"Supa-star"

So I just got back from our last soccer session of the season. I have been unable to play soccer for months due to my car accident in December but I've been living vicariously through Camryn who just finished up with a goalie training clinic. I was a bit peeved because after signing up for the 9 sessions we had to miss the first one because they planned it only 2 days in advance. Then they decided to cancel one that fell on a long weekend and then 2 were rained out. That plus 3 birthday parties that were at the exact same time as training sessions you can imagine how many we made it to. Needless to say Camryn was looking forward to being able to attend this last one. She loves being a goalie but I've told her that at only 9 years old I don't want her to specialize yet. I think it's too young to lock yourself into a position for the rest of your life.

Now for those of you who think I'm being overly dramatic....or those who are just unfamiliar with how youth soccer goes these days I will tell you that this is no exaggeration. There are training academies for 6 year olds. If your child shows any promise in soccer they will be actively recruited to play higher tiers. How do you move to the higher tiers?....oh by attending technical sessions, fitness sessions, regular practices, and games. Our "neighborhood club" has their top tier 7 and 8 year olds actively engaged in soccer an average of 6 times per week. The parents are expected to make sure their child is at everything unless they are bleeding from their eyes....then it's just optional. The parents are told how their child could get scholarships one day or be on the national team 10 years down the road. It's not just a scam to try to get kids to sign up. This is really the goal for these kids. Oh and if your child blows their knee out the first semester into their 4 year scholarship guess what? Bye bye scholarship. These kids are nothing but commodities. But don't tell their parents that because they don't want to hear it. Of course it wouldn't work if the kids weren't on board right? I know you thought that didn't you? Well if you are told by all the adults in your life that success for you lies on the soccer pitch and they groomed you from the time you were 5 or 6 years old to be a soccer star you'd believe it and want it so bad you could taste it.

Camryn just wants to play soccer but we went to one of the try-outs last year which they now call Player Evaluations. Basically every kid in an age group is expected to attend. They run them through a series of drills and then pluck they best of the best out for the top teams. When I heard one mother say to her 8 year old daughter "Stop limping or they'll cut you for sure" I knew I was okay with Camryn being in the bottom rungs of the club. I mean doesn't anyone want their kid to play for fun anymore? We opted out of the next year's evaluation. I think the club thought I was nuts when I asked for her to just be placed on the "bottom" tier team. But they did it.

Does that mean she didn't get sat way more than her fair share? Nope. She most certainly did. The coaches had high hopes for their own daughters and one even told me that he believed in fair playing time but that they wanted to win and didn't I understand that they needed to use their stronger players. Presumably that was meant to make me feel better about driving for an hour to watch my kid get 10 minutes of playing time in an hour long game. I will say for the record that I don't think she does suck. She was the smallest player on the team in size but she could beat the other girls in a foot race. She also worked her but off every time she was out there. Sadly she wasn't the only kid warming the bench this season.

Needless to say I was looking forward to the end of soccer for awhile. First we had just one more goalie training session to get to. So we showed up on a warm Saturday afternoon to find to our surprise that Camryn was the one and only kid to show up for it. Out of the 15 kids to start we were the only die-hards. Camryn had a one-on-one session with the best looking trainer in the club. "Oh Ramon". (Sigh) I was pleased on all fronts. Cam worked her butt off as usual and got more out of 50 minutes of training than she has in the rest of the season combined. It was so much fun to watch her improvement in less than an hour.

I'm still planning on asking for her to be placed in the lowest tier for indoor season in the fall because I do believe that soccer should always be fun at this age. I may doom her to never getting a soccer scholarship but I'm okay with that if it means she can actually enjoy her childhood and not spend it doing some variation of soccer every single day of the week whether she likes it or not. Call me crazy....

Camryn learning how to "punch" the ball.