News around San Diego is that girls program director Kirby is out at La Jolla United. I thought she was doing a great job growing that program and the PSW ODP program in recent years.
How so? Her teams have done very poorly, accusations of favoritism of LJHS/LJU athlete’s… PSW zone has not faired well under her and the zone has had incredible attrition. Especially when you consider the class of 27’ is the most talented in a decade. At least 8 committed d1 athletes in the class of 27’ with only ONE participating in ODP. I objectively disagree…
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The PSW ODP Program is in shackles. None of the top players on the girls side are participating. It’s been a monumental failure lead by her.
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Is it her or is it ODP? Genuine question. I do not know her.
PSW Female Youth ODP Participation
PSW Female Cadet ODP Participation
PSW Female Development ODP Participation
Interesting that Development has gone up in numbers while all else fell off. I would think that is a good trend for Development? Attrition from the youngest level would be expected, but a large development class would be a good thing for the future right?
My own personal head scratcher was more about how it seemed like LJU boys has such a great 14U but only mid pack 12U the last couple years.
Thanks Marco. Can you add a second zone to those graphs as a comparison. SPA or CST. Same age groups and girls. Wonder if they follow similar trends. My hunch is as you get older you start to see ODP differently than you do at Dev.
CST PSW SPA Female Youth ODP Participation
CST PSW SPA Female Cadet ODP Participation
CST PSW SPA Female Development ODP Participation
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This doesn’t tell me that the zone has a leadership problem when looking at other zones trends, at least not a bigger problem than the rest. Again, I do not know those involved, but was curious about the sentiment that she has caused the ODP issue.
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That’s good news that the PSW DEV #''s are up. However, DEV was never the issue in PSW. The rapidly declining Cadet and Youth numbers are the issue. A lot of this has been discussed in much more detail in a previous thread 2026 Girls' ODP/Pipeline
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Looks like a decline in numbers for most, if not all of these SoCal zones. I would be curious to see the numbers for the PAC zone. Overall, their teams did well (boys and girls) in JOs.
yes. And seeing the trends for the non CA zones would be really interesting as well(Sorry Marco for the extra work!)
Still surprised about Kirby being potentially out at LJU.
This, once the excitement wears off and you learn that this is a money grab and cycle through a few times you eventually figure it out. The issue still stands that only 1/9 d1 recruits from the zone ( many from the power 4) stopped participating in PSW ODP…
Go GLZ!
GLZ HAW MTN SEZ Female Youth ODP Participation
GLZ HAW MTN SEZ Female Cadet ODP Participation
GLZ HAW MTN SEZ Female Development ODP Participation
MDW NEZ PNW SWZ Female Youth ODP Participation
MDW NEZ PNW SWZ Female Cadet ODP Participation
MDW NEZ PNW SWZ Female Development ODP Participation
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I’m surprised no one has brought up the Academy teams as a reason for a decline in overall ODP participation, especially at the 16-18 yr old (2nd year of cadet, all youth) level.
That is a solid point. The academy athletes are not necessarily captured in the ODP Camp participation data, but I can change that. Will update when I have the data.
Just an FYI - SWZ divided into two regions this past ODP. This changed the participation level in the Houston area but not in the Dallas area.
To retain consistency with past years, I didn’t split SWZ. I do have visibility on how many athletes were SWZ North versus South and how many dual-attended camps in both sub-zones, but for the aggregated numbers it is all SWZ.
No problem just pointing out more opportunity to make a team more participation as the sharp upswing for 2025.
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Whatever they are doing, they should keep it up and other zones should copy their plan. SWZ appears to be a bright spot for growth of the sport.