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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 4974248, member: 153"] VERY LONG RESPONSE: Kobe, I support your decision to stick with the travel local teams and I'll give my reasons why. Right now, my youngest daughter is playing at the highest levels of US youth soccer, the top league, on a club whose boys are affiliated with MLS Next (in other words, one of the top 80 clubs in the nation). I am begging her to return to travel soccer for a number of reasons. One, it's too much, too much away from school and school activities. This weekend she was in Canton, Ohio, she missed a Physics test on Friday, and she's struggling in that class. And she's taken an even greater interesting in singing/acting (already making money from it). Two, I've already been through this with my older daughter who played at a very high level, and what I saw from the outcomes of all her fellow teammates has me returning to skepticism of the whole circus. Fishy mentions above not seeing a high level of talent on these very high-falutin' teams. That was me with my older daughter several years ago. I kept telling the other parents I doubted this was going to lead to anything for the girls. When the team came up against loaded teams with true talent at far away renowned national tournaments, the girls had their heads handed to them. Our coach sold a bill of goods and absolutely knew what tourneys to schedule and what brackets to join to make his girls look good. But the rubber hit the road eventually. Now, I said I doubted the girls were ticketed for D1. Turns out, I was wrong. A lot of them went on to play D1 soccer this year. Only 3 of the 18 ended up in D3. I was genuinely surprised that what I considered a lot of mediocrity would be taking that mediocrity to D1. Then I peeled back the layers a little more. D1 recruiting budgets are small. Coaches struggle to identify talent in those small windows. A local D1 coach I'm friends with told me he took 2 boys sight unseen from the Kansas City MLS Club's NextPro team. They sit on the bench and haven't seen playing time all year. One player with our club (one level up from my oldest) was pretty decent with us, but nothing eye popping, she was all B1G freshman this year and scored 10+ goals for Ohio St. I found that shocking. I seem to have underestimated these girls. OK, so then it's worth it? This summer I found myself at an outdoor concert for the Pixies sitting on a blanket next to a D1 coach I know. And we talked about one of the girls, and he basically laid it all out, what a sham it is, how unprepared they are to play real soccer after all these years (he's a former Dutch First Division pro with a Uefa Pro coaching license). He tells me that all but 2 of his girls receive only a $2k discount on tuition for playing soccer... at his private D1 university. All that work, all those years, all that tuition, for $2k off (and that's really a meaningless number). So I'm trying to get my daughter to drop down, but the coaches keep pointing to the successes. My older daughter's good friend is in the USWNT youth camp and will be a freshman next year at UNC (top program in the US). Multiple girls have landed at place like Pitt, Ohio St, Alabama and Providence. But all in all, the likelihood is that you'll instead end up at a place like St. Bonaventure footing a $50k tuition bill. Two positives for high level sports: 1. If you're very wealthy and planning on footing the now $90k bill a year for college, then sports is a good way to get your kid admitted to a top college in the summer special admissions window (where students aren't given any financial aid). 2. We have spent a lot of time in the car discussing everything from music (theirs and mine), books, friends, politics, advice, making jokes. That part has been good. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach