Recreational Soccer: The Elephant Not In The Room

Last time out, I was talking about how PEI Soccer and most community clubs try to keep everyone satisfied by not doing too much to upset the old apple cart and in doing so, don’t really satisfy anyone. While I think you can’t and shouldn’t try to please everyone, you can at least offer enough of a variety of programs that participants can be satisfied with their choice.

At the moment, Island soccer programming consists of:

• House league for players age 9 and younger
• Competitive for players age 10 and 11, divided into two divisions
• Competitive for players age 12 and 13, divided into three divisions
• Competitive for players age 14 to 18, divided into two divisions
• Senior soccer for those over 18, divided into two or three divisions (depending on numbers)

What’s Missing?

Do you see the glaring absence? The elephant that’s not in the room? Here’s a hint. What word above do you see repeated multiple times? Now, what would be the opposite of that word with respect to sports programming? If you said recreational or house league, then you are seeing what I am seeing. And that’s an elephant-sized problem.

Young players start of their soccer experience at a leisurely pace in their club’s grassroots program. Then they get to under eleven and the pace goes from leisurely to breakneck, with no real step in between. It’s just one day house league and the next day competitive. And then that’s the end of rec soccer because everything else is run as and treated as “competitive.”

Where I’ve worked, the clubs have continued to maintain a house league program beyond U9 — some even up to U18 or senior. And there is no doubt in my mind that many Island players would just be happy to come out and play one game a week and then not set foot on a soccer field again until the next week’s game.

But This is Little PEI

When you add up total Island soccer registrations, I suspect you’ll get close to 6000. In the Greater Toronto area, for example, that’s the number of players that many clubs have. Clubs! The biggest club I worked for had almost 12,000 players across the age and ability spectrum.

And yes, of course that means that clubs like that can afford to offer their own house league programming throughout the system. Because they have such big numbers. But here, where the majority of clubs are 500 players or less, that’s not possible.

I get that. I do.

The thing is, what we do offer isn’t working well. If a player’s only choice is to play “competitive” soccer or no soccer than there’s something wrong with the system.

Now, I’m pretty sure that PEI Soccer would agree that at U13, where there’s most often enough teams to form three different tiers, that the lowest tier is pretty much recreational. But it’s not called recreational, it’s called Division 2 and is considered part of the Youth Competitive system. Some teams in some clubs will treat it more competitively and practice as well as play and some clubs will treat it more like house league. That’s a problem because not everyone is on the same page about what the tier is for.

At under 11, where there is also a very large number of participants, there are only two divisions — a higher and a lower. So clubs form a higher level team, maybe two if they’re bigger, and often two (or more) lower tier teams. The top tier team(s) are straight forward. Like I said in this post, the majority who go through the tryout filter and end up at the higher level are bigger, stronger, faster, more mature, more aggressive, more focused or more athletic but not necessarily better skilled soccer players.

The players that don’t make it to the top tier are neither skilled nor many of the other things I mentioned above (at least not yet). But because there’s so many of them, more than one team has to be made. And the simplest way not to piss off the majority of people is to make your teams balanced. But while that might keep things kosher, it doesn’t raise the bar.

It creates a mess because these balanced teams still have two different tiers of players making them up — the players that belong at the second tier and another group of players that really belong at a non-existent third tier. And that third tier should be recreational, not competitive.

And all it would take is for PEI Soccer to say that there’s now going to be three tiers at U11 so pick and place teams at the tier you believe is appropriate. Then call the first two tiers competitive (I’d call them developmental which would align better with good practice elsewhere in Canada). And call that third tier recreational.

Then, set up program standards for each tier. Third tier/rec is just one game a week, no practices. Second tier is at least one game and one practice per week. First tier is at least one game and two practices per week. You could do the same with the costs as well — the higher tier requiring the biggest financial commitment. In doing so, you create a system that has something that the majority of people can be satisfied with in terms of costs, time commitment and competitiveness.

Thinking Outside the Box

While that would definitely work at U11, it wouldn’t work at U15 or older. There just aren’t enough players at those levels. And even if you could have three tiers, there wouldn’t be enough teams in any of those three tiers to avoid playing the same few teams over and over and over.

But that’s if you colour inside the lines or keep your thinking to inside the box.

Who says the third tier at U15 has to play 11-a-side soccer? Or that the third tier at U13 has to play 9-a-side? Why not make it 7-a-side? Or even 5-a-side. The point is to find a way to keep players playing through the ages instead of dropping out in such large numbers. Using playing formats that require less players on the field means team sizes could be smaller. For example, a U15 team typically has between 16 and 18 players. Make it 7 vs 7 and the roster can drop down to 10. Play 5 vs 5 and the roster could drop down to 7 or 8.

TL;DR

Folks, there is so much that could be done to raise Island soccer’s bar if we were willing to get away from: 1) the mindset of this is the way we’ve always done it and 2) look at more creative ways of making our smaller numbers work. Doing so doesn’t solve the lack of quality coaches issue but it does give players more choice and opportunity to find the right tier for their ability and willingness levels.

Settling and satisfaction aren’ the same thing. Why settle when there’s so much more that could be done to make soccer here in PEI satisfying.