My son is going into 9th grade, and is quite skilled at soccer. Coaches at two different programs are both trying to convince us to sign up with them, and both seem to think he has the skills necessary for college soccer. This is uncharted territory for us, as we neither his mother or I had any real interest in sports growing up. We have to help him make a decision for next year, this week, and really can’t decide or don’t have any neutral people to ask the best steps.
Here is the decision: play at the highest league (MLS Next), which is substantially more inconvenient (much more travel for both practice and games), and which doesn’t allow him to play on his high school soccer team. This league would challenge him, both on his team and with opposing teams. Or play at the third league down (ECNL - Regional), which is substantially more local and allows him to play on his high school team. He currently plays in the ECNL, which he enjoys, but doesn’t provide a real challenge, either for his spot on the team or with the competition. There are no 2nd level league teams in our area.
I’m afraid this is going to come across as a humble brag, but we are going back and forth and don’t know anyone (neutral) that can help us make a decision. Any advice on the choice, or resources would be appreciated.
I don’t really know anything about sports but as an analogy I would rather be the number 1 quarterback at a small college than a bench warmer at a big university–where both have a comparable level of skill.
My (lack) of bona fides - I played soccer through middle school, but not particularly well, with a brother who played extensively on a college team though not at a ranking school, and who is still deeply involved in the sport with kids going to a specialized academic academy with an emphasis on soccar!
(So barely more knowledgeable than you TBH!)
A lot of it is going to boil down to A) what you can afford which hasn’t been mentioned yet B) your son’s degree of enjoyment or obsession about the sport and C) what the long term goals are.
For the first, as you almost certainly already know, the travel, the distance, the practices and equipment at the higher levels are going to be shockingly expensive over time, though not always in any one purchase. Not always in absolute dollars (though it will add up faster than you’d expect) but especially in time. My nephew is in practice 5+ days a week, not the once or twice a week I did as a kid. It is going to (as a parent, more on the child in a moment) a big commitment of time, energy and money in getting them back and forth to training, practice, games, and the rest.
As for B), well, they’re in 9th grade. Some kids believe or know what they want to do at that point in their life. Some change their minds when they find out that they’re spending 15/20/25+ hours a week doing it, and worse… they may never be great at it. This is something that worries me for my nephew, because he’s honestly very good - compared to a lot of American soccer players, and he’s been doing it since he was very young. But the coaches, some of whom have worked on international training where there’s a much stronger cultural obsession, don’t find any of the players as stand-outs. Sure, they’re good, they work hard, but… Credit to my brother and nephew though, strong academics and backup plans are very much a large part of their thinking as well.
Which finally leads to part C - goals. If you can afford it, and he enjoys it, we’re at @PastTense’s point. Sure, he’s not being challenged, but is he having fun? Sometimes it’s great to be a local hero, rather than a regional also-ran, or national benchwarmer. Does your son want the challenge, and can you afford the time and money? Why not, as long as his academics don’t suffer. Highschool and college are good times to expand your options, try things, and challenge yourself if circumstances allow. And he’s less likely (non-zero though) to badly injure himself in life-changing ways in soccer than full contact sports.
So, full circle, it’s up to you and your son - and you’re the only one who can make educated evaluations on the questions above.
You (and your son) need to decide what your end game is first. That is, what are you looking to get out of soccer. Once you define that, everything else will flow from your decision. So, does you son want to play college soccer (and by college soccer, I am primarily referring to Div 1 soccer)? It is extremely competitive and requires a year round commitment. Burnout is real, and many very, very good high school players simply decide they no longer want to keep up with the demands. You also need to understand the financials involved. Men’s soccer in college is NOT like D1 football. There are very few, if any NIL deals available, and even the scholarships offered are almost never full scholarships. More often, they are only partial (e.g. 1/4) scholarships, so they do not cover the full cost of college attendance. Another real risk is whether you son will continue to develop such that a college career is realistic. At 9th grade, you can start to get an idea on who will be a viable college prospect, but things can change over the next four years to change that, even with the best coaching and competition. Failure to physically develop, injuries, etc. can all derail a promising youth’s potential.
So, if the answer after looking at all of these variable is a resounding “yes, I want to try to play D1 college soccer”, then MLS next is indeed your best choice. You and your son will make sacrifices, and playing may seem like more of a job at times than it should, but it will give you the best chance to make it.
