Kid's sports - The Sequel

[lookout123]

I put this in Home Base because that is where the first thread was, but we can move it to sports if you all want. Or delete it altogether if you really want.

After people complained about the results from last season we decided to make sure that the teams were divided up more evenly for this session. That translated to me (and the other 4 coaches who bothered showing up) spending 3+ hours at the club one night running every single player through some evals. we each rated every player and then sat down to go through the numbers. The coaches who showed up were the more reasonable ones who want to make sure that fun and learning is priority one. The blowhards were apparently busy. After lots of ideas were thrown out I suggested we each go to the whiteboard and list each of our returning players under our teams and assume we would keep them unless and until one team looks too overpowering and then we could fill all the new kids in around the existing kids in a way to balance things out.

I went to the board and started writing names. I had lil lookout and 3 girls and 1 boy coming back. my number 2 scorer, and 2 really stroong defenders didn't come back. 2 of my strongest players, B and C, I assumed I was losing because they are family friends and we recruited C's dad as a new coach (I'm helping him in addition to my own team). I assumed he would form his team around those two. He piped in from the back though that the parents had talked and they want B and C on my team because they wanted them to stick with me. Fine by me, so I already had 7 of my expected 10 players.

We had assigned each player a number between 1-5 as a rating, 5 being the most skilled. I rated my team as two 4's, four 3's, and a 2. The other coaches had rated my players as two 5's, four 4's, and two 3's. A little generous is you look at the kids, but I already knew where this was going. Long story short, I took on 2 more boys who had never seen a soccer ball before. All I had asked for is that I get someone who can player keeper, but they wanted me to trade away lil lookout and my 2nd most experienced player to get that. No thanks, I'll teach them to stop as many as they can and just outscore the other teams.

The other teams look pretty even on paper. We picked up some really really good players from another club that has had some issues lately. There are two players that I can't believe aren't playing travel team at a higher age bracket - they were awesome in evals. big, aggressive, and SKILLS. Very impressive. 1 of the other coaches was really complaining about his "weak squad" and how he wouldn't stand a chance even though we let him have the 2 most impressive kids that came in new, 6 of his existing players, and a couple more decent newbies. Average ratings wise, his team had the same strength mine does, but he still complained so they decided that the first game of the session would be my kids against his. If the score was too out of line we'd change the teams. I saw trouble brewing, but oh well. My opinion is that, although he is a friend, he is a poor coach. He doesn't give direction or explain why or when a skill is important, he just drills the skills and tells them to go play and then complains about being overmatched when his kids resort to jumbleball and lose. Oh well.

Next up: Game One