With all due respect to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (now known as Will Smith), sometimes parents DO understand.
Skye Eddy Bruce, an experienced player and coach, is now working to help parents understand youth soccer and then advocate for their kids. Throughout this interview, she and I talk about empowering parents. (And educating them — the idea isn’t to have ignorant parents berating coaches all over the country.) We don’t need to let coaches push winning over development, and we don’t need to sign up for the league that travels all over creation.
A few highlights:
2:15 About the Soccer Parenting Association — seeking to elevate the game with a focus on educating, engaging, supporting and advocating for youth soccer parents. And Bruce’s bio — including playing in Italy!
5:15 The stereotype of ignorant parents and how it’s changing. Includes a reference to this video:
12:55 Bringing up Bobby Warshaw’s concern about balancing “being a good person” with “being a good player.”
15:55 Putting too much of an emphasis on winning can drive kids away.
19:45 The true purpose of youth soccer
20:35 The proliferation of “elite leagues.”
28:20 The need to standardize our language — what does “elite” mean? Or “classic” or anything else?
33:35 Down with specialization! (At least, parents should be able to say that.)
You can’t fault the Washington Spirit for trading Kristie Mewis. She’s a strong attacking player who hasn’t been a full-time starter in recent weeks as the Spirit fully embrace their non-contender status and continue to develop a gaggle of young attackers who have been better than expected. She has trade value, and yet it’s reasonable to omit her from the current starting XI.
The question: What are they getting for her, and what does it say about the Spirit’s awareness of where this team really stands?
The early indication from coach Jim Gabarra on Lifetime’s broadcast is that they’re going for even more youth:
Per Jim Gabarra the Kristie Mewis trade is for a draft pick or "a player for the future"
Here’s why I’m skeptical: Mark Parsons turned this team around in 2014 and 2015 by trading away a whole bunch of young players for those with more experience. He and fellow English coach Laura Harvey figured it out early on — this league devours rookies. Sometimes, it’s just for a year, and then they figure it out. (See Crystal Dunn, Kealia Ohai, Sarah Killion, etc.) Sometimes, a player whose ACC accomplishments gave Anson Dorrance nightmares simply can’t adjust to a higher level (or playing 90 minutes).
It’s easy to get attached to the 2017 Spirit underdogs. Their third-round draft picks (Arielle Ship, Megan Dougherty Howard) matched up just fine with Boston’s first-round picks in their last home game (to be fair, the Breakers were missing Rose Lavelle, who was resetting our expectations of rookies before her injury). Havana Solaun, all but forgotten in Seattle, has been solid. The Spirit touted Dougherty Howard’s passing acumen in the press release on today’s loss at North Carolina, where the 2-0 scoreline flattered the Courage. Their effort is rarely lacking.
But we saw this in 2013 as well. Some of the losses were unlucky. Injuries took a toll. Unheralded players had bright moments. I was told the passing stats, even more of a secret then than they are today with Opta, made a couple of rookies look fantastic.
Most of those players didn’t last. I count six players from the 2013 roster who are still in the NWSL. (Four of them in Orlando!) That includes three allocated players who had plenty of experience before arriving in Washington.
Several of the young Spirit players are doing better than expected — particularly on offense, which hasn’t been the problem this season. But there’s a difference between overachieving as a rookie or second-year player on a young team and being a true building block of a playoff-contending team in the future.
The Spirit have a glaring immediate need. It’s defense. They’ve conceded 32 goals, second-worst in the league, and goalkeeper Stephanie Labbe isn’t the problem.
That’s not a need that can easily be filled in a draft. Andi Sullivan has some national team experience and strong D.C.-area ties that might bring her to the Spirit even if they don’t get the No. 1 draft pick (if this were MLS, the Spirit would just slap a “homegrown” tag on her and rest easy), but she should really be a No. 6, not a center back.
Now perhaps the Spirit wouldn’t be able to get a starting center back for Kristie Mewis. Or perhaps they have plans to stockpile some younger players and draft picks, then package them together in a trade.
