In our part of Michigan, soccer starts out as a recreation league. Everybody plays. Great pains are taken to ensure any talent is evenly spread among the teams.
At roughly age 9 or 10, one of the better coaches starts a team that plays other teams in the region. There are tryouts. Not everybody makes the team. It has been a while but I cannot remember if this is call "Elite" or "Premier" as apposed to Rec-League.
Many years, there are enough teams at this level to stratify into levels based on how skilled the team is. Nobody likes to lose every game of the season and the best teams don't learn anything crushing a team in the first half-period.
Then a few years later a regional team is pulled together from the kids that "rose to the top" in the previous level. The regional team travels to other, nearby metropolitan areas and plays their regional team.
One fine year the Eaton Rapids 13 year-old-boys (just above Rec-league) team were scheduled to play a team of Lansing area home-schoolers. The home-schoolers crushed the Eaton Rapids team. Even though these kids were all the same age, the home-schoolers were more athletic, more muscular and every one of them could handle the ball as well as the Eaton Rapids "star". They also played as a team. When a player was about to break into the open he would call for the ball and whoever had it would send it his way.
The home-schoolers' coach apologized profusely. They were new to how things were organized and had asked to be slotted into the "middle" strata of the Elite league. They just did not have any basis for knowing how good they were.
I saw it used in film/tv as satire, but... In the not too distant future I can forsee schools/leagues strapping weights (or electronic countermeasures) onto the more 'gifted' players so as not to hurt the feelings of those not as well gifted. Only trying to make everything fair mind you.
ReplyDeleteHarrison Beregeron.
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