NCAA Tourn/ Youth Soccer in US

NCAA Soccer Tourney

It's down to the final 8. This weekend I plan to go with some friends to watch Akron take on Tulsa. I wanted to see them Sunday because the weather was beautiful and they were playing Stanford (beat them 2- 0, very one-side match, Stanford didnt get a shot off until the second half), but the game was sold out. For this game we will buy tickets very early, like tomorrow. Crazy to be playing soccer in Ohio in December.

Akron's record is 22-0-0. It would really be something if they could go the season without a loss or tie (of course no ties is a given at this point). Come on you zips!! Any of you northern Ohioans should consider going. Disappointing thing is that Akron's stadium only holds 2700 people, but at least the message is getting out that our soccer stadiums are not big enough!!

Oh if you want to see the brackets, look here

http://www.ncaa.com/brackets/2009/ncaa_ ... r_men.html

 

RE: NCAA Soccer Tourney

I did get to watch one of the final eight this season when the University of Evansville handed Drake a 1-0 loss in Evansville. I guess this gives me a rooting interest since UE did not make the field.

 

Thanks for posting the bracket Mo. The thing that jumps out is half of the remaining 8 are from the ACC. I usually pull for the Pac 10 but since I can't stand the Bruins in any sport, I'll pull for the Zips (how often can you say that).

 

We've got the D3 Men's and Women's Finals this w/e. Unfortunately for them, they're coming to San Antonio in time for a wet cold front. Expected temps...high in the low to mid 40's, low in the low to mid 30's with rain and possible sleet. Ohio may not have been such a bad draw for a tournament afterall.

 

I confess I lost interest after my Billikens (that's St. Louis U., by the way) lost in the second round in an overtime heartbreaker to Tulsa.

Now that you've revived my interest, I'll be cheering for Tulsa.

 

Yeah.. they really DO call themselves the 'Zips" and that's why they will win the NCAA.

That and a REALLY good recruiter/coach. IYAM, the guy will be in MLS sometime soon. I mean if he can take a small school from absolutely nothing to National #1, what's the point of going to coach USC or Va?

Doesnt mean he'll be successful, but it got Sigi and Arena there.. of course Tom Fitzgerald, too.

 

ZIP it, Skippy!

But I mean that in a good way. How can you root against "Zippers"? Some of my best teenage memories involved them.

 

Akron 1 - 0 Tulsa. Great game. However, with the little bit that I have seen of Akron, I have a worry. In both games that I saw they completely and utterly dominated the opposition in terms of shots on goal and possesion (for the entire tourney I believe the opposition has only managed one shot in the first half and that was Tulsa) to the point where Akron looked to be a team of a different level. Then in the second half things look much more even. I'm not sure this will be enough to beat the remaining competition, but I have my fingers crossed. One of their strongest players did not play these last few games due to injury, but hopefully he'll be fit for Friday. I hope lots of Uof A fans are traveling because they will need it. The locale is basically a home game for the other 3 teams.

Here is the final four for this weekend:

Akron (23-0-0) v. North Carolina (16-2-3)

Wake Forest (17-3-3) v. Virginia (17-3-3)

I think ESPN is airing the semi final games but I dont think they are live.

 

Was at the Fox Sports Bar at the Phoenix airport yesterday, and in the bank of tv sets showing all the NFL games the College Cup was on. I was only able to see the first half, but Akron looked to be in control and should have put away that one really good chance they had. Sad to see that they ended up losing in pks, sorry Mo.

 

Followe don CBS StatTracker, and appeared painfully uneventful and lacking in creativity.

Paul Gardner's Take:

What College Cup reveals about the college game

By Paul Gardner

Without much hesitation, I'd say that the weekend's Akron vs. North Carolina NCAA Division I semifinal was probably the best college game that I've seen. And that's in nearly 50 years of watching. I put that probably in there, because there are some ifs and buts to be considered. Firstly: I'm using the criteria of college soccer to judge the game -- I'm not comparing it with youth soccer generally, or with, say, the Under-20 World Cup.

If we must have college soccer, then this was as good a display of the strengths it possesses that you could ask for. We got 110 minutes of superb commitment, stamina, effort, speed, athleticism and -- again within the college criteria -- skill. It was exciting, for sure -- but it suffered ultimately in that it couldn't come up with even one goal, and so collapsed into what has to be an anticlimax: the shootout. Not an anticlimax for the winners, Akron, of course. But for everyone else, a let-down, like drawing the "winner" out of a hat.

Akron a worthy winner, nevertheless? Not really. There was nothing to separate these teams, really and it came down to one blown shot by Jordan Graye. As so often in the accursed shootout, it was a player who had played very well in the real game who made the fatal mistake.

But I think I'd probably be writing a very similar opinion had North Carolina won. Yes, for me, Carolina was the better team -- that is, it played the more attractive soccer. But it couldn't score -- so Akron nipped in and whisked away the prize.

Akron coach Caleb Porter played at Indiana University. And no doubt he learned a good deal about coaching from Jerry Yeagley. Which is why Akron plays like Indiana. With one notable difference; Yeagley usually managed to find a playmaker. Often they were foreign players -- Angelo Di Bernardo, Armando Betancourt and Aleksey Korol -- but Brian Maisonneuve was a good American example.

