Interesting Article from CP re: Women's Team

[Richard]

quote:Originally posted by terpfan68

They do not assess all players. They only assess players who have already been selected for the provincial programs. The players who have been passed over for provincial teams have not been looked at by anyone outside of their province. Maybe there should be "open" try out like Toronto FC had.

I didn't say they assessed all players in the province, my point was that selected players have to perform to the satisfaction of several different national team coaches in order to stay in the District Development Centre programs. And in BC there ARE open tryouts for the provincial allstar teams. Th BCSA is advertising their first and second OPEN evaluation camps on their website right now.

[Richard]

quote:Originally posted by terpfan68

I think Martyr made a very good point when he (she?) said that Provinces are acting like clubs. That really should not be their roll. We really need to enlarge the player base so that potential National team players don't get overlooked. If the numbers trained at 15, 17 and 19 years of age were to double (or triple) then the cream would eventually rise to the top. In addition competition for spots would in and of itself increase performance. Would Owen Hargraves have been overlooked in Alberta if the player pool for development had been doubled?

I don't disgaree and in BC many clubs across the province are raising their training and development standards by hiring fulltime professional head coaches and developing their own elite player academies. Two examples... Surrey United has been operating its own internal academy for some time now (coached by Craig Dalrymple, Tony Waiters and Derek Possee) and has seen a marked impact on the standard of play in their own teams. The two girl's clubs in Richmond have just announced plans to establish a joint high performance centre for their players:

http://www.canada.com/richmondnews/news/sports/story.html?id=bae428fc-0f08-41f1-a048-feba3e6ecb9b

And there are many other examples. So there is progress in the right direction at the club level although the hiring of fulltime professional head coaches by clubs is controversial in some quarters it would seem.

[Martyr]

Unfortunately, progressive clubs like Surrey United (and others - Abbotsford in particular come to mind) have always seemed to be at odds with the BCSA. I don't know what the state of affairs is between them right now but the relationship previously seemed to end up with the BCSA making some kind of ruling that was a blatant attempt to cut the clubs out of the development of top quality players - and then, thankfully, those clubs just going ahead and doing it anyway.

However, if the BCSA put their energy into helping the clubs get the funding, facilities and personnel (as I believe is the point of a collective organization) to do it themselves we'd have a far greater pool of talent to draw from. If this made the Provincial All Star programme redundant - so be it. That would be a sign that the game is getting much stronger.

[terpfan68]

To Richard: I know there are open tryouts for Provincial Teams (You call them All Star teams. We just use the term Provincial Team.) My point is that the people who select the Provincial Team are associated with various clubs and the players from these clubs seem to be picked at a high rate than their teams performance would deserve. Team A goes to the National in three successive years. Once as an underage team. Team B never goes. Team B has 10 Provincial team members. Team A has three Provincial team members. Two out of three selectors of the Provincial Team are from Team B's Club. Hard to figure why. Eventually after being rejected several times players from Team A decline to try out because they know what the outcome will be. Tryout numbers decrease from 60 at 15 years old to 40 at 16 and 25 at 17. Only the members of the Provincial team are looked at by coaches at the National Level. (This is how it was 3 or 4 years ago. I don't know what it is like now, but suspect that nothing has changed.)

[Richard]

I have no argument about player development and the running of teams in league competition being more properly the responsibility of clubs not the provincial associations and I agree that provinces should not be running teams on a long term basis. Provincial teams should be selected and brought together for specific tournaments and not play in leagues like club teams.

I suspect the current situation is the result of generally poor standard of coaching at the club level in years past with the province trying to rectify that by establishing their own programs for the better players. In my experience in years past many youth clubs have a heavy emphasis on recreational participation rather than competition and the development of elite players. I have no problem with the former but it ought not to be at the expense of the latter. The game has moved on with many clubs providing just as good player development as the provincial coaches can if not better in some instances - most of the provincial coaches are drawn from the clubs anyway.

We need to evolve the system and reorganise the structure in keeping with the changing circumstances but there will be resistance to change, that's just human nature.

[Richard]

Nice to hear from you Marty. I generally only get grumpy when people become irrational or foulmouthed and the level of discussion is dragged down into the gutter :-)