I wonder if those coaches planned to "disband" their teams the following season? There are not many coaches around here who would "shop" their better players to other teams.
A change in mentality question for the group.....
- Thread starter JAD
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I wonder if those coaches planned to "disband" their teams the following season? There are not many coaches around here who would "shop" their better players to other teams.
- May 8, 2013
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True, not many coaches would probabably be willing to do this. My DD's coach is very supportive of her - she chose to stay on her current team instead of taking a spot on a "marquee" team because she wasn't 100% sure of her future goals (although she now says she wants to definitely play in college, but wants to stay local). I know that her current coach plans to put the girls in 16u and 18u tourneys as a 2nd year 14u team and would gladly contact other coaches on her behalf.
I've been the head coach of my current team for the past 3 years, from the time we were 2nd year 12Us to now (second year 14Us). I don't have a DD on this team, and I have no intention of moving up with the players aging out (the team has known this for at least 16 months). I am not the right guy for that since many of the girls have college aspirations, and I know my limitations (I stopped coaching my DD when she aged up to 14U a few years ago, but that is another thread). Last year, we played in a major college showcase in the area as a first year 14U team, and ended up joining a "name" organization this year to be the 14U feeder team for their Gold team. My goal has been to develop the girls so that they have a chance to play for the mother ship, and if not, help find them another Gold/Showcase team at the end of the year. I plan to stay in the organization as the 14U coach for as long as they will have me (and my DW lets me!). It's a nice arrangement, as they provide us with training and opportunities that I alone could not have ofered, and the potential to play on a team with a long history of placing kids in good D1 programs.
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Shopping players is rare in the younger years, but at 14u it becomes a moment of truth for a lot of teams and individuals. I would've loved to have kept my girls from 6 to 18, but that would have been selfish of me and might have jeopardized their collegiate chances.
As a father and a coach, I had taken and taught them as far as my knowledge would allow. For the recruiting years I felt it was time to hand the keys over to someone experienced in driving around that part of town ( college farm teams ). I "might" have been able to navigate the showcase process myself with the team, but that was not a gamble I was willing to take, especially when better options were available for the girls only a couple hours away.
Many......many of the regional teams we played against since 8u disbanded at 14. Some disbanded not by choice ( individuals just left on their own ), some agreed to disband as a whole. I'm just glad we had a plan, made the transition much easier for all involved.
- Sep 29, 2014
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While not a guarantee, playing for the right organization can be a ticket to at least the opportunity to play college ball. I don't know if it is this way around the country but in Texas where I was until recently, if you were in the right organization you were pretty much going to play college ball. What that usually meant was coaches and asst coaches that had relationships with maybe half a dozens schools. So you might see their gold team with 2 or 3 players going upper tier D1 (usually Big 12), another 2 or 3 lower level D1, then the rest of the team gong to smaller schools but always the SAME schools. So that college would get 1 or 2 girls from their team every year...different organizations hooked up with different colleges and over the years the school plugged into each organization would change as coaches rotated out.
One thing I have noticed is some schools place a lot of their verballed players on a particular TB team after they have verballed. If you just look at the TB team roster you would think that there was a "pipeline" from the TB organization to the college.
Thunderbolts 97 Home Page
02Crush
Way past gone
I have more questions as I am 4 years behind you and this sounds like a good learning experience for me and DD.
Please feel free to post your questions here or if you prefer send me or anyone else in this thread a PM!
This was a valuable lesson I learned last year - the hard way. My DD and I LOVED being a part of an independent team, and then a Tier-2 organization. We were one of those teams that could compete with the Tier-1 marquee teams on the field, but when it came to recruiting most of the big name D1 coaches would not give us the time of day. And the funny part was a lot of the D2 and D3 coaches that did come to watch us play would barely give my DD a second look because they knew she could play D1 and they did not want to waste their time. We were literally caught in a recruiting "catch-22"....
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