What's the word on RR from Seattle United as a coach or otherwise? Just doing some due diligence before tryout season starts. Any thoughts are appreciated
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It's unfortunate that this board doesn't have a search feature. I'll put it this way: Please investigate all your options at various clubs. -
you can search, button on the top right corner on the state threads screen above the view counts.Comment
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I had a kid play for him one year (RR left mid-year, so it wasn’t a full season). Her experience with him was good. He knows college programs and coaches around the country well, and is good at networking and helping to identify a good fit (and, as importantly, communicating when a school is not in the cards so you should focus your attention elsewhere). With teams that he’s been with for longer he’s taken pride in finding spots for the whole roster and succeeded in doing so. His teams work hard in training and on the field, and he’s very competitive. He’s a grown up with a family, so has a better understanding of what it’s like outside the soccer coach bubble than many coaches. He communicates clearly both on and off the field; he actively coaches from the sideline but it’s not the constant torrent of commentary you see from BW. Negatives: his competitiveness sometimes slides over into bad mouthing other clubs and coaches and overstating the likelihood of a player joining his team or the benefits of making a move to his. His efforts to orchestrate the comings and goings have sometimes backfired, and even when they haven’t they’ve rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He has a lot of balls in the air between his various jobs/roles (uw, su, gk, girls director, teams) and it’s surely a challenge to effectively attend to each. Bubble players who have been told they’d be placed on the b team, train regularly with the top team, and have a chance to move up often haven’t gotten the opportunities they expected, but that’s more of a club issue and one that’s not limited to SU. His teams sometimes play a relatively direct/smashmouth/intensely athletic style, which isn’t what everyone is looking for. Some may see it as a negative that he always has his eye out for players who will make his teams better and won’t hesitate to bring them in and drop a starter if he thinks it makes sense to do so, but your view on that probably deepens on whether you’re the dropeee or a player who now has a better team. Overall there aren’t a lot of coaches out there I’d rather have a kid play for.Originally posted by Unregistered View PostComment
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Thank you for the very helpful post, exactly what I was looking for and hopefully useful to others as well.Comment
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RR Feedback
Just to follow up on the previous post (which I agree with 100%) - come to a game & observe. What you see is what you get with RR. If your player can’t handle being called out on an error and if that will undermine the rest of their game, RR may not be a good fit. However, IMO, 99% of his in-game coaching comments are on-point & are meant to improve a player. (Still not easy to hear as a parent)!
Praise/compliments are few and far between. He is a college coach and expects a lot of maturity from his Seattle United teams.
Ultimately, this works for our HS age kid. It’s not always easy & fun, but it’s a life lesson- raised expectations = raised level of play. Good luck!Comment
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