This was my kid's first experience doing this out West. A few observations:
There many talented players in this age group. Congrats to those who made the cut! They said that there are roughly 9,000 players in the age group in SoCal, so it's an accomplishment to be selected at all.
There is no "system" to play within at these ODP sessions. The coaches pretty much roll out the ball and say "go play." There really isn't coaching or training at all, so don't send your kids for the training or coaching.
The format favors aggressive, selfish players. Players willing to push their way through the scrum and knock girls down. I don't mean this in a disrespectful way. I actually respect the drive and passion I saw. It seemed like kids were trying to get noticed by taking on other players on and going on long individual dribbling runs. By the 2nd day, my kid was rolling her eyes every time she collected a ball, made a pass and then moved into space, only to have the recipient take off down the field into traffic and try to dribble 4-5 players. I encouraged her to be more aggressive and go for it herself, but she thought is was ridiculous. Ultimately she didn't make the cut, so you could argue that she didn't do the right thing, but it's her journey not mine so what can you do?
I was surprised that Cal South didn't make it feel more special. There's very little done in the way of banners or signage or hoopla. There's a lot more of a special field at National Cup. This year, we didn't even get matching uniforms. I saw a picture of the 2007s and they had matching shirts and shorts, while we ended up with a white t-shirt. It may seem trivial, but I would have liked to see more recognition overall and value from the session. Show the girls a bit more love.
My kid really enjoyed meeting and getting to know players that she competed against this year. She thought everyone was great.
Overall, I would send her again if given the opportunity. It's great to have her experience a highly "alpha-oriented" training and tryout environment. If she's going to be successful, she's going to need to learn how to deal with this type of environment, whether in high school, on a college pitch, inside a company, etc.
Hi all, my daughter also attended the event and loved it. She was the only player from her team, played her heart out with a great attitude, but unfortunately didn’t make the cut. There was a huge amount of talent out there this weekend, even the coaches mentioned that. We heard many other parents say the level of play was much higher this year over last, and last year girls were even more selfish? I can’t speak to that.
I appreciated all the post-event analysis. From where I was sitting, the passing was good. It was a matter of intensity and speed of play that separated players. I saw some beautiful players make beautiful plays, but they looked a bit more leisure on the ball, so perhaps that’s why they didn’t get selected? There was a certain consistent intensity in some players.
It did also seem that all teams valued winning in the end despite the format. If you assisted in helping your team score, defend, pressure turnovers, or win, it was noted by the girls (and probably the coaches) and the ball returned, I thought. I think the game IQ for both the players and coaches is higher than we give them credit for at times. Having played myself, and this is true of all sports, when you’re actually on the field facing the opponent, you actually see and know what really happens much better — who contributes, who’s very difficult to guard and you have to watch out for, who’s a jerk on and off the field.
However, speed of play was an issue. Play was fast. If you were slow to space, or slow to overlap, or even looked leisure in getting there, the ball didn’t necessarily return. Sometimes you had to go get the ball yourself. What I noticed was a lot of girls knew each other, so they did have passing preferences. Outside girls had to prove themselves before looks came their direction. From where I was sitting, it wasn’t as simple as selfish players made it and unselfish didn’t. I saw plenty of selfish “bowl over-type” players get cut and plenty of unselfish, skill-based, technical, “good soccer” ballers make it. This is not to say that everything mentioned earlier didn’t happen, since there were many games going on and I was only able to focus on one game at a time. Having said that, I did see plenty of girls make their Mike Tyson’s straight line Bald Bull charges down the middle or the sideline all day even from defensive positions to the opposing goal line. We’ve probably all seen these same players do this before. Sometimes it works well on the small field, but it seemed less effective on the big field unless you were blazing fast, and this was certainly dependent on the speed of the specific defense at the time.
In the end, it was an invaluable experience to learn from. I can’t imagine not supporting your player’s desire to better themselves at events such as this one. Keeping them home for any reason only limits their exposure plus experience and if you’re doing it to protect them because they may not get selected or you think the event is silly (which seems a bit arrogant to me given the honor it is to be selected, just thinking about the girls on our team that weren’t selected and the team selected didn’t even play anything last year - it was just an exercise) or the coaches don’t train, you may be doing a disservice to your daughter in the end and be missing the point of these ‘real life’ experience events. If you wanted pure training in a bubble with no competition, I know a TOCA center in Torrance that charges $45/hour and gives excellent training on a machine with perfect passes in speed and angle and no pressure or opponents, and then you could bestow best TOCA training player award on her after as a morale boost (kidding, of course). Personally, I think both are needed and helpful, and I’m sincerely grateful for the experience which bettered my daughter.