It seems like a good decision to me. I had not thought about the fact that he’s changing schools, and starting high school, this fall (if I’m reading your posts accurately); that’s potentially a step up in academic difficulty, as well, and adding in a new, more intense soccer program at the same time could potentially overload hm.
Yes. He is going from a public middle school to a private high school. We anticipate that it will be a lot more work.
@mjmartin, I am thrilled that your family has settled on a path for now that you are comfortable with. That done I am going to complain some more generically, no criticism of you implied.
Kids sports currently encourages, virtually forces intense single sport focus from early ages. It is pretty much the norm - year round intense club gymnastics, hockey, soccer. If a kid is going to play a sport now from very early on they play a sport. And it is an investment, not just fun. As pointed out significant money and time for families. And of course for the kid.
If the kid is good the system really doesn’t give them much of an option to do much else.
I don’t think this is good for kids. Including for their physical development. Constant year round single sport play, using the same muscles in the same ways, increases overuse injury risk. It increases burn out risk.
Girl gymnastics almost has to be that way as elite levels hit at such a young age. And these girls are very frequently the walking wounded. But soccer? I don’t think kids need to have early single sports specialization to be able to play in college and beyond. I’d be curious if most playing at elite levels have been products of early single sport specialization and such high family investment clubs, or not. I strongly expect not.
The move to elite clubs seems especially wrong for soccer? Worldwide the beauty of soccer has been that kids anywhere could play with little barrier or cost to entry.
Again not criticizing you. You are supporting your child doing something they love doing, and have explicitly made a decision that gives space for more. This is a rant about the system of children’s sports.
In that case, please don’t let him anywhere near college soccer.
When I was more involved with the game (referee, coach, player) the conventional wisdom was that NCAA soccer doesn’t adequately prepare serious youth players for potential pro careers, especially for overseas leagues (which is every league that really matters).
The serious soccer was being played on club teams and that was the way to get ahead. Now, there have been some American college players who have played medium to high level pro soccer, but that was likely in spite of their college career rather than because of it.
I don’t know if quality of NCAA soccer has improved that much relative to club soccer (in other words: NCAA has certainly improved in general in the last 30 years but that’s only because US soccer players in general have improved). But has US college soccer become the place to find the best soccer players, or do those still come out of top academies and clubs.
NCAA soccer doesn’t even use the same rules that the rest of the world uses. For example, I believe they still have unlimited substitution or some other bastardization of the FIFA Laws of the Game. They don’t time the game properly either. You can’t train to play soccer if you aren’t even playing by the proper rules. Especially if you’re allowed to substitute out of the game whenever you get a little tired.
It’d be like playing on a college tennis team to train for Olympic table tennis—it’s a different sport (admittedly not as different as tennis is from table tennis). I believe* your son would do better staying far away from NCAA soccer (high school soccer, too) and concentrate on playing for an academy and/or club. In short, NCAA soccer is not a professional development league (as NCAA basketball and football are) Most pros come from sources other than the NCAA.
*I’ve been out of touch with the game for a while. I suppose it’s possible there have been a whole bunch of rule and culture changes in NCAA soccer. But I very much doubt it.
I think this is a fine idea. Especially if he will be starting high school, a new school, with more academic challenges, new friends, and all kinds of extracurriculars that he might never have considered, but that he finds that he has an interest in (“Mom, Dad? Y’know, soccer’s great and all, but I find that I really like Drama Club …”). Let him play at the lower levels for at least a year, then see how he feels after that. If he wants to move up after he’s found his footing at high school, fine.
I am glad to hear that you are not pushing him to go higher, faster. Ours was a figure skating family, and thinking about myself at age 14, my younger sister and I spent an ungodly amount of time at the rink. That was our choice, not our parents’, and it should be noted that Mom was a figure skater herself, so while you might think she was living vicariously through us, that was not the case. She (and Dad) let us go as far as we wanted to. Which, in my case, was about age 18, when I found more interest in writing for the yearbook, competing on the high school quiz show team, and … you guessed it … Drama Club.
Meanwhile, we watched a bunch of young girls (never seemed to be boys) burn themselves out on figure skating, because they were pushed too hard by their parents to excel in one sport. I will say that @DSeid 's comments are important, especially when he says this:
So yes, let him play a sport, but also let him find himself. New school, new friends, new activities that he may have never considered that he had an interest in. He’s 14 and a part of soccer, but it seems to me that he won’t be penalized if he continues to play at a lower level for a year.
As an aside, the custom-made figure skates I bought when I was 16 still fit my feet, and the blades I chose to go with them still work, and I can still skate. Now, all I need is a dance partner to do some set-patterns with me.
I know that this is true, and have heard the stories of kids coming from nothing to play at the highest levels. I just don’t know how it’s possible. The gap in quality of soccer from the middle school team to the club level is astounding. His middle school team mates are all decent athletes, but the soccer knowledge is just not there. On any given middle school team there may be 2 or 3 kids out of 15 that would qualify to play on a club team. I suspect that the gap will grow as the kids get older. Frankly, I would shocked if any players on a D1 or D2 did not come from a club or soccer academy.
I certainly agree with you that the one-sport specialization isn’t a good thing. I believe (without any real research) that year long soccer playing doesn’t pose the same risks as other sports, i.e. pitchers in baseball, doing the same movement over and over again all year long, football with repeated head injuries, etc.
My overwhelming assumption is that playing college soccer would be the absolute highest possible level he could reasonably hope for. If he proves me wrong, I will be thrilled, of course.
It sounds like he has the ability to get a scholarship, which could be a significant cost savings for college. Even if he doesn’t go to a school which offers scholarships for soccer, being an elite soccer player may help with his admission. The coaches can recommend athletes be admitted so they can have a stronger team.
