Patience!

[Unregistered]

are you kidding me? 50% couples got divorce and I am sure marriage is pretty important to most of them. Have you ever truly changed the behavior of your spouse? Good luck dealing with a bunch of morons in an organization.

Divorce is what quitters do, next!!

[Unregistered]

Divorce is what quitters do, next!!

Quitting is what former smokers, former drinkers and former drug users do to.

You should really quit being a ********* too, but I forgot you are no quitter! Good for you.

[Unregistered]

Divorce is what quitters do, next!!

Next level TS trolling.

[Unregistered]

are you kidding me? 50% couples got divorce and I am sure marriage is pretty important to most of them. Have you ever truly changed the behavior of your spouse? Good luck dealing with a bunch of morons in an organization.

No, he's not kidding you, he's trolling you. Adding nothing to the discussion...not unlike a youth soccer board member who thinks everything is just fine, nothing to see here, move along. Probably works for the state too.

[Unregistered]

Because I really don't want your kid to develop. Your kid will end up competing with my kid for a spot on the travel team, a spot on the top local club team, the starting center mid position on that club team, a spot on a destination club team, the high school team, an invitation to an I.D. camp, some good press in the local paper, a college scholarship offer, a starting spot on the college team. Your kid and my kid are competitors, at least in my eyes. It's an arms race, and if my kid starts out bigger and stronger, and your kid falls by the way side because he develops a bit slower, then my kid wins. After my kid is safely ahead, I'll root for your kid to become good enough to be a supporting player on one of my kid's teams.

This is our culture, and it's why youth sports are set up the way they are.

Your kid will be one of the many that drops by the wayside on the way to that gloried college team. Very high percentage of ghost in top young fall away because their initial advantages were ONLY due to this stuff. There will be too little true love of the game or work ethic to prevail later.

Mine wasn't a soccer superstar young. Too busy playing several sports and being a kid. Passed the slackers with the helicopter parents quickly though on way to captain ides and all-conference honors in college.

One of the most precocious youth players of our time was fat and unable to keep up by u-16. Many other "stars" fell by he wayside but about 20% of he kids who were "elite" back at u-12 actually played in college. Good luck with that model.

[Unregistered]

No, he's not kidding you, he's trolling you. Adding nothing to the discussion...not unlike a youth soccer board member who thinks everything is just fine, nothing to see here, move along. Probably works for the state too.

At least you typically don't see them bitching about the state while they are collecting their no show paycheck.

[Unregistered]

Quitting is what former smokers, former drinkers and former drug users do to.

You should really quit being a ********* too, but I forgot you are no quitter! Good for you.

Never said that I never quite anything (I'm divorced). Just never bitched like a baby how tough it was to sooth my ego. When things get f**ked up in life you'll never see me jumping up on a soapbox trying to explain them away as I run away. Grow a pair.

[Unregistered]

Ugh, another thread gone bad.

Thanks to the OP for the link to the article and for starting what WAS a good discussion.

[Unregistered]

Never said that I never quite anything (I'm divorced). Just never bitched like a baby how tough it was to sooth my ego. When things get f**ked up in life you'll never see me jumping up on a soapbox trying to explain them away as I run away. Grow a pair.

Who's bitching? I never said it was tough at all. I simply like to avoid idiots like you. The times I have spent coaching and on boards, have been ruined by morons like yourself. Keep trying to get lil Johnny on the A team by sucking up to the board or by being an assistant coach.

When people have options, they usually will decide on the best one. Kind of like your ex wife.

P.S. When your marriage got ****ed up you ran away. And now you are on a soapbox. Hypocritical twit.

[Unregistered]

Your kid will be one of the many that drops by the wayside on the way to that gloried college team. Very high percentage of ghost in top young fall away because their initial advantages were ONLY due to this stuff. There will be too little true love of the game or work ethic to prevail later.

Mine wasn't a soccer superstar young. Too busy playing several sports and being a kid. Passed the slackers with the helicopter parents quickly though on way to captain ides and all-conference honors in college.

One of the most precocious youth players of our time was fat and unable to keep up by u-16. Many other "stars" fell by he wayside but about 20% of he kids who were "elite" back at u-12 actually played in college. Good luck with that model.

This is exactly why I don't get the emphasis on winning games at a young age. Kids develop differently over many years.

[Unregistered]

Who's bitching? I never said it was tough at all. I simply like to avoid idiots like you. The times I have spent coaching and on boards, have been ruined by morons like yourself. Keep trying to get lil Johnny on the A team by sucking up to the board or by being an assistant coach.

