Possibly a State Soccer Title?

That is very exciting cjhsa - I bet your daughter is thrilled too!
Congratulations!

Thanks! Yes, she's having a blast!

cjhsa:

As I am sure you know, HS sports exist to provide opportunities for kids to play with their friends and build connections to their school which, in turn, helps improve kids' academic performance. The also help build and maintain connections with the local community. JV teams are particularly important in fulfilling the participation goal.

As in many if not most states, the success of a HS soccer program at a particular school largely depends on the number and quality of the club players who attend the school relative to their competitors. The short HS season gives HS coaches little time to work on individual player skills. Instead they mostly focus on basic tactics and conditioning as not all of the kids are coming off another sport so fitness can be an issue.

It is not very surprising then that the same schools/communities tend to produce the most competitive teams year after year. And, frankly, the strong teams from the west side of the state have a little easier run to the finals simply because there are fewer strong soccer teams there than on the east side of the state.

If you look at last year's finalists they're fairly typical of the situation. In Div. I (largest schools) you had Novi v Rochester. Novi draws kids from a strong community travel program (Novi Jaguars) and the Livonia Hawks which is one of the top clubs in the country. Rochester likewise has a strong community club program as well as close proximity to the Michigan Gators and Varder travel clubs. I would hazard a guess there is no kid on either high school varsity squad who has not played at least 3 or 4 years of travel soccer and it would not surprise me if every starter was still playing on a club team. Novi has been in the state finals 3 years in a row.

At Div II you had Grand Rapids Forrest Hills Central v Bloomfield Lahser. The club set up in the GR area is a little more unsettled but FHC has kids who play for GR Crew and W. Mich Fire - both decent clubs. FHC was in the finals 2 of the last 3 years and Lahser has been in the finals 2 years in a row. Lahser mostly draws kids from the Bloomfield Force which is a good community club, but in particular the Force had a team that won the club u18 national championship last year so there were several exceptional players on that team who attended Lahser. Most of those kids have graduated now, but Lahser still has a goalie who is committed to UofM and can steal games this year (the back up goalie also has a full ride to a Div I school).

At Div III you have Christian Unity v Flint Powers. Powers draws kids from all over, and there are some okay club teams in the area with Vardar North and GSSC, but they are a bit of surprise over Detroit Country Day which is smack in the middle of an area with lots of clubs (and has been to the finals 5 times in 10 years). Unity Christian (4 years in a row in the finals) I think has made the most of 2 exceptional players who graduate this year. Both will play for MSU next year and 1 is in the national team pool. That kind of talent is hard to deal with at a Div. III level. Unity actually beat Novi last year 1-0 in an exhibition game. Both those girls played for the Bloomfield Force team that won the club national championship even though you are talking about a 2 hour drive each way to practice.

Finally, at Div IV you had K-zoo Christian v Ann Arbor Greenhills. Greenhills is similar to DCD in drawing kids. Ann Arbor has several decent clubs (AA United, AA Arsenal primarily) to draw from and Greenhills gets a good number of experienced club players. K'zoo Christian (and oft finalist K'zoo Hackett) also gets a good number of club players for a school of that size -- drawing from the Kingdom club which does a good job in the area.

Each year it is a little different obvously. If you put a national team level player in a small school environment you can throw the works off (e.g. Unity Christian), but mostly, year after year, it is the schools in areas with good clubs to feed their HS programs that will do well in HS play. A solid JV program is great, and good for the kids. I just may not ultimately mean the varsity should do well next year or the year after.

In the meantime, good luck to your daughter and her team.

I know there are tons of variables. I don't put my kid on a pedastal either. She's good, and helps the team, but she's not the best or flashiest player. She does have a heck of a left foot though.

We've played many of those teams you speak of. We tied FHC 1-1 this year and beat Lowell. On the year it's a 77-4 (scoring) drubbing of the opponents and a 12-1-2 record. Very happy to no longer have Unity Christian in our division!!! They are a D3 monster.

newsocdad - I should have welcomed you to A2K! Welcome!

Thanks for the great info too!

Make that 85-4 on the season. 13-1-2 record.

Any of the kids playing (well probably mostly watching) varsity in the district games. That is always a good experience.

I went back an recalculated. They finished up 14-1-2 and outscored their opponents 100-4. Two of those goals game in the opening 2-1 loss. To only allow two more goals all season is really impressive.

When my daughter was young, she was an an AYSO travelling team in California. We'd drive all over hell, finally get our team together and would be down 3-0 before you could say "****". It's nice to have the cleat on the other foot for a change.

In Germany, we've only national champions from the U17/U16 onwards, both for males and feamales. (Female champions only from 2000 onwards.)

Similar in other European countries. (When my niece played in the Austrain national U 17 and U 18 team, they didn't have such in the late 90's. Started there much later.)

I hope she decides to play next year. It is demanding, and she takes her studies very seriously. Between soccer and her first ever boyfriend, her grades have suffered slightly (not enough to worry about unless you're her).

That'll work out fine, I suppose!
(My niece finsihed grammar school second but best, got her BA and MA in a rather short time, a boyfriend [now her partner] .... while playing (quite successfully) in a first division team (which was not so successful, got down to 2nd Bundesliga for one year).

It's not an easy row to hoe. When she played in competitive leagues in CA the training was a killer. One day in PE they ran an 800 and she came in second place - to another girl on her soccer team. Of course the track team then wanted her - she turned them down.

Walter:

As you probably know, the youth soccer system in the US is obviously very different than in Europe primarily because there are no true academies in the US. The professional teams simply lack the financial ability to fund them. Instead, we have a widely disbursed, but oddly still fairly well organized system of private clubs. Being the US, we have to have at least a couple different governing organizations (USYSA and USSoccer) with their own playoff and champion systems although both operate under the umbrella of the USSF. I believe in most states the USYSA leagues tend to have stronger representation in terms of numbers and quality of teams. USYSA National championships start at 14.

For many of our top players, boys and girls, the goal is play in college rather than professionally -- much to the chagrin, I believe, of the USSF which would rather have kids go off and play in Europe and return to play for the national team. The problem there is that the money is simply not that good to play in Europe as an untested young teenager. But, that same kid could very likely get a full ride to a good university worth $60,000 to $100,000, a chance they forfeit once they play for money.

cjhsa:

Is your daughter going to play for a club next fall?

I doubt it. I think she's tired of them. A shame really. She played in CYSA for several years on a club team I helped form. She grew into the best player on the team, but was injury prone (at 13).

This is one of my favorite pics of her. Taken almost four years ago in a city far far away. She was a sixth grader playing on the 7th grade team. It captures the speed of the game and her intent on putting some serious hurt on those three defenders.



Actually you can see the club team skills as well. Of those three defenders, only one has a chance based simply on body language, and that's the last one. That's most likely why they put her back there.

I like their jerseys though -- sort of an island theme.

I think once the kids hit HS age a good many stop playing club in favor of other HS sports or activities.

If she had some interest you might check out the msysa site or stop in at a soccer store and pick up a copy of the msysa May tryout publication. Pretty much every club's tryouts start on 6/15. My daughter is still playing club, but has been recruited a bit and she still has to decide where exactly she wants to tryout.