But Spirit fans have to be hoping the team isn’t expecting to take this year’s squad, add a few draft picks and make the playoffs. That’s simply not a realistic view of where this team stands.
“If you let your kid play sports, she’ll grow up to be a productive member of society! If you don’t, what’s wrong with you?”
That’s the subtext of a lot of sports marketing ads for everything from the NCAA to shoe companies. And we sports journalists buy in whole hog.
But wait a minute. Aren’t some of the traits that make someone a good athlete — aggression, attitude, a winner-takes-all mentality — actually bad traits to have in life?
Bobby Warshaw played at Stanford and went on to the pros in MLS and Scandinavia. His book, When the Dream Became Reality: The journey of a professional soccer player, and the push for meaning, purpose, and contentment, wrestles with the duality of being a good athlete and a good person.
Along the way, we talk about the now-dissolved Bradenton academy (“There’s no human being that came out of that Bradenton academy that was a regular person after that”), promotion/relegation, parenting, character-building and whether the Scandinavians know something we don’t about how to live.
Concentrating on soccer was rather difficult this afternoon. When we weren’t checking updates on Charlottesville, we were checking the weather. A couple of minutes after the final whistle, the SoccerPlex lightning-detection system kicked into gear, and we all had a wet drive home.
But the game deserves some mention, even if it was basically a showdown between two teams battling for eighth place in a 10-team league. It ended 2-2, which won’t propel either team to seventh place, let alone a playoff berth that’s surely unattainable by this point.
Even with only one team below them in the standings, I’d argue both teams have overachieved this season. They’re both young teams, and between them, their injury lists nearly comprise a strong starting 11. But today, the Spirit played inspired soccer in stretches, while the Breakers showed plenty of resilience.
Boston coach Matt Beard wasn’t quite pleased, though — at least, as far as we could tell while conducting interviews in a gym where several youth basketball games were in progress. (As Lloyd Yaxley once put it: Why would someone invent such a noisy game?) Beard’s view: Goalkeeper Abby Smith had a terrific performance, the team took advantage of its opportunities to score two goals, and the Breakers turned the ball over far too often.
Washington coach Jim Gabarra was also unhappy, though in his case, it was his ongoing concern that referees simply aren’t calling enough fouls to protect players. He had a point, in this game and through the season, though Breakers fans may rightly wonder why Caprice Dydasco wiped out Tiffany Weimer twice in the opening minutes. Maybe the Millennials really want anyone over 30 to disappear?
(The ref gave Dydasco a few stern words, which apparently helped. But other players are a little less receptive to the “Hi, could you please stop running over your opponent?” school of officiating.)
Other than that, it’s hard to draw any long-term conclusions from this game. I’d wanted to see if the Spirit’s youth movement was for real, but their younger attackers were a bit erratic today after a busy stretch of games. They were more dangerous when Cheyna Williams came in, and that’s not the first time I’ve said that this season.
I can’t judge the Breakers’ youth movement as long as Rose Lavelle is out. They’re a different team without her.
But both teams have a lot of potential to be better next season. Neither team has had much luck with injuries, and the Spirit could certainly feel they deserved better today.
And it was certainly entertaining. Best of all, they managed to squeeze in the whole game before the storms hit. We were told Lifetime would cut to a movie if the game was scrubbed, and the world doesn’t need that. Seeing a bunch of young athletes with skill and potential was a lot better than that, and it was a nice diversion on a day in which we really needed it.
Charles Barkley said he isn’t a role model. Women’s soccer players, though, have typically embraced that role. But does being on a pedestal come with inevitable pitfalls? Jen Cooper, keeper of Keeper Notes and the Mixxed Zone podcast, joins the show to talk about it.
We cover (in rough order; see Podbean for the timestamps): four-letter words, arrests, fan worship, Christie Pearce on divorce and therapy, Abby Wambach’s memoir, collective bargaining propaganda, the fawning mainstream media, 99ers heteronormative “girl next door” marketing, soccer moms, and yes, Hope Solo.
Sometime last night, while the U.S. women were losing to Brazil (before the frenetic last 10 minutes yielded an improbable 4–3 win), WoSo Twitter was melting down.