When people have options, they usually will decide on the best one. Kind of like your ex wife.

P.S. When your marriage got ****ed up you ran away. And now you are on a soapbox. Hypocritical twit.

You might be surprised that I was probably on many of those same boards. For sure it takes a village to do this stuff right and you have to cut through a lot of bs to make progress. My attitude is basically, hey f**ck you, if you don't want to do it don't do it, but don't expect someone like me who stayed in the trenches dealing with the same idiots you are crying about to give you much respect. From where I sit people like you with your self indulgent cynicism are just a much a part of the problem and the lunatic parents.

[Unregistered]

Your kid will be one of the many that drops by the wayside on the way to that gloried college team. Very high percentage of ghost in top young fall away because their initial advantages were ONLY due to this stuff. There will be too little true love of the game or work ethic to prevail later.

Mine wasn't a soccer superstar young. Too busy playing several sports and being a kid. Passed the slackers with the helicopter parents quickly though on way to captain ides and all-conference honors in college.

One of the most precocious youth players of our time was fat and unable to keep up by u-16. Many other "stars" fell by he wayside but about 20% of he kids who were "elite" back at u-12 actually played in college. Good luck with that model.

Your reading comprehension blows. Hopefully your kid is smarter than you are.

[Unregistered]

[QUOTE=Unregistered;1376972]You might be surprised that I was probably on many of those same boards. For sure it takes a village to do this stuff right and you have to cut through a lot of bs to make progress. My attitude is basically, hey f**ck you, if you don't want to do it don't do it, but don't expect someone like me who stayed in the trenches dealing with the same idiots you are crying about to give you much respect. From where I sit people like you with your self indulgent cynicism are just a much a part of the problem and the lunatic parents.[/QUOTE

I am no longer part of any problem because I left this type of mess for folks like you. Good luck with that. And I will sleep well tonight without your respect.

[Unregistered]

Because I really don't want your kid to develop. Your kid will end up competing with my kid for a spot on the travel team, a spot on the top local club team, the starting center mid position on that club team, a spot on a destination club team, the high school team, an invitation to an I.D. camp, some good press in the local paper, a college scholarship offer, a starting spot on the college team. Your kid and my kid are competitors, at least in my eyes. It's an arms race, and if my kid starts out bigger and stronger, and your kid falls by the way side because he develops a bit slower, then my kid wins. After my kid is safely ahead, I'll root for your kid to become good enough to be a supporting player on one of my kid's teams.

This is our culture, and it's why youth sports are set up the way they are.

Perspective here. I've been away for a few weeks but I guess I'm not surprised to see the same old, same old. Resentment-driven obsessions never die and indeed most often deepen and expand with age.

That said, I am intrigued by the post above. I have no idea who wrote it and don't care, and I'm not even sure what prompted the content based on the post that was quoted. At any rate, in my view the above is one of the truest offerings I've seen on TS in a long time. The content describes all of us and explains 95% of what we see here on TS. And what is described obviously does not apply just to soccer.

I'm sure parents always have been competitive, and always to some degree have measured their own worth based on how their children fare. The poster said it perfectly. If your kid isn't competing with or in my kid's way then your kid can be embraced and cheered for, even genuinely. There are scenarios where the success of other kids actually enhances one's own kid. But once that line is crossed, or one even smells the possibility of the line crossed in terms of being a competitive threat, then our backs raise up like a cat in self-defense mode. Here often this is blamed on club, even specific clubs, specific players/families, and specific opposing clubs/players/families. All of that is just but one mere example. It can be over high school captain, over team MVP, over college admissions, over who gets the book awards on a school awards night. None of us are immune.

I think this phenomenon is personally and culturally worse now because families are far more isolated and cordoned off from one another. We may engage in friendly banter and put on a good social show but often it is through gritted teeth. No one wants to credit anyone else, especially as the correlation between others getting something and our kids not getting something increases. Our own families are naturally what are most important to us, but increasingly they seem to be the only thing that is important.

And so even at very young ages we have parents masterminding, looking for edges, feeling burned when your 4 or 5 year old misses out on something, etc. And this explains much of TS. We see it every day. D1 is the best. D3 is really the best. Only these kids are special, while others say if you look through a different prism it's actually the other kids. And some think they are outside of all this, and that they are only calling out and correctly labeling those who don't really measure up. And that's the grandest of delusions, because they too, and all of us, experience the same types of visceral reactions that in our gut we know we have even when we so badly want to say that we don't.

[Unregistered]

There's a lot of schadenfreude out there.