If the answer is “no”, or “not sure”, then I would suggest keep playing ECN and with his high school team. It will be less pressure, almost assuredly more enjoyable, way less of a time commitment, way less expensive, and will allow your son to play with his friends and generally enjoy his high school years doing high school stuff, rather than traveling every weekend to away soccer tournaments.
As the others said, it really boils down to two things:
What’s your son’s ultimate goal? Does he want to play pro, or even have a faint chance of going pro? Then MLS Next would be the thing for him. If he just likes enjoying amateur level, but a highly skilled level, then ECNL Regional would be the thing.
Do the coaches have some sort of ulterior motive for wanting your son to be on their team (such as more fees, revenue, for you to pay them?) Sometimes coaches may inflate or exaggerate or flatter if they can get money, although the two leagues you describe don’t sound desperate for people for their rosters.
I think he wants to go as far as possible, whatever that may mean. We have explained to him repeatedly, and he knows that playing professionally is a one in a million long shot. But he loves the game, loves getting better at it, and loves when he is challenged.
Both teams have offered substantial discounts on the fees (approximately 75% off), so I don’t think its financially driven.
OK, in that case, it all comes down to how strong his desire is compared to his (and your) willingness to tolerate a lot of travel and inconvenience. In pure soccer terms, I’d say MLS Next sounds best for him and you, but it all comes down to the hefty trade off of all that time and distance traveling.
I think that there’s an important point here. The OP says that their son is “quite skilled at soccer.” Particularly if, at this age, your son is, indeed, saying, “my dream is to play professional soccer,” then it may be worth talking to the son’s current coaches, trainers, etc., or some other independent source who has no skin in the game, about what they think the son’s real chances are for that. They may be able to help give you guidance on his realistic ceiling (given dedicating himself to the sport for the next few years): Division I college team? Division II or III? MLS?
“Quite skilled” could mean “he’s in the top 10% in his age group,” or “he’s in the top 1%,” and that difference could have a big impact on your decision.
In addition, it may be helpful to understand what, if anything, is really needed to help your son continue to progress – and here, too, his coaches may be able to help. Is he gifted with raw talent, and able to “coast” on that a bit, but needs more intensive training, and play against a higher caliber of talent, to refine his skills? Or, is he already a really hard worker, practicing hard, but may be topping out because he may not have the same level of innate talent or athletic ability as some of his peers?
As already touched on, pursuing either of the two paths that the OP describes will require the son to devote a huge amount of time to the sport (possibly to the exclusion of typical high school social activities), as well as being very expensive – potentially very expensive – for the OP and their family. Burnout, and regret over not being able to do some of the things that his friends are doing, can be very real.
Related to the above, I can share the anecdote of one of my nieces: when she was about 7 years old, she took a “fun” gymnastics class, and was identified as having real talent for it, which led to enrollment in club gymnastics. When she was about the age of the OP’s son, she was one of the top-ranked gymnasts in her age group in the state. She was going to practice 5-6 days a week, changing clubs in order to pursue better coaching, and was regularly going to tournaments and camps all over the country.
By the time she was 15, she was completely burned out on gymnastics: she wanted to be able to do things with her (non-gymnastics) friends, she had been struggling to rehab from a hip injury, and she just wasn’t as in love with the sport as she had been a couple of years earlier. Her declaration that “I don’t want to do this anymore” was met with anger and hostility by her mother (my sister-in-law) and her grandmother (my mother-in-law); not only did they have stars in their eyes over my niece’s prospects for future success, but they were deeply into a sunk-cost fallacy, having spent way, way too much money that they didn’t really have on her gymnastics career. I know for a fact that my SIL was (realistically or not) counting on her daughter getting an athletic scholarship to help pay for college.
Despite the two of them pressuring my niece for the better part of a year on the topic, they (thankfully) weren’t able to convince her otherwise. The niece is still engaged with athletic activities – mostly swimming and diving now – and is, IMO, a lot better adjusted emotionally, and a better-rounded person, now. She just finished her sophomore year of college, and is working towards a degree in something which has nothing to do with sports.