Mental AND physical burn-out. It’s one thing to be over it and just not enjoying it anymore, but it’s totally another to want to keep progressing but you’ve already worn out your body. That’s a tough line to walk. Push too hard too early and you may get the recruitment or scholarship, but once you’re there you can’t cut it because you’re already physically broken. Conversely, if you take a more conservative approach then those doors are never opened for you in the first place, so there’s no pathway for advancement.
It does look like the prospects for any sort of pro-level sports prodigy are so slim and so fragile (a single injury can end the whole thing) that the sport need to be at best a secondary deciding factor for school and future career. Perhaps it can be a means to get into an otherwise out-of-reach school, but the sport itself can’t be the end goal, just a means to another end. Hopefully that keeps it more fun too.
Another benefit to being a little less focused on The One True Sport is that it’s easier to transition to other similar sports. You can argue that all (ball) sports are just variations of soccer, but lacrosse, hockey, and rugby are the most similar in the type of physical effort, while water polo is the most similar spiritually. Some of those may be more fun than “regular” soccer, and they work the body in different ways, especially water polo. Similarly, gymnastics, figure skating, and diving are basically different forms of ballet. It’s not uncommon for a gymnast to also be on the diving team, and I think that’s a good thing.
The size of the denominator probably.
Across much of the world kids who play (that is almost all kids) play soccer and they know soccer. The nerds nerd out on soccer. The gifted athletes from all SES levels are playing soccer. Much more than, say, basketball.
Here in the states, with the higher barrier to entry and the club system, the gifted athlete child is only playing soccer if they also are both somewhat upper SES and then choosing it, other than some other single sport specialization, like hockey, or rugby, or baseball, or gymnastics on the girls side. (I see all of those chosen much more often.) That’s a smallish n. Shooting hoops is the accessible to all activity instead. And come to think of it I don’t know of many year round kids basketball elite travel teams. That large n for basketball resultant of accessibility is likely part of American dominance in that sport.
I gotta say that you have a better grasp of it than many parents. And the High School team itself may be more of a challenging level than you expect. As you’ve noted he is clearly a big kid who has physically matured early. And he is good at the game. He may get moved up to varsity right off, playing with and against others just as big, and who have more experience.
Since this is a private HS, I would tend to think that the level of competition will be lower than in a public HS. That seems to be the case due to many factors, one of which is the smaller size of the student body. The pool of athletes is smaller, so the level of competition is lower. For him to continue to be at a competitive level, he’ll probably need to continue playing with a club. It may make sense for him to not play in HS at all, since it may not provide much challenge for him and would add another time commitment.
The numbers actually go substantially the other way. His private school (boys only) will have about 10 times more boys in his class than our local high school. My understanding is that the majority of kids that play on the varsity team play on clubs after the high school soccer season ends. I have no idea what the actual level of competition is though. This will have a big impact on our decision whether to move him up to the higher level club next year (10th grade).
I’m not sure you’ve discussed your son’s plans POST college soccer (should he make it that far). If his plan is to play professionally, well, the numbers suggests he might as well buy lottery tickets. Not sure how that happens unless one is phenomenally gifted, dedicated, AND fortunate. Nice to aim at, perhaps. But wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a backup plan.
So if he is playing in college, will it be at a GOOD college? Will he be studying a major that will increase his employment opportunities in a field that appeals to him should he fail to hit the bigs? Or would he be better off just aiming at the best school for his lifelong plans, and playing club soccer for fun?
Does he want a career in and around pro soccer - as a coach or team manager or something? When my eldest went to college, we strongly encouraged her to study music education rather than performance. Good move. And a nephew of mine who was state cross county champ got a full ride to a Big10 school, struggled through injuries, but studied PT. He now enjoys coaching youth runners in his spare time.
My opinion is that, taking the longterm view of the decades he will have POST soccer, he MIGHT be better served by working hard at soccer, but not making it totally dominate his life as the top-level club might. But, ya know, young folk are resilient. And life is long. With a supportive family you your son has, even if he blows his knee out as a HS senior, I’m sure he’ll end up just fine. Even if he has to take a year of or attend community college for a year or two to get his bearings.
All you can do as a parent is make the best decision you can, with the best information you have available to you. Maybe you’ll make a wrong decision. But so long as you didn’t make your decision based on laziness, cheapness, selfishness, or some other negative motivation, you’ve done the best you can do. Don’t worry - whichever decision you make your kid might well later complain about why you didn’t make the other decision! 
People that end up playing pro anywhere in the world, overwhelmingly come from club backgrounds at an early age.
That’s a big private school. I’m not familiar with them being so much bigger than the HS. In any case, the competition will depend on what other schools they play. They may be in a league with other private schools. Even if his school has 10x the students of the public HS, the other schools they play might not be that big.
One way to get an idea of the ability of the team and the league is to look for game videos on YouTube. You may find videos uploaded from parents or from the school.
I don’t pay much attention to US high school soccer anymore, but generally high school’s are significantly lower quality than the club teams. I thought a lot of teams and academies have moved to year round / the kids don’t tend to play for their high schools? If they do, a kid that has aspirations for D1 or pro probably is a reasonable choice for the varsity team as a freshman at all but the best high school teams.
Are club teams and the soccer academies the same thing?
No.
Terminology might vary across the world, but in the US I would say clubs are something you pay to join and academies are associated with professional teams and recruit players. I know some clubs waive fees for talented players so they can raise the profile of the club. Depending on country there are going to be rights associated with signing players from academies.
Academies in the US are relatively new. Maybe ~15-20 years old? Academies and club will play each other though. Looking at MLS Next’s wikipedia page and you’ve got all the MLS team academies as well as top club teams.