can build at the grass roots and still move up the pyramid without the risk of being sent down. They would eventually run into some difficulties with the USSF professional league criteria, but if they can demonstrate that they have the finances to make it through a season without folding (the main reason these criteria exist, and I think most NASL-watchers say it has resulted in more stability), perhaps they can apply for a waiver to the “single rich owner” criterion.

That’s the system we have now. Portland, Orlando, Seattle, Minnesota, maybe Sacramento or San Antonio … they can all move up without the risk of being sent down. Then they feel free to invest in facilities and players, both on the Designated Player end of the career path and the academy end.

That quest for security isn’t unique to the USA. If Reading could maintain EPL status, it would have a bigger stadium now. They’ve put it on hold when they’ve been relegated.

Nor should we feel inferior because we don’t have a full amateur-to-pro pyramid. England needed nearly 100 years before it had automatic pro/rel between the League and Non-League football. (England needed about 10 years to have automatic pro/rel between its two pro division, then about another 30 before a third tier was added.) The Netherlands is just tiptoeing into pro/rel between amateur and pro ball in the 2010s.

So how can we make pro/rel happen in the USA? Here are a couple of possibilities and their pros and cons:

1. Force MLS to do it. A non-starter. You’ll spend the next 20 years in court.

2. Start a second “First Division” league that has pro/rel. Also carries a legal risk and a lot of financial risk. Advocates think this move would force healthy competition between MLS and this new league. I’d argue that any U.S. league will have a tough time competing for eyeballs with the big Euro leagues and Liga MX, and diluting the available resources (players, sponsorships, etc.) will just make it worse.

We get back to something important: MLS has reached this point — 20 teams with an average attendance over 20,000, new youth academies, and quite a few players who are a lot of fun to watch — by minimizing risk.

In any case — this is feasible if someone applies. The Federation isn’t going to sanction something that doesn’t even exist on paper and has no capital behind it.

3. Gradually persuade MLS owners that it’s a good idea. Notice I said “owners.” Please forget any notion that when Don Garber retires, everything changes. Garber is employed by and speaks for the owners. It’s not up to him. He’s not the one with anything to risk.

And here’s a hint: Yelling at people that they’re part of some conspiracy and that they all actually hate soccer is not a good way to persuade them.

So how about some ideas that don’t start from the top down?

4. Try it in lower divisions first. Then you can build up interest. Plenty of amateur leagues already do it — trace Open Cup teams back to their leagues, and you’ll often find they’re in a regional “Premier League” with lower tiers beneath.

So maybe we could try this in the NASL, USL and NPSL (the PDL is set up to be a summer league for college-eligible players, and there’s nothing wrong with staying there for those clubs that choose it).

Except … they don’t seem all that interested in actually doing it.

So the bottom line is this … you shouldn’t be yelling at me about it. You can yell along with Eric Wynalda, but as much as I like and respect Eric, that’s not going to bring about any change, either. You can yell at the rest of the media, but they’ve blocked you — not because they don’t think it’s fun to talk about pro/rel, but because the people who’ve been talking about pro/rel for the past 15 years are abusive serial harassers.

You could try yelling at Timbers owner Merritt Paulson or Sounders co-owner Drew Carey. I’ve never seen people doing that — does anyone have any examples of that happening?

Why don’t you try engaging with the NASL’s Bill Peterson? His latest position is “explore options when we get closer to 20 teams.” But they still haven’t taken anything close to a concrete step. They’re really no different than MLS — they want to be totally stable before they take a serious look.

You might actually be best off trying to get the USL to do it. They already tried a bit of it in the past, but the teams couldn’t or wouldn’t pull it off. They have enough teams to make it work.

“But … the USL is part of the conspiracy!” The USL is doing what it can to survive and grow. If you really think there’s some MLS/USL cabal with no interest in the game other than persecuting the New York Cosmos, then maybe you can tell the USL they could steal the NASL’s thunder by going pro/rel now!

So there you have it. That’s my latest effort to speak with some people who seem sincere about looking for a way to make this happen — people who might actually look at the obstacles I point out as “something you have to consider” rather than “evil roadblock I’ve conjured up because I’m part of the conspiracy.”

And if we get more sincere, serious, rational people in the discussion, who knows what’ll happen? We know years of screaming hasn’t gotten us anywhere. Why not try something different?

4
soccer

Making the Club World Cup interesting

Posted on by Beau Dure

You’re not watching the Club World Cup? You’re not engrossed in every game?

No one is. And that’s a pity, because it’s a grand idea poorly executed.

Want to make it more interesting? Spread it out like the Davis Cup.

Make each game an interesting event. Africa vs. Asia. Oceania vs. North America. Have continents alternate as hosts for the early rounds. And so on until you have at least a few weeks to hype the neutral-site final.

(Which will probably be South America vs. Europe. Or a really interesting underdog story.)

This year’s tournament could’ve been:

September

  • TP Mazembe vs. Guangzhou Evergrande
  • Club America vs. Auckland City

Late October

  • River Plate vs. Mazembe-Guangzhou winner
  • Barcelona vs. America-Auckland winner

This weekend: Final.

