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Soccer’s Shifting Sands

November 27, 2012

US Soccer has created “Development Academies” for high school age soccer players that prohibit those players from competing on their high school teams.  This has created a nationwide gnashing of teeth to which I contributed in this space on March 9, 2012 – “US Soccer Gets a Red Card.”

It now appears that the effects of US Soccer’s exclusionary policy have been felt in Michigan, as a new cast of characters played leading roles in the MHSAA’s recently completed Lower Peninsula Boys Soccer Tournament and the Michigan High School Soccer Coaches Association’s team rankings tilted from the southeast, home of the state’s two US Soccer Development Academy programs, and toward the west and north.

Divisions 1, 2 and 3 of the MHSAA boys tournament lacked a southeast team in the Finals; and the soccer coaches association did not rank a southeast team in the top two of Divisions 1 and 4, in the top four of Division 3, and in the top eight of Division 2.

Certainly, one year's results is not a trend; there could be other factors at play here.  And it’s also true that some folks are not alarmed, saying any student lost to the US Soccer Development Academy opens up a spot for another student to play for his high school team.

Perhaps that’s so.  Still, it is disconcerting that US Soccer now plans to descend to an even younger level of athlete for its boys development academy and to start a similar program for girls soccer.

Family Focus

September 2, 2014

The year I graduated from college (1970), 40 percent of U.S. households consisted of a married couple and their children. According to research summarized in AARP The Magazine’s June-July issue, the percentage was only 19 percent in 2013.
Even more startling is this: In 1960, five percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women. In 2012, it was 41 percent.
Very far from the most important impact these trends have on life in America today is the slice of American society we serve: competitive school sports.
In the 1960s and 1970s, schools would expect two parents in attendance for each child’s games or meets. In 2014, it is not unusual that one or infrequent that both parents are absent when their son or daughter competes.
Of course, school programs today have more boys sports and an almost entirely new slate of girls sports for parents to observe than two generations ago; and many times multiple events are scheduled simultaneously and force attentive parents to miss one child’s game while another child competes elsewhere.
It’s not my purpose here to point to specific strategies needed to keep parents constructively engaged in school sports. The limit of my commentary now is to offer a reminder, even to myself, that the manner in which we did things when the family unit looked one way is very likely in need of an overhaul, or at least a tweak, when the family unit looks very different.
The challenge, of course, is finding new avenues for old messages – fresh ways to deliver lasting core values. If we continue to proclaim that our brand is family friendly, we will meet this challenge.