Island Soccer’s Low Bar: Losing your Ass

A man and his son were once going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along by his side a countryman passed them and said, “You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?” So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.
But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said, “See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.”

So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other, “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.”

Well, the man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his boy up before him on the donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.

The men said, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours — you and your hulking son?”

The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, until at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them until they came to a bridge, when the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the donkey fell over the bridge, and his forefeet being tied together, he was drowned.

Moral: Try to please everyone, and you will please no one.

This is a story I’ve known for a long, long time and is credited to a fable of Aesop. For more than 30 years, I’ve been using this as a metaphor for the outcome of how organized youth soccer chooses to run at many of the clubs I’ve observed across Canada and, in particular to this blog, in PEI.

Last week’s post was supposed to be the closing of this blog. Honestly though, when it comes to soccer and PEI and building a culture driven by higher standards, I could continue to write and write and write. And so, for the time being, I will.

What exactly does “quality” mean?

The Club that I had been helping out just recently sent out an email to its members. They need to fill almost every board position except for two. And if that’s not done then there won’t be any summer soccer for that community in 2024. One part of the email request read, “No soccer or board experience necessary, just a commitment to continuing quality soccer for your community.”

Quality.

Quality soccer for your community.

Here’s the problem as I see it from behind these eyeballs. There is no agreed upon definition of what quality actually means. When I was with that club, quality was based on good practice and Canada Soccer’s Club Licensing Standards. In doing so, we were the first club on PEI to achieve the Club License status of Quality Soccer Provider. The License makes it very clear what quality means. There is a list of administrative, financial and technical standards — almost like a checklist — and you are either meeting that standard or you aren’t.

Did you know that Canada Soccer has made it mandatory for all soccer clubs across the country to attain, at the minimum, the standards of the Quality Soccer Provider License? And the QSP, by the way, represents the lowest level in the 4-tier licensing system.

Ask your club’s executive members: Has your club achieved the Quality Soccer Provider Standard for summer 2023 as per Canada Soccer’s mandate of all Canadian community soccer clubs? If not, what exactly is your Club doing to ensure they align with Canada Soccer’s club development policies for good practice? What is PEI Soccer doing to ensure that soccer here in PEI aligns with soccer across the rest of the country?

The current leadership of the club I was assisting defined quality in a far less stringent way. I wasn’t willing to water down those standards and so I left. And now that I’m no longer there to fight for an agreed upon definition of quality, the club has not maintained the necessary standards and Canada Soccer has taken away their designation as the first and only Quality Soccer Provider in PEI.

Outgrowing your Business Model

I’m not a business person. That’s not my strength by any means. So what I generally tend to assume is that a business experiencing success shouldn’t grow too fast. If it grows and can’t maintain the quality that made it successful, then that business is in potential trouble. I have read that one of the key reasons for a business going bust is growing faster then it can maintain its quality.

And yet, that’s what I see happening in the organising of Island soccer. Clubs take in more registrations than they typically have the operational ability to handle. Season on season, this leads to a product that at best is satisfactory. It becomes the norm and the impression that any Islander with a child in soccer simply comes to expect.

The Warning Signs

Recently, I was looking at this article, 15 Warning Signs that Show a Company is Growing too Fast, from Forbes. When it comes to the way we organise community soccer in PEI, taking on more players than we have the potential to handle, here are some of the signs from the article that I felt exactly related to soccer.

1. Employees are confused by your culture

If you volunteer for your soccer club, do you even know what the culture is let alone end up being confused by it?

2. You Don’t Have Scalable Processes

According to the CBC, 174,000 people was the population estimate for the Island on July 1st of 2023. And getting to the 200,000 mark could happen years earlier than was initially predicted. Clubs may end up growing just because the population is growing. What are they, and PEI Soccer, doing to plan for that possibility. Two Island clubs in particular — Stratford and Sherwood-Parkdale — have already seen huge increases in their registration numbers in the last couple of years.

3. Your Quality Standards Aren’t Being Met

Does your club actually even measure anything regarding its results other than wins and losses? Does PEI Soccer actually measure anything other than registrations, coach certification, referee development and camp numbers? If not, then how in the world does anyone know for sure that targets are being met or that success is really happening? And as I already mentioned, I’m skeptical that many if any of the clubs are actually aligned with all of the standards in Canada Soccer Club Licensing program.

4. Senior Hires Don’t Know How To Be Successful

From the article: “The first marker that your company is growing too quickly is when your experienced hires aren’t clear on how to be successful and don’t know what their decision rights and success metrics are.”

I was speaking with a coach from the club that I had been assisting as technical director over the last number of years and, since I’d left, things had gone downhill. Coaches were doing their own thing and nobody was really trying to work together. The sad thing is that there are coaches that I was working with that should have known better than that and should have led the way. And yet, with no technical leadership, they reverted to type and basically did whatever they wanted. Like quality, how do you know what success is if everyone has a different definition and there is no unifying actions from leadership?

5. Your Resources are Stretched Too Thin

From the article: “You may be growing too quickly if you’re stretching your resources (cash, people, service and quality) beyond your normal standards of excellence. Sometimes it’s better to slow down, assess your situation and ensure that you are giving a first-class service to clients while upgrading for the long-term.” You start to see a theme connecting all of these warning signs. No plan, no processes. No processes, no order.

6. You Don’t Have Systems to Manage and Support Growth.

If all you think about is what needs to get done right now, then the future will cause problems. Reacting and putting out the latest fire then becomes the norm. The boards of most soccer clubs in PEI are operational, not strategic. They spend the majority of their time running the current soccer season when they should be planning for future soccer seasons. That’s clear to see in Canada Soccer’s Governance Guide who suggests the most effective board is the one that spends their time writing policy, the highest form of which is the strategic plan.

TL;DR

The majority of soccer clubs do the best they can with what they know. Like I’ve said before, figuring out what you need to know to run a quality community soccer program really isn’t that hard to find. For example, just go to Canada Soccer’s website and see what they recommend. They have a page called Club Resources that contains the Governance Guide along with a number of other useful guides.

But maybe. Just maybe, it’s PEI Soccer that should be taking those good practices and assisting the clubs to learn about and implement them. Maybe instead of worrying about what the masses think soccer should be, they just stick to following through on what Canada Soccer wants soccer to be. Otherwise, in trying to appease everyone, they’ll continue to lose their ass.