sitting in the bleachers at the 08/07 tryouts in Stamford last night it was clear BS is in trouble. parents of current players all talking about the OTHER tryouts their kids are going to or which kids already have offers from other teams.
my kid is not amazing but he has definitely outgrown our town program. watching him play with existing BS players was sad. they split the kids into 4 random groups of 10-12 and each group had about 3-4 genuinely strong players (current BS and new kids). at one point they had the kids juggle. not that juggling on its own is any indication of talent, but by u11 if you are a half decent player, you should have no problem keeping the ball up for at least 5-10 touches. with a few exceptions, none of the current BS players were able to do more than 2-3 touches.
assuming all those top kids join/stay - it's about 16 players. add a few more who are being recruited with offers and you are looking at about 20. how the hell will they field 2 academy and 1 premier team out of 20 or so kids?
don't know if this is true or not but i was talking to a few BS parents who said that most of last year's u11s were offered academy spots and many (perhaps most) turned them down so BS had to take younger kids and scramble to fill spots. academy also lost some players recently so they pulled kids out of current 07 roster.
my kid is not amazing but he has definitely outgrown our town program. watching him play with existing BS players was sad. they split the kids into 4 random groups of 10-12 and each group had about 3-4 genuinely strong players (current BS and new kids). at one point they had the kids juggle. not that juggling on its own is any indication of talent, but by u11 if you are a half decent player, you should have no problem keeping the ball up for at least 5-10 touches. with a few exceptions, none of the current BS players were able to do more than 2-3 touches.
assuming all those top kids join/stay - it's about 16 players. add a few more who are being recruited with offers and you are looking at about 20. how the hell will they field 2 academy and 1 premier team out of 20 or so kids?
don't know if this is true or not but i was talking to a few BS parents who said that most of last year's u11s were offered academy spots and many (perhaps most) turned them down so BS had to take younger kids and scramble to fill spots. academy also lost some players recently so they pulled kids out of current 07 roster.
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