For those of you who haven’t seen her play, Reign rookie Bethany Balcer is almost certain to win rookie of the year. (The Reign have one more home game on Sat v Portland, but Balcer may not play as she was injured after scoring the winning goal). Anyone who hasn’t seen her really missed out and should take the opportunity to get your kid there to do so next year, regardless of whether you otherwise like to spend your time bashing one club or another on this board.
Balcer’s unconventional background raises some interesting questions about talent ID and talent development in the country. She played college at the NAIA level (scoring tons of goals for a national championship team), was a multi-sport athlete who played on hs teams through hs (basketball), and apparently didn’t play ECNL (was pre-DA) and wasn’t picked out for any ynt (until a month ago when she was called up for the u23’s). She ended up on the Reign after they signed her as an undrafted free agent after lighting it up with Sounders Women.
A number young players who have recently broken through to elite levels, like Tierna Davidson and Rose Lavelle, were never picked for YNT’s until college (and played high school soccer). (Mallory Pugh, on the other hand, was on YNT’s from early on, but as a general matter US Soccer’s track record of identifying the best talent early on and developing it isn’t very good).
Has US Soccer changed something in terms of personnel or process to suggest that they will now be able to identify players like this earlier, that doing so will make them better than they otherwise would be, and that the DA is the best way to facilitate doing that? Or are the same people who have been in charge of US Soccer’s youth side all along just kinda winging it and asking everyone to trust them? Do they have some model from another country that suggests what they are doing will work better than what had worked here thus far? I think there’s a significant likelihood that the way US Soccer is going about things with DA will make it even less likely that whatever future Bethany Balcer’s who are out there will break through, and that the USWNT will ultimately be the worse for it. I suspect that the rush to early specialization and aggregation of talent onto so-called “elite” teams leads to similar issues with less elite talents on the college and even high school levels.
Balcer’s unconventional background raises some interesting questions about talent ID and talent development in the country. She played college at the NAIA level (scoring tons of goals for a national championship team), was a multi-sport athlete who played on hs teams through hs (basketball), and apparently didn’t play ECNL (was pre-DA) and wasn’t picked out for any ynt (until a month ago when she was called up for the u23’s). She ended up on the Reign after they signed her as an undrafted free agent after lighting it up with Sounders Women.
A number young players who have recently broken through to elite levels, like Tierna Davidson and Rose Lavelle, were never picked for YNT’s until college (and played high school soccer). (Mallory Pugh, on the other hand, was on YNT’s from early on, but as a general matter US Soccer’s track record of identifying the best talent early on and developing it isn’t very good).
Has US Soccer changed something in terms of personnel or process to suggest that they will now be able to identify players like this earlier, that doing so will make them better than they otherwise would be, and that the DA is the best way to facilitate doing that? Or are the same people who have been in charge of US Soccer’s youth side all along just kinda winging it and asking everyone to trust them? Do they have some model from another country that suggests what they are doing will work better than what had worked here thus far? I think there’s a significant likelihood that the way US Soccer is going about things with DA will make it even less likely that whatever future Bethany Balcer’s who are out there will break through, and that the USWNT will ultimately be the worse for it. I suspect that the rush to early specialization and aggregation of talent onto so-called “elite” teams leads to similar issues with less elite talents on the college and even high school levels.
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