By Charlie Slagle
Club leaders should always attempt to build club affinity. This can be a difficult chore if the club has multiple teams in a single age bracket. Tension between thefamilies and toward the club of these teams can develop due to the inevitable placing of players.
In addition to running a club with great business practices, club leaders need to devise plansthat benefit all the players in the club. The plans should be short- and long-range in nature that take into account more than a particular season or year.
Many clubs use barbecues, free-playnights, 3v3 events, etc., to try and accomplish that. I am going to give you another uniting program that has worked.
I was in charge of the U-11 age bracket at a big club. There were fiveboys teams and five girls teams. There were three tier levels of teams. Knowing that the uniform purchasing was in a two-year cycle, each player got a unique number. Numbers were decided by goingalphabetically by picking a letter and direction (up the alphabet or down the alphabet) out of a hat. Therefore, number series didn’t identify players with a certain team. Some numbers wereskipped for players joining the club at a later time.
Having unique numbers for all players, throughout the age bracket, made it easier for players to guest play with other teams and couldtake some of the sting out of a player being brought down a tier and having to buy another uniform because their number was already taken.
Since these teams were in the 2001 age bracket, the“Odyssey Cup” was born. Out of the five teams in girls and five teams in boys, six new teams, each, were chosen with equal distribution of talent on all teams. Six teams made it easier inthe tournament format and also lowered the number of players per team to maximize playing time for each player.
The everyday coaches of these teams did not coach the Cup. The coaches for theCup came from players at the older age brackets of the club. They met their teams on Friday before the weekend tournament. The everyday coaches were present at the event to watch their charges.
The format was a girls game followed by a boys game in 45-minute time intervals. Three round-robin games were played on Saturday morning and two more on Sunday morning for a total of six time slotsand a total of 4.5 hours each day. The sixth game, after the five round-robin matches on Sunday, included a championship match and the third vs. fourth and fifth vs. sixth place games.
Whathappened?
1) Parents on the sidelines were well behaved as every team had at least one player from their regular team playing.
2) Families met and interacted with other families onother teams in the age bracket.
3) The players were seen between games kicking the ball and hanging out with their new teammates for the weekend.
4) Competition was fierce but cleanand the older players who were coaching formed a bond with their younger team and had a great time.
5) The older player coaches also saw the game from a different vantage point than being onthe field.
6) Many of the lower tier players stepped up their game to a level not seen in their own games.
7) Many of the top tier players took leadership roles to help their team besuccessful.
8) Referees said the games were some of the easiest they had ever done due to spectator decorum and the positive action on the field and from the coaching boxes.
9) Allinvolved had a great time.
The cost of the tournament per player was $30 and each player received an “Odyssey Cup” T-shirt with their unique number on the back. The fee coveredplayer T-shirts, referee fees, coaches’ T-shirts and championship T-shirts for each winning player. Feedback from the families was that it was money well spent and a great weekend of soccer.
In smaller clubs, a tournament similar to the “Odyssey Cup” can be achieved by combining age brackets. This will allow the club to have the critical numbers to host the tournament.
This event built club affinity. As is the case in many membership organizations, it is much easier to retain members than to acquire new members. When a club builds a bond with its membership, itis much easier to retain the members. Also, content members let their friends know about the organization and thus creates new members.
Planning, short range and long range, to create a betterclub is always worth it. Do what is best for all of the players and it will pay dividends in the end!
Charlie Slagle, who served as CEO of North Carolina’s Capital Area Soccer League (CASL)for more than 12 years, is the owner of Charlie Slagle Sport Consulting LLC, specializing in working with soccer clubs to help them reachtheir potential — with emphasis on working with clubs’ professional staff and board of directors. Slagle, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Vice President of Education, was Davidson College head men’s coach in 1980-2000 and tournament organizer of 14 NCAA Division I CollegeCups.)
This set-up has a lot of merits. I actually organized a skills program (U6-U10) that served as the in-house league based on similar principles, and had similar results. Instead of individual teams, we had practice groups (2x/week practice), with game days on Saturdays. As a skills program, I designed the common practice plan that every coach used (many coaches were not experienced, everyone was a volunteer), and since the goal was to develop players rather than defeat other teams, coaches helped each other out during practices. On game day, every player in the age group had the same color shirt, and we played small sided games (3 v 3 up to 5 v 5), using pinnies to distinguish the teams on the field. Half the time we placed the players randomly, the other half we separated them based on skill levels. The goal was to have every game be competitive, so one coach would run a field (no refs), and if one team clearly had better players, at the break, the coach would switch them up to make them competitive. Like the tournament Slagle described, this meant that players were focused on playing good soccer (instead of having team loyalty), and interacted with other players as teammates and friends, not as opponents. Even though score was meaningless, the players played very hard, and the option to separate players on skill, allowed good players to experience playing at a very high level (instead of dominating less skilled players), and allowed weak players to take larger roles. And completely unexpectedly, the parents cheered for good plays by individuals from either team, and we never had any issues with bad behavior. Mixing players from different teams makes kids understand that a game is really a friendly competition in which you push your opponent to improve, rather than a war in which you want your opponent to falter.