Porter has no playmaker, no organizing mastermind to vary the pace and to upset the predictability. Indeed, one might even wonder whether a playmaker could survive this frantic pace. North Carolina has Michael Farfan, but we saw nothing like the best of him as he was caught up in the pell-mell activity, almost compelled by the insistent rhythm of the game to quick-fire first-time passes.

At that particular game, Akron is better. Its passing was, on the whole, quick and crisp and accurate. With one drawback. It was almost always predictable. Nine times out of 10 you would have little difficulty predicting where the next Akron pass would be going. That may not make defending against them easy, but it makes it more straightforward.

In the final, Virginia certainly made it look pretty standard stuff, defending stoutly for 110 minutes, barely allowing Akron a clear shot on goal. At the other end of the field, Virginia also found it impossible to score.

So the brainless "defense wins championships" mantra yet again showed its threadbareness. In the end it came down to scoring goals, even though they were fake shootout goals -- and the 2009 College Cup closed, after 220 minutes of scoreless soccer, with another shootout. And once again the losing team's outstanding player became the goat. Blair Gavin had the miss this time, crucial and cruel, that doomed Akron.

The same question -- did Virginia deserve this win? Again -- not really. Akron did enough to win, but its luck ran out in the semi. If anything, the trophy should be split down the middle.

Then again, maybe Virginia does deserve it on the grounds that it was the only team out of the four that actually won a game -- its semi, when it beat Wake Forest, 2-1, in overtime. But the final game was as even as you can get. The shootout decided against Akron this time, so Virginia is the champion. Neither deservedly nor undeservedly - that is the sort of judgment-defying limbo that the shootout spawns.

To return to an overall look at college soccer. The pluses are all those largely physical qualities that I mentioned earlier on. And they are impressive. But they are not enough. College soccer simply has to find a way to start playing a more thoughtful, much more skillful game. If, that is, it is going to produce pro players for MLS.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber should be concerned at what he sees here. Because it is deceiving. The colleges are still producing plenty of average-to-good defenders and midfielders. Very few top level-forwards, and no creative midfielders. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Working on the possibly already fictional notion that the colleges will supply the American base of MLS teams, this does not bode well for the future of MLS as a league that needs to play entertaining soccer.

But ... maybe we're seeing the first glimmer of a change in attitude here, for, just maybe, the presence of Michael Farfan on North Carolina and Jonathan Villanueva on Virginia offers a shimmer of hope that the colleges are, years later than they should have been, interested in recruiting Latino players -- by which I mean particularly the creative midfielders and forwards.

This blind spot has marred the college record for decades. On these four finalist teams, there were over twice as many African-Americans as Hispanics. Given that American blacks do not play soccer in significant numbers, but Latin Americans very definitely do, that needs some explaining. How the colleges and their coaches explain it, I do not know. But someone ought to tell us what is going on.
----------------------------

Here's my thought on what is going on:

Paul Gardner, who's writing I really enjoy, is either a) not thinking very hard, or b) not being honest, when he says he doesn't understand why there are not more Latinos/Hispanics in the college game.

Even here in little ol' Santa Rosa Beach (which will be getting a Wally-World soon, God help us!), the young Hispanic players don't join our Academie. They'd much rather either play pick-up or in the Hispanic League which does not involve itself with affiliations or travel.

Not to mention, I think many Hispanic/Latinos are more affected by socio-economic factors than many African-Americans these days. Boys are put to work helping Papi in construction before they are out of middle school.

 

Same here in STL. The two official academy squads (one on either side of the river) are supposed to have the best and most promising teen-age players. That's the theory, anyway.

The reality is that the official development academies are populated overwhelmingly by middle-to-upper class white kids. There are ethnic clubs here that compete in the official youth soccer leagues (Bosnian and Hispanic, primarily), but they don't travel, and their kids generally do not try out for the academies.

We do not have a very good strategy around here for developing our best youth talent. The high school teams have a diluted (and arbitrary) pool of talent from which to form a team...but they're free, so everyone can try out. The academies are great at addressing the problem of a diluted talent pool, but they are financially exclusive.

 

And how do you get Coaches, Directors, etc., to commit the time without paying them anything near the value of their time, or possibly no pay at all?

 

Gardner stated that Akron had no playmaker, but they did. I can't recall his name, but they had an underclassman who most of the offense went through but he left the Carolina game with an injury. They were far less threatening after his departure.

That's not to defend the NCAA's though. 2 out of 3 matches ended scoreless and had to go to pk's. That's not the kind of display that will inspire me to watch it again anytime soon.

 

FWIW, the head coach of the academies here are full-time, salaried employees of the club (St. Louis Scott Gallagher Soccer Club). They both have other duties with the club besides coaching the academies.

...but that exacerbates the issue. In order to pay them, the club charges hefty fees to its members, thus becoming financially exclusive.

