Three Kinds of Select Soccer Players

All right. Been a while since I've been able to add to this, but now that the season is winding down, I'll see if I can't add a little more tips, tricks and unsolicited opinions about youth soccer in Cincinnati.

In the beginning of the 21st century (2000 - 2001) Cincinnati was the second largest youth soccer market in the US, behind St. Louis. It probably remains in the top 5 - I just haven't seen the numbers in quite a few years. This results in a huge base of soccer players, and divisions in some Select leagues down to C6, if not "deeper."

So why so many kids, and so many levels of play at the Select level? My theory is that there are three types of players on Select teams in this area. Select, Rec and Check. I forget where I first heard that theory posited, but I have adopted it like a lost kitten, and made it my own. :-)

Select players (and Elite players) are skilled players who have the ability and interest to compete at the Select level. The more of these players you have on your team (and I'll go into the dilution of the talent pool in another post) the higher level soccer your team will compete at, and the more successful your team will be. Some of the top boys teams can manage 11 or 12 quality players. Many of the C4 and lower may have 1 or 2.

Rec players are players who either don't have the interest or the skill to be playing at the Select level, but are anyway. These players may be playing because the coach needed to fill out the roster, they want to play with their friends, they want to stay on the same team every season, or maybe they like the uniforms better. There are a lot of these players playing at the C3 - C6 level. These are players who would probably be better served by the many Rec programs in the area, but play Select instead. In a perfect world the Select organizations would work closely with the Rec organizations not only to identify talent that needs to be developed by a Select program, but also to send players back to Rec that really shouldn't be playing Select. Unfortunately, the name of the game for many clubs is to roster as many teams as you can find warm bodies for. Apparently whoever dies with the most teams wins.

Check players are those players that are on the team because their check cleared. There are still some teams/clubs out there that are more interested in the almighty buck than they are about developing players, and as a result you'll see teams that have players that probably shouldn't be on the team, but are because their parents were willing to fund their play.

More on the impact of this player mix on the quality of teams in the area in future posts - for the 4 people who stumbled across this site, stay tuned.