I’m going to bring my old blog back as a soccer parent blog – I might toss in some real estate related posts as well, who knows.
Growing up soccer was not my best sport or favorite sport. I did play year-round on very good but not national level club teams, but soccer always took a back seat to basketball, baseball, and eventually golf. Now, I’m an immersed soccer parent. I spend a lot of time thinking about youth soccer, one day plan to coach, and I am excited to have a front row seat to the development of two of my kids and and also very curious to watch the tops players in these age groups grow and develop to see if I can learn something along the way.
My kids currently play for the Michigan Stars. As a club they recently had a big merger, they are on the come-up as an organization, strong but not top and only 8 minutes from our house. My daughter plays on a very strong team, currently #2 in Michigan and probably a top 30 team nationally. My 13-year old son plays on the Michigan Stars Elite Second team (ranked 16 in the state of Michigan).
My son (Will) and my daughter (Lexie) have had very different soccer journeys. My son was never a true standout at any level and has slowly and steadily climbed the ladder. When I coached him in AYSO, he was the 3rd best player out of 7. As a parent, I don’t really subscribe to playing sports for fun. I see sports “fun” as a function of improvement and winning. I don’t see how staying the same or getting worse and losing can ever be enjoyable for the kid or the parent. As a life lesson, I think sports teaches a critical lesson that effort leads to improvement and then results, even if its not always very linear.
In order to justify the time (and money) commitment , I think a child should show the willingness to work outside of practice to improve. If after a few years they complain about practice or extra training, I think it’s best to find something they like better. But I do recommend forcing them at young ages to try things – don’t let fear of new things block them.
Over the last six years there were 1-2 times where I was considering talking to my son about quitting soccer or spending our time on something else. It just seemed like he was going through the motions. Almost as I was ready to have that conversation with him, the switch flipped.
Will was lucky enough to make a team with a great coach with a winning mentality. My son’s willingness to improve outside of practice and excitement for the sport has never been higher. It’s a very exciting time for him. He wants to be a varsity soccer player, I think that’s certainly within reach and with a little luck on the athleticism front, who knows after that.
Lexie is more of a natural athlete. I spent so much time getting ready for AYSO with my son – my daughter who was 3 or 4 at the time would just hang around. Then she would come in and I would give her a few minutes at the end, never really thinking much of it. Lexie went into AYSO pretty much cold and was way better than all the other kids, boys and girls. I remember looking at my wife Katie and asking her if she saw this coming and she shrugged and laughed along with me. The natural path is that you get invited to a travel team after that and meet more of the kids that were AYSO standouts.
So we have a – the natural vs the hard-worker dynamic developing. My son has seen some adversity and overcome it. My daughter for the most part has yet to hit any real adversity. It will be interesting to see how that plays out – not as competitors vs each other obviously – but as how the different paths have different challenges. I don’t plan to blog much about my kids or their teams specifically, but mostly about parenting/coaching/soccer/training and then more about the local, state, and even national landscape of soccer.
justinsadauskas 