And it wasn’t without reason. I found myself recalling that Tom Sermanni lost his job for far less experimentation than Jill Ellis has been doing in 2017.
But the consensus is that Sermanni was unjustly fired, isn’t it? Wouldn’t we (mostly) agree that it’s a good thing that no block of veteran players is going to grumble every time the lineup changes and force U.S. Soccer to start from scratch?
Some of the concern on Twitter was about this elusive “chemistry” that the team might lose by shifting things around. But we’re still two years from the next World Cup. As it stands now, the players in the best form are Megan Rapinoe and Christen Press. Who’s to say it won’t be Crystal Dunn and Tobin Heath in 2019?
National teams have to experiment at some point. Otherwise, we get situations in which, say, only one goalkeeper and two central defenders have any experience. That’s not good.
Now the question is whether Jill Ellis is choosing the right experiments. She has plenty of time right now, but it’s not unlimited. The team won’t play enough games to try every possible permutation of 40 or so players. The 3–5–2 formation trotted out earlier this year may be best saved for the time the USA would actually use it — trailing late in the game (like last night). We may also wonder why Lindsey Horan is getting a run at forward when we have plenty of evidence that says she’s best as a midfield playmaker, a position the USA has never had in abundance. (Arguably none since Aly Wagner.)
And yes, Becky Sauerbrunn at defensive mid was an odd call. I can see a bit of a case — she hasn’t been flawless in 2017, she could surely do the job, and moving her gives other players an opportunity. But there’s little doubt her best position and the team’s greatest need are in central defense.
Yet the experiments do yield some results. At this point, the clear choice for defensive mid — a position occupied by converted forwards all too often — is Sauerbrunn’s former partner, Julie Ertz. And if you had to pick one forward right now, you’d have to pick Christen Press. We can also conclude that Megan Rapinoe’s run of form in the NWSL is no fluke.
All that said, Ellis may still need to try other people in those positions this year. Players lose form and get hurt. That’s why the U.S. men rarely field a recognizable lineup from one game to the next in friendlies and the Gold Cup group stage.
It’s taken us nearly 20 years to realize a national team needs more than 15 players. Don’t spoil it now!
And let’s be clear — a lot of the failings you saw last night had nothing to do with unfamiliarity. Abby Dahlkemper isn’t sending weak passes back to the keeper because she’s not familiar with her defensive partner. Alex Morgan isn’t failing to spot her passing options because she doesn’t know Press or Dunn. (Maybe playing a bunch of blowouts in Lyon didn’t sharpen Morgan’s form. I’d be tempted to argue that playing in England might have hurt Dunn and Carli Lloyd, but it didn’t hurt the English national team!)
And still — the USA didn’t play that badly last night over the whole 90 minutes. The first Brazilian goal was a shot that Alyssa Naeher saves 99 times out of 100. After consulting with the Laws of the Game and a few refs, I’d say the ref erred in giving an indirect kick for dangerous play instead of a penalty kick when Sauerbrunn took a Holly Holm-style boot to the face — the intent may not have been there, but the Laws do mention “contact,” which obviously was.
Rewind to the 2008 Olympic final. The USA beat Brazil in that game because Hope Solo played out of her mind and Carli Lloyd took a shot that changed her life. The gap between the USA and Brazil has historically not been huge.
If you’d said before last night’s game that the USA would concede a goalkeeping howler, concede a goal on a world-class free kick, be robbed of a penalty kick and see Dunn, Morgan and Mallory Pugh squandering chances, would you have predicted a 4–3 win? Probably not.
So let’s not excuse everything. Maybe spread some of the blame to the players, some of whom are simply not at their best right now for whatever reason.
And we can hope Sauerbrunn stays on the back line from now on. Otherwise, on to the next experiment … (maybe Campbell at keeper? Or Krieger with Sauerbrunn in central defense?)
It’s easy to debate promotion and relegation when you have no money or livelihood at stake. What about those who run or coach teams up and down this weirdly constructed pyramid of U.S. leagues?