One consideration I haven’t seen raised directly yet (though it’s come up indirectly in a couple of posts) is that of getting your child recruited to college via soccer, regardless of whether he wants to continue playing after college. I didn’t know anything about sports recruiting before this year (and I still don’t know much) but one of my young relatives was sport-recruited this year, as a junior, to an elite college (div 1) which she would have had a way smaller chance of getting into via regular admissions, given that elite college admissions are SO competitive these days. (She still needed to have good grades, good SAT scores, etc. but that’s not nearly enough to get you in to one of the really selective colleges these days!) I was talking to a friend of mine about this whom I knew had played soccer in college and found she had been recruited in soccer to a college (Div 2) that although maybe not “super elite” is still a very good school and gave her a nice scholarship. My friend has a very different job now (she still likes to play, but just for fun), and my relative is also planning a career not around her sport (though she will also try to go as far as she can).
For college recruitment purposes, I suspect your kid should play on the high-league team – though I’d also be asking both coaches, and the high school team coach as well, about college recruiting, who they have had recruited, and I’d talk to the families of the kids that have been recruited, and also be doing the math as to whether the cost of both the league and travel is worth it for any scholarships your kid might get.
Honestly, I’m glad sports are not my kids’ thing and I didn’t need to make this kind of decision. It’s a great problem to have, of course, but it’s also tough on the family. My relative’s family has spent a LOT of time on practice and travel, and it’s 100% been worth it for them, but watching from the outside it has been a lot.
I’m going to push back against those saying it’s important for your son to determine what his future goals are and what he wants out of it. He’s in 9th grade, he doesn’t need to have his future planned out. Whatever decision he makes this year, he can change it down the road.
I’d base the decision on two factors: first, your son has said he doesn’t feel challenged and, more importantly, wants to feel challenged. He wants to see if he can really excel when given the opportunity. That sounds like a heavy vote for stepping up to the higher league.
But the second factor is your willingness and ability to support his travel, expenses, and overall time commitment. Make sure you’re fully on board with that side before signing him up.
And if he decides it’s not for him after a year or two, I’m sure it goes without saying: don’t be like @kenobi_65’s SIL and be resentful of the time and money you put in.
This is the difficult part. In his current league, he is probably without question the top player on his team, and probably in the top 1% in the league. It’s hard to know how that translates to the top league.
He has both raw talent and works hard at it. He also has matured faster than average, he’s 6’ at 14. Some of his strength over other players is that he is just taller, faster and stronger than the average 14 year old. I don’t want him to get into a habit of relying on that, because that natural advantage will disappear, soon. The MLS team would definitely be a higher level of competition and play.
That’s an excellent point. If he’s possibly in the top 1% of his league today, having had the gift of physically maturing a bit faster than his peers might well be part of that (which it sounds like you understand). It may well be that he’s at his peak, relative to his peers, right now, and in a year or two, when everyone else has gotten through their growth spurts, he may be top 10%, or whatever.
What is your level of participation if he’s in the higher league? How will your nights be impacted if the practice field is far enough away that it doesn’t pay to come home but you’re now out for hours in the evening/weekend?
How does that impact your time getting him to/from practices, leaving work early, using your vacation days to drive to multiple different tournaments every/other Friday instead of a week off doing whatever you normally like for vacation. The higher level league affects the whole family’s life much more than the local leagues/school;s do
Was he on a club team where you can ask a former coach who doesn’t benefit one way or the other on his decision & might know the insiders reputation of both options?
If the goal is scholarship, talk to a local college coach; do they recruit somewhat equally or three or four kids from MLS league for every one from a HS? IOW, does one benefit him much more than the other?
Which is why I stated a former coach who doesn’t benefit one way or the other. As a coach, it’s much easier to win (& potentially move up in the world, whether that becoming a HS or college coach) if I have superior players.
Yes. I should have been more clear, his middle school coach has no vested interest, because my son is going to a different school system for high school.
After reading this, I think I am going to tell my son to do at least one more year at the lower level and high school, with a goal to jump to the higher level next year if he continues to want to push himself.
The time commitment would also mean less time for school work and hanging out with friends. His life might end up consisting of homework, practice, and games. There wouldn’t be a lot of time for fun. He’d have to be really serious about soccer to make so many sacrifices. Keeping things as-is for a year sounds like a good idea. He may find that he enjoys a more relaxed time in HS versus dedicating his life to soccer.