Comparing High School and Club Soccer
By Rick Crow
Although many schools have built rich soccer traditions, the world’s greatest game is a relative newcomer to the U.S. interscholastic sports scene. High school soccer puts large numbers of players on the field, but it is often treated as a stepchild by soccer savants who criticize the level of play and the occasional athletic director who is obligated to shoehorn soccer around other traditional American sports.
Unlike seasonal sports such as gridiron football, basketball and baseball, there doesn’t seem to be a time of the year when almost every high school in the United States is playing soccer. Across the country boys and girls lace up their cleats for fall varsity and JV games, but some states play in the spring, while a few southern states hold their high school soccer seasons sometime in between. This crazy quilt becomes even more complex in states where boys play during one season and girls play in another, or when public and private schools compete at different times of the year.
No matter when the high school season takes place, conflicts between club and high school teams seem inevitable. Some players even skip the high school season to play with their club teams on a year-round basis; other players may spend the week with their high school teams, but play in games and tournaments with their club teams on the weekend.
Playing for school and club at the same time can take a toll physically and emotionally on a player. It can take away from study time, recreational opportunities, family time and much-needed rest for adolescent bodies. In many cases though, the end seems to justify the means for players who are determined to climb to the next level.
Deciding whether to commit to club or high school soccer is an incredibly complicated matter. So many variables affect organizations, teams and individuals that it would be easy to write a persuasive piece claiming that either version of soccer is preferable to the other. In fact, both club and high school soccer programs are taking the game forward in our country.
For starters, we must credit club soccer. Some sports, notably gridiron football, are almost totally dominated by high school administrators and interscholastic organizations. If you can’t make your high school football team, if you can’t get along with the coach or if you don’t like playing left guard, there is nowhere else to turn. Thanks to independent clubs, soccer players have choices.
Coaching and high level play, however, are the biggest attractions of club soccer. Clubs can form dream teams that compete against regional powerhouses from around the country; some even travel overseas. Very few high schools are allowed to recruit this kind of talent and visit as many exotic destinations.
As a referee and a spectator, I have witnessed some truly horrible high school games. These games often feature ill-conceived passes and awkward traps that lead to uncountable 50-50 balls, and in many cases, collisions. In high school soccer, it is not unusual to see coaches force their players into mistakes by yelling at them to hustle when there is no reason to run. Certainly, there are lots of good high school games, but those teams are usually dominated by club players. In fact, most high school coaches know that if they are going to be competitive next year, they need to encourage players to join travel teams in the off-season.
On the flip side, there are plenty of positives in interscholastic competition that simply can’t be duplicated by club soccer. The fact that most teams can’t recruit outside of their schools limits the talent pool. But this may actually speed the development of players who don’t have an opportunity to exercise leadership skills on a typical regional all-star team that consistently trounces its opponents 6-0.
High school programs offer a degree of stability, affiliation, tradition and a sense of community that can’t be found in a club setting. Of course, there is turnover on high school rosters, but players can at least be assured that they are not competing for their roster sport with hordes of superstars who come from miles around to attend open tryouts. How many times have we seen a club team thrown together that goes on to win a state, regional or national youth championship, and then dissolve as soon as the awards are handed out?
Real Salt Lake Coach John Ellinger can still be proud of the back-to-back national championships he won at the U.S. Youth Soccer National Championship with Columbia City United (Maryland) in 1996 and 1997. But I wonder if I could find 50 people in the state who know anything about this team and what it accomplished. At least high schools have trophy cases to honor great teams and great players, while preserving institutional memory.
Schools also offer players something that they rarely see in club soccer: a chance to play before a crowd! With crowds come P.A. announcers, pre-game promotion, newspaper articles, and maybe even highlights or interviews on television. For this reason alone, it’s important for every fan to support high school soccer. Even if the level of play is not always equal to club soccer, crowds elevate the profile of our sport, and players can do some pretty amazing things when hundreds or even thousands of people are watching.
Crowds or no crowds, the quality of play in high school will probably never be as good as club soccer. Then again, I’m not sure if this will continue to be a big issue in the near future. If American soccer is truly going to enter the 21st century, all MLS teams need to form youth teams sooner rather than later.
The percentage of elite players lost to MLS youth teams is so tiny that it won’t affect the overall level of play in club or high school soccer. In fact, because of the sheer numbers of boys and girls that clubs and high schools put on the field, both programs will continue to produce talent that will some day play for U.S. national teams.
Unfortunately, one of the areas in which clubs and high schools are letting us down is recreational soccer. While high schools back their varsity and JV sports, they support very few athletic activities for the majority of their students. In my area of Maryland, the Soccer Association of Columbia and Montgomery Soccer Inc. are two clubs that have developed outstanding recreational leagues for high school boys and girls, but across the country these kinds programs tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
To win a World Cup, we don’t need millions of superstars. Probably a dozen or so could get the job done. However, if we hope to become a true soccer nation we need to do everything we can to get many more millions of players on the field and instill a love for soccer that will keep them playing through adulthood. These are the people who will support Major League Soccer and the U.S. National Teams. These are the people who can help us build the infrastructure we need to make soccer the No. 1 sport in the country.
Rick Crow is former editor of Maryland Soccer News and former director of ticket sales for the Maryland State Youth Soccer Association.