I’ve sent out a survey to the following:
All NASL teams
All independent USL teams (not MLS reserve teams)
NPSL: The easiest email addresses to find (about 10), then whichever teams I could find among those in the round of 16 of this year’s playoffs or in last place in their respective divisions. (Figured I’d try to get some of the top teams and some of the bottom.)
PDL: Playoff teams and last-place teams — if I could find contact info.
UPSL: The 13 easiest email addresses to find.
Then I went scrounging for email addresses from USASA Elite Leagues and a few others:
American Soccer League (ASL, East Coast)
American Premier Soccer League (APSL, Fla.)
Buffalo and District Soccer League (BDSL)
Cosmopolitan Soccer League (CSL, NY/NJ/Conn.)
Evergreen Premier League (EPL, Pacific NW)
Gulf Coast Premier League (GCPL)
Long Island Soccer Football League (LISFL)
Maryland Major Soccer League (MMSL)
Michigan Premier Soccer League (MPSL)
Premier League of America (PLA, Great Lakes)
Rochester and District Soccer League (RDSL)
San Francisco Soccer Football League (SFSFL)
SoCal Premier League
United Soccer League (USL, Pa.)
Washington Premier League (WSL, DC/Md./Va.)
If you’re in one of these leagues and didn’t get a survey, please get in touch, and I’ll send you one.
(I’m obviously not just going to throw open a link, because then the Twitter troll brigade will skew the results. A bit.)
Gwendolyn Oxenham and I both went to Duke, but she’s a more typical Dukie overachiever — soccer player, filmmaker, author, etc. Her new book, Under the Lights and In the Dark: Untold Stories of Women’s Soccer, collects interesting stories from all over, showing us what women’s soccer players do to compete and get better in a sport that is providing more opportunities than in the past but not quite as much as we’d all like.
She also chats here about her youth soccer experience (a devoted coach!) and what she’d like to see for her kids.
English Premier League soccer team Manchester City has launched SkillCity, presented by Nexen, a new interactive app that will help develop the talents of young soccer players across the US. The City squad is currently in the United States for its pre-season tour, visiting Houston, Los Angeles and Nashville.
SkillCity will see young players compete across a series of challenges that have been exclusively developed by the Club’s City Football Schools coaches. The four challenges will allow boys and girls aged 5–14 years old to test their speed of movement, ball mastery, finishing and passing — ranking themselves against their friends and Manchester City players. Manchester City player Kevin De Bruyne and former Manchester City Women’s player, and Tour Ambassador, Carli Lloyd have already tested the app and users can watch these videos to help develop their skills.
U.S. women’s soccer is already well-represented in this app genre. Former WPS Commissioner Tonya Antonucci was on iSoccer’s board of directors. Kristine Lilly’s long association with Coerver carried over to apps.
And last week’s Ranting Soccer Dad podcast guest, Yael Averbuch, teaches skills through her Techne Futbol app.
I’ve got a healthy skepticism of coaches who imply they’d be able to develop the next Messi while few other coaches could handle it. This quote puts it best:
But there’s no doubt Brian Kleiban, the subject of RSD podcast guest Mike Woitalla’s latest Q-and-A, has a lot of good things to say about coaching. And here’s one:
In my opinion, less is more. Figure out your core exercises to teach the basic fundamentals and team style of play. Work them over and over and over again. Demand perfection and execution in training. Once it becomes clear on consistent basis that they have mastered it individually and collectively, you can add layers of complexity. Until then, stick to the same things. Most coaches just jump around, all over the place with new content to fool everyone that they can run different sessions each and every day. The players never improve in any facets of their games this way.
Note that this runs directly counter to what we’re all told in the USSF license sequence. We’re supposed to plan out a curriculum, like we’re science teachers or something. Teach a new topic each time, reinforcing it with every step from warmups to scrimmage.
And for most coaches, that’s a royal (and wholly unnecessary) pain. For one thing, coaches end up spending half the practice explaining a bunch of new drills. For another — when was the last time you mastered something in 15 minutes?
Duresport.com 