The early games will at least be big events for the teams that are hosting. Global interest will pick up a bit with the big guns entering.

Alternate idea: Hold the Club World Cup in odd-numbered years in the summers, when we don’t have the “other” men’s World Cup, the Euros or Copa America.

0
soccer

The tough turf questions to ask after the WNT cancellation

Posted on by Beau Dure

The U.S. women’s national team will not play Trinidad & Tobago today. The cancellation is the stunning but fair conclusion to yesterday’s news that Megan Rapinoe tore her ACL in training and the team was less than pleased with the conditions of Aloha Stadium’s artificial turf.

The first question: How could this happen?

Easy answer: U.S. Soccer dropped the ball and failed to check out the field. But it’s a little more complex than that.

This field hasn’t been sitting idle for months. Hawaii’s football team just finished a full season on it. The NFL’s Pro Bowl will be played there in a couple of months.

So how can a field be suitable for large people making sharp cuts and tackling each other but not suitable for a soccer game?

KHON says turf was added to the playing area in an effort to make it wider than a football field, and they cite Hope Solo’s tweet lifting a seam in the turf. But the Honolulu Star-Advertiser cites coach Jill Ellis in saying the field is still “very narrow.”

From overhead photos, it looks like the stadium has little space to add width. This isn’t one of these new NFL stadiums with allowances made for the width of a soccer field.

But they’ve done it before. The Los Angeles Galaxy played at Aloha Stadium in 2008. David Beckham, who criticized artificial turf upon his arrival in MLS, played in that game.

So what happened since then? Did the stadium try a different method of widening the field than was used in 2008? Has the surface simply deteriorated?

Men’s soccer has been through plenty of turf issues in the past couple of generations. The NASL played on old-school artificial turf. The Dallas Burn spent one season in Dragon Stadium, a high school football stadium that was OK for Friday night games in Texas but turned into a broiler in the summer heat. The Burn, no longer willing to take their name literally, moved back to the Cotton Bowl before settling into permanent facilities elsewhere.

Most of the narrow fields are gone. The Columbus Crew will play today in their spacious home, not Ohio State’s narrow football stadium. But turf is still an issue in MLS, and some players are “rested” when it’s time to play on the fake stuff.

So field quality is an ongoing issue. The question now: What can be learned from the Hawaii incident?

For U.S. Soccer, it simply shows venues must be vetted more thoroughly. But I’m also curious to know how a stadium that has hosted elite pro soccer in the past along with its usual college and pro football was unable to pull it off here.

Update: To clarify, it appears Rapinoe was injured on a training field, not at Aloha Stadium. It was on grass, in fact, though reliable sources suggest it was a poor grass field.

I’ve been chatting a lot on Twitter today — some good discussion, some “how dare you ask questions and not just be satisfied with our narrative that U.S. Soccer doesn’t care about women?” nonsense. The latter does not cover the women’s soccer community in glory.

Yes, we should ask why the men play on grass-over-turf (which often incurs its own set of problems) while the women play on turf. Yes, we should ask why the training field was so bad.

But we can and should ask whether this should be the last straw in terms of the men and women playing in unsuitable venues. U.S. Soccer clearly needs to overhaul the way it vets its venues, period. Maybe international games should all be in MLS stadiums with grass. (Sorry, Portland.)

And, to get outside of our soccer bubble, we can and should ask whether the Aloha Stadium turf is unsafe for college football. Or the Pro Bowl.

So thanks to those of you on Twitter who found these questions interesting. In the long run, I think these questions will help all athletes. Including women’s soccer players.

1
soccer

The ideal MLS playoff format, 2015 edition

Posted on by Beau Dure

“Get rid of the away-goal tiebreaker!”

“Have a minigame after the second game!”

“I miss shootouts!”

Yes, it’s that time of year. Even the commissioner, Don Garber, has fretted about the away-goal tiebreaker.

So, once again, I’m going to say MLS should use a modified Page playoff system. But I’ll tweak it this year, going up to 10 teams.

In each conference:

Play-in round
#5 at #4

Quarterfinals
4-5 winner at #3
#2 at #1

Semifinal
3-4-5 winner at 1-2 loser

Final
Semifinal winner at 1-2 winner

Yes, the 1-2 quarterfinal loser gets another chance. That’s a perk of finishing in the top two.

And that’s the beauty of this system. The higher the seed, the more of an advantage a team has.

No more griping about the top seed gaining little advantage in a two-leg series. No more coasting once a team has wrapped up a playoff berth.

The top seed gets home field and another chance with a loss. The second seed gets a second chance and will host its second game, either the semifinal or the final.

The third seed gets to skip the play-in game and host a quarterfinal. The fourth seed gets to host the play-in game.

The fifth seed is a long shot.

Here’s how it would’ve worked this year:

WEST

Play-in
#5 Los Angeles at #4 Seattle. This game was actually played, with Seattle winning 3-2.

