Maybe moving to Dallas next year.

My Daughter and Son are very good players for their age. My Daughter is a u7 and plays up against our local u8 academy play ups and my son is a u5 who trains and plays with some of the top u7 boys in our area. One of my options for me going back to school full time is in Dallas. We want to know what would be the best option for our kiddos. My schooling will be East Downtown med center and we are looking for somwhere that I could commute reasonably and our kids would be in the best soccer environment that we could afford. My DD is very strong and my Boy is arguably the best I have had at his age in my years of training. I had been doing the training myself but won't have time going back to school full time. Please advise. Thank you in advance.

Find the coach who makes a difference - NOT the club. You'll get inundated with "Come here" responses but I think you'll need to go and watch/participate in a good number of practices before you make a final decision. Sorry for the vague response but it's a pretty competitive soccer world in Dallas.
Welcome to our jungle!

Try different coaches and don't be afraid to leave if the coach is a jerk or rarely at your games because he/she has too many teams.

This is the way I see it. The club is good for your kid to learn/rehearse some technique, play a game or two on weekends and practice twice a week. That is as much as you will get from the club experience. There is truly very little individual attention/development and longitudinal instruction by the coach and this is were you as a parent come in and fill in the gaps in technique (control, first touch etc), soccer awareness or whatever your son needs to make him a better player. U6 to U12 is the golden age to quickly develop soccer specific skills. Take full advantage of this window and work as much as possible with him. So club is just one piece of the puzzle. Need to fill in the rest if at all possible.

Depor, that is what is killing me with my decision I have to make very soon. I can go to a school in a place where the talent pool isn't as deep and the club scene isn't as competitive but the training is good. I would have more access to my kids maybe one or two days a week training them in a smaller town environment where I am not making a commute. I have always been coaching and training them. Or I could come to Big D where I know the level of soccer is very competitive but I probably wouldn't be able to coach them as much because of commuting to the med center each day. I am looking for a group of highly skilled and competitive group of players who have committed families for the love of the game just like my family has. My wife has even tried to persuade me to give up my schooling and move to Dallas and join a good club as a trainer, but that would be throwing away the sacrifices I have already made for our financial future. I wish this decision was easy.

live where you work!!!!! make the commute to practice (if necessary). impossible to know what level, which team your kids will be best suited for until they are "measured". the bigger clubs may have their own facility but no way of knowing where your eventual team will be training. coach may choose an elementary school 30 miles from your house and close to his. good luck. if you don't know what clubs are in the dallas area you could ask for list.....

socdoc13 wrote:Depor, that is what is killing me with my decision I have to make very soon.  I can go to a school in a place where the talent pool isn't as deep and the club scene isn't as competitive but  the training is good.  I would have more access to my kids maybe one or two days a week training them in a smaller town environment where I am not making a commute.  I have always been coaching and training them.  Or I could come to Big D where I know the level of soccer is very competitive but I probably wouldn't be able to coach them as much because of commuting to the med center each day.  I am looking for a group of highly skilled and competitive group of players who have committed families for the love of the game just like my family has.  My wife has even tried to persuade me to give up my schooling and move to Dallas and join a good club as a trainer, but that would be throwing away the sacrifices I have already made for our financial future.  I wish this decision was easy.

The final decision is of course yours and your families but I would say that your kids do not need the high level competition until later ie starting at earliest around 12 and I would even push it to around 14. What they do need now is your help in becoming better future soccer players. As you might know the golden age for soccer only comes once and your son is right in the middle of that age. I have not come across true soccer developers in the metroplex where they work with your son to teach and correct the defects. It is pretty much on you to do this. Sorry it I sound pessimistic but I have been part of the system for a long time and have not seen a whole lot of changes that favor long term development over immediate results (academy was supposed to correct this but it falls short).

There are several opportunities to fulfill soccer training besides the clubs. Ferdie at Sole Roll is excellent. City Futsal in Carrollton has excellent training and highly competitive kids. You could start there and join a club when you get a better feel for the environment. There is no one club that is outstanding, but you will find devoted soccer families in all of them.

It sounds like you have a soccer background, so you should be able to evaluate coaches fairly easily.

Schools will be an important factor and so that may dictate where you decide to live as well. Many live in suburbs because of the schools, but if you expect to be close to your work that will limit your options.

Good luck.

If you are going to work/study at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the best location for you would be the Coppell/Carrollton area because of good public schools, and closeness to several soccer clubs and indoor facilities. Other suburbs have excellent schools (Plano, Frisco, Lewisville, Flower Mound) but I would not advice you to live so far from downtown. Traffic is really bad on I35 towards downtown during rush hours. And with I35 construction going on, it's a nightmare! Also as you kids are so young, you may consider living closer to work, mostly if you do not plan to stay in the area and you will move out after finishing your studies.

I think the bigger question is with you going to school full time, will you have the budget for club soccer? City Futsal and Ferdie are expensive if you calculate it per hour (and Ferdie is offered too infrequently to not be merely a supplement). I think you should look at the rates of the various clubs, and see if they are in the budget. Mind you that tournaments and uniforms are rarely included in the price. And in our toll crazy metropolitan area, make sure you budget for that... they can add a pretty hefty amount to your soccer bill driving to academy games, especially in Frisco where you don't have a lot of choice but to take a toll. I will also say, don't sweat it too much... your career is more important than your 5 and 7 year olds soccer.

My kids have a passion and I want to make sure I can do everything I can do to support it. Environment is everything for development and success, I want to make sure I can provide the best I can all the while trying to further my career for my family.

socdoc13 wrote:My kids have a passion and I want to make sure I can do everything I can do to support it.  Environment is everything for development and success, I want to make sure I can provide the best I can all the while trying to further my career for my family.

OMG! With an awesome reply like that you will fit right in...Let me be one of the first to Welcome you to the wild and sometimes crazy world of North Texas Soccer (NTSSA).

Choose what's best for your career....it's going to be much longer than your kids' soccer games, and it's going to pay for college if they don't get full scholarships~

You can't have it perfect...the clubs near where we live have bad coaching so we drive....it's just a part of it so again, choose:

1) Career
2)Schools/Neighborhood
3) Find coach that's right for kids

Soccerinsanity wrote:Choose what's best for your career....it's going to be much longer than your kids' soccer games, and it's going to pay for college if they don't get full scholarships~

You can't have it perfect...the clubs near where we live have bad coaching so we drive....it's just a part of it so again, choose:

1) Career
2)Schools/Neighborhood
3) Find coach that's right for kids

absolutely A+ post.

...and realize that most of a player's development occurs outside of practice, i.e. what he does for himself.