The club vs. high school battle plagued American youth soccer long before the U.S. Soccer Federation banned high school ball for its Boys Development Academy players in 2012.

I'm sure anyone who's raised an adolescent or teenager can attest to the idea that teenagers don't get as much sleep as they need.

The U.S. Soccer Federation made it official on Tuesday: It will launch the Girls Development Academy (GDA) in fall of 2017 -- a nationwide league with 60 to 80 clubs fielding teams at the U-14/15, U-16/17 and U-18/19 age groups.

Mark Twain once joked that: "A gifted person ought to learn English in 30 hours, French in 30 days and German in 30 years."

U.S. U-20 women's national team coach Michelle French has named a 22-player roster for the La Manga Tournament in Spain March 2-6. The squad includes 14 players who weren't part of the squad that finished first at the December qualifying tournament for the 2016 U-20 Women's World Cup.

A few years ago, I wrote about the increasing number of soccer games being played on artificial turf. In the past, teams used to say that they needed to get used to playing on turf. Now I am hearing just as many teams say that they need to get used to playing on grass.

The U.S. Soccer Federation is set to launch a Development Academy (DA) for girls in August 2017, replicating the DA for boys that it launched in 2007.

Last year, the U.S. Soccer Federation announced a ban on heading for players age 10 and younger. Last week, the U.S. Soccer Referee program sent out a memo on how the rule should be implemented:

It's not easy to become a USSF-licensed elite soccer coach. Indeed, it's tougher to become a licensed elite soccer coach than a certified teacher.

U.S. Soccer has appointed Dave van den Bergh, who came to the USA from his native Netherlands in 2006 to play in MLS, head coach of the U.S. U-15 boys national team.

The USA has so many organizations involved in youth soccer the term "turf war" often comes up.

Generalizing about genders is a precarious venture, especially when one side is making assumptions about the other. But I'll go out on a limb: Girls care more about playing high school soccer than boys do.

After opening the Copa del Atlantico tournament in the Canary Islands with a 1-0 loss to Spain, the U.S. U-19 men's national team (1998s) fell, 5-0, to France.

Fifty-six clubs will join the U.S. Soccer Development Academy at the U-12 level, which the DA will launch for the 2016-17 season. They join 78 existing Academy members that field teams for U-12 competition for a total of 134 clubs.

Will my child be changing teams? Will she be playing "up" if she stays with her current team? Will he move to what had been the "younger" team? Will my 12th grader even have a club team during her senior year of high school?