Quarterfinals
Seattle at #3 Portland
#2 Vancouver at #1 Dallas

Semifinal
Seattle-Portland winner at Vancouver-Dallas loser

Final
Semifinal winner at Vancouver-Dallas winner

EAST

Play-in
#5 New England at #4 D.C. United. In the real world, D.C. won this game 2-1.

Quarterfinals
D.C. at #3 Montreal
#2 Columbus at #1 New York

Semifinal
D.C.-Montreal winner at Columbus-NY loser

Final
Semifinal winner at Columbus-NY winner

The advantages of this system:

  • Regular-season performance is rewarded.
  • Fewer games than current system.
  • No awkward two-leg series. Every game advances one team; most games eliminate one team.

Disadvantages: None.

So there you have it. Again.

1
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: The bond of a rec team

Posted on by Beau Dure

My U12 House league team finished its season on a chilly, windy Saturday morning, completing a four-team mini-tournament with a win on penalty kicks.

After the game, the parents gave me a photo book. The joy of the season was on every page. Each player had a couple of pictures and a comment or two about the season and the team. One player even had a message for the people who hand out coaching licenses, telling them they should just hand me whatever license I was seeking. (I’m halfway to the D.)

Some teams in our league have been together, more or less, for a few years. Our team isn’t like that, but I did coach a lot of these players back when they were U8s. A couple of them played travel soccer for a few years and returned to House league this year so they could play multiple sports without overloading their schedules. Some play soccer every other season. Some moved to our town more recently.

But we have a wonderful bond. A couple of the families live in my neighborhood. I see others at school when I pick up my kids.

After our game and the postgame festivities, I drove one of our players home. Then I swung by another player’s home to drop off the photo he wasn’t able to pick up because he was sick. His little sister heard me in the hallway and called out, “Hi, Coach Beau!”

I know travel teams can build up this sort of bond over time. But there’s something unique about a team built around a school and a neighborhood.

These kids did learn a few things about soccer over the course of the season. A couple of players did things in the last game that they couldn’t have done in the first. We had some productive practices, and something sunk in.

But we also made and strengthened friendships. And I got a book I’ll treasure.

Have you read Single-Digit Soccer yet? Read more about it here.

0
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: The challenge of finding a properly challenging level

Posted on by Beau Dure

The book Coaching Outside the Box: Changing the Mindset in Youth Soccer has a chapter with best-case and worst-case scenarios for moving up and facing a tougher level of competition.

The best case is a nice tale of a U11 boy named Liam, technically proficient but small in stature, who is invited to play up one age group for one or two games by a caring coach who lays out the pros and cons, then makes it his decision.

The worst case is a depressing story of a U9 girl named Sally, who is on a low-level travel team but interested in doing more. So she tries out for a local “premier” team that accepts her but shoves her on defense so she can run down opposing forwards despite lacking the technique to play at that level. The coach “reassures” the parents by telling them the team needs her speed. But the coach yells at her for making mistakes, and she’s miserable, realizing (even if her parents don’t) that she’s just not ready to play here.

Finding the right level is one of the biggest challenges in youth soccer, and it’s worst in the prime development years between U8 and U12. By U13 or so, most players have settled into a team that plays a particular level — an actual elite league, a pseudo-elite league, or the local multidivision travel league that sorts out the competition. Even rec leagues have ways of sorting things out.

It’s rather strange that we as a soccer community don’t make more of an effort to make games more even at this age. Granted, the vagaries of U9 soccer make matchmaking difficult — a single player with a big shot or a precocious goalkeeper can make a big difference in the score, which may or may not reflect the balance of play. But too many leagues spend an entire season letting one team dominate or one team get crushed, then schedule things exactly the same way the next season.

A lot of these leagues view promotion and relegation as an evil concept. If teams are worried about being relegated, the consensus says, they’ll play for the result rather than development. Fair enough. Some “club-centric” “elite” leagues don’t have promotion/relegation at any age group.

So what do you do when you get a lot of 9-0 games? You may not care about the result. But is anyone developing? Is the team with 0 learning anything or simply too overwhelmed to use whatever skills they’ve been picking up in practice? Is the team with 9 getting anything other than a mild sweat?

A couple of things that can help:

  1. Clubs should be on the same page, more or less, when it comes to how they’re approaching the competition. That wasn’t the case in a U8 competition I saw in which some teams were tossed together out of an open-enrollment training program while others were selected by tryout from a large talent pool.
  2. Without having formal promotion/relegation, leagues should take note of how teams are playing and adjust from the fall season to the spring season. If a couple of teams are losing badly or winning a series of blowout, schedule those teams against each other the next season.
  3. If some clubs in your league are tiering their teams (A, B, C, etc.) and others aren’t, don’t just hand the non-tiered teams a schedule full of other clubs’ A teams. Mix it up.

Bottom line: Be aware. If you have an opportunity to avoid a whole season of blowouts, do it.

The game needs to be fun. Blowouts aren’t fun.

 

0