It is possible, but I don’t think so. At least at San Diego Shores, I’d say the biggest issue is their lack of support for the early stages of the player pipeline.
The Bishop’s pool, where SD Shores is based, is roughly half the size of Coggan/La Jolla’s or Cathedral Catholic/Del Mar’s pool. SD Shores has to buy pool time from neighboring pools and they also cut practice time to make it all work. The 10u team for SD Shores practices for 3 hours per week total.
SD Shores has good coaches but even the most masterful coaches the sport has ever seen cannot overcome that amount of practice time deficit. The longer this situation goes on, the weaker SD Shores and Bishop’s is getting. Bishop’s most promising freshmen last year were both Del Mar players, and the team lost to La Jolla High last year. This year, SD Shores’ 12u boys A team is now PSW’s fourth best team behind Del Mar’s 12u B team.
At Vanguard, the story is different. They have a good pipeline. I don’t think in either case, the presence of international players is the cause, but the foreign players being welcomed to those pools may instead be the symptom stemming from other issues.
“We don’t want to put in the hours but we still want to medal…call in the Hungarians!! Let’s be sure and not give them JO All-American though, too awkward/ironic”
USAWP thankfully instituted the international roster limit because of this stuff
Plenty of clubs have to pay for pool time and figure out how to make it work. I guess the clubs that are just one high school might have cost advantages I hadn’t considered.
A lack of available pools in San Diego may be a part of the problem (for pool access for SD Shores)… It’s difficult to get community support in San Diego for it, too.
I want to make sure we are talking about physical pools and not talent pools. I dont think pool avails means the teams need to import players. They have the talent pool to draw from.
did anyone ever comment on why some clubs would play in antiwave and others would play in quiksilver cup? 14U boys in antiwave has CIU and Mission while Quiksilver has Lamo, SD shores, CC United, La jolla and others…
I believe some teams declined Quicksilver citing concerns over fatigue heading into JO’s and preferring a less intense tune-up with only 5 days between this tournament and JO’s.
Del Mar 14s aren’t playing in either one. Neither are Patriot 14s. Both are among the top 5 teams. Every coach has their own philosophies about how best to spend the weekend before JO’s…
On the whole, we tend to underestimate the value of rest in