As tryout season begins, please remember you will NOT find a perfect club. You will find the BEST fit for NOW club. You may find a very good one, but there is not one single Club that has it all. You have to decide what is most important in serving your player and family dynamic.
The grass is sometimes greener on the other side, but sometimes you are exchanging one dirt patch for another – and sometimes, that is necessary – as the other patch may not be as big. Please please do not wait until the given tryout dates if you are looking to join competitive soccer for the first time, or to switch clubs. Tryout dates are unbelievably busy for the Coaches and other staff. And most importantly, you will not have a real sense of how being a part of the Team/Club is, unless you request to participate in a practice or observe them. I also recommend you observe games. Games will show you ; how the players play in game situations – are they doing what they learned in practice (not perfectly they are kids, but is there an attempt), how the Coach is coaching during a game, and how the sideline behavior is. We have been a part of teams where practice time with the parents was very enjoyable but then on the sideline they change into those “crazy soccer parents”. I have observed crazy soccer Coaches too, but thank the Lord, not on any of our teams. But wouldn’t this bit of social information help with your decision making, especially if you are somewhere with many options.
I have written a Competitive Club Evaluation form. These are questions that there is not a right or wrong answer to – just what it is. What is the Club like? You will need to decide what is a best most feasible fit for your player and your family. And just like the seasons of the Sport – we all have different life seasons too! Feel free to share it, print it, and even better email me at soccerparentacademy@gmail.com with anything you would add to this form.
Page 1 are questions you would ask Club Leadership and page 2 is a guide in having conversations with parents you may meet while at tryouts or as a guest at a practice. You will get a bigger picture if you ask newer parents as well as ‘veteran’ parents who have been with the Club for more than 1 year. On page 1 I created the header the way I did in case you are in a large town and are evaluating several Clubs. You may need to print one per player or just write their age and # of and length of practices as well as if they are at a different location than their siblings.