 

As far as the Gardner article, I seem to remember some snooze-fest world cup matches that ended in 0-0 penalty kick shoot outs that kept me from becoming a soccer fan for years. In fact, I think one involved Brazil, you know that hispanic (okay portugese) country that creates all those playmakers that the US ,with its soccer ineptitude, is incapable of.

The 0-0 draw happens at every level; and it probably happens more at the higher levels. It happens when every player on the field cares about their team winning above anything else. It is a weakness of the beautiful game, not of college soccer. I'm sick of this soccer snobbery; it is all over the place, and its so so tiring and pathetic. I can go to my sons matches and hear the snobbery from parents or I can tune in to the NCAA finals and hear the snobbery of the ACC or I can listen to Europeans or Eurosnobs talk about US players or Fulham.

Like FulhamAg said, Ampaipitakwong, Akron's key playmaking midfielder during the tournament was injured for the final, but even more key and unoted by the announcers, was the absence of Michael Nanchoff. He is their best playmaker with one of the highest assist totals in the NCAA. So the remaining offensive threat left to Akron was Bunbury and Virginia fouled him everytime he got some space and practically every time he got the ball. Lastly, the draw in the final might have something to do with the fact that the game featured the two best defenses and two best goalies in college soccer.

 

Tell us how you really feel, Mo!

 

Youth Soccer in America

There were some comments in the NCAA thread about youth soccer in this country, but I thought I'd start a topic for it.

Here in Maryland, it follows the "usual" pattern of soccer being mostly available to "suburban" kids.

Howard County, MD is one of the wealthiest in the state and has SAC, the Soccer Association of Columbia. For $250-300, your kid can play both Fall and Spring, rec level. The coaches at this level are unpaid. Underarmor is the sponsor and provides uniforms. The higher levels (rec A, travel) are more expensive (up to $5000 a season) and the coaches do receive compensation. There's also at least two other academies in this area, even more expensive. The refs (at rec level at least) are a combination of retirees and teenagers, and do get paid by SAC ($10-15 per game, IIRC).

In Baltimore County, MD the only official rec level soccer is pretty much a joke. It's cheap (~ $50 a season), but at the lower age groups, each team doesn't even have their own coach - multiple teams practice near each other and one coach explains drills and moves on to the next team with the parents running the drills. Parents are also refs during the games.

There is at least one free academy in Baltimore, Crystal Palace Baltimore's, but it's not nearly enough, especially with a sizable hispanic population in East Baltimore and a largely untapped African-American population.

So, really, youth soccer in this country is held together by volunteers as I would guess over 90% of kids are coached by unpaid coaches.

Part of the problem is the college program in the US. An academy is not going to invest a bunch of money in a player just to have him go off to college for four years, playing for and making money for some other organization, and then be, effectively, a "free agent."

For academies to work in this country, there need to be some changes:
- academies need to handle education as well - i.e., get the kids their GEDs by the time they're 16.
- academies need to have the ability to sign players to contracts, even at a young age. Player sales would help the funding.
- and we of course need more professional teams so that the primary purpose of academies is to create players for the parent team of the academy, investing for the future.
- and, unfortunately, mens college soccer needs to be relegated to a rec level sport. NCAA soccer should not be perceived as a path to professional soccer; it should be a last hurrah for people who want to use their degree to get a job but want to have a last few years playing the sport they enjoy. Without this change, academies will continue to be hamstrung by the "typical sports progression" of this country.

 

Youth Soccer in America

Andy,

So many good points I don;t know where to start. A couple that jump out and I will comment on for now.

1. "So, really, youth soccer in this country is held together by volunteers as I would guess over 90% of kids are coached by unpaid coaches."
Probably the biggest reason that the level of soccer in the States is not improving faster, at the youth level and beyond (since the seeds are sown early). It never fails that we have former athletes coaching kids in our youth program, but they were mostly American football players in their day, and that approach just does not translate effectively enough.

2. "For academies to work in this country, there need to be some changes:
- academies need to handle education as well - i.e., get the kids their GEDs by the time they're 16.
- academies need to have the ability to sign players to contracts, even at a young age. Player sales would help the funding.
- and we of course need more professional teams so that the primary purpose of academies is to create players for the parent team of the academy, investing for the future.
- and, unfortunately, mens college soccer needs to be relegated to a rec level sport. NCAA soccer should not be perceived as a path to professional soccer; it should be a last hurrah for people who want to use their degree to get a job but want to have a last few years playing the sport they enjoy. Without this change, academies will continue to be hamstrung by the "typical sports progression" of this country."
Good Lord, Andy, this is a business plan waiting to be expounded on. One of my ideas for a local sports campus proposal is to start an academie similar to the one in Bradenton, but avoid the mistakes made there. If I need some help fleshing out the details, which I will, I'll be contacting you. And as far as college sports, it is not just soccer that needs re-thinking, it is the whole concept of college sports. I am definitely an advocate of givng the college games back to the students. If someone is there for only sports, I think the idea of developmental leagues outside of college should deal with that.
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We need more input on this EVERYONE! Petty, can you parse out the preface from the other thread to include in this one?
Too difficult to parse it.. just joined it with the NCAA thread as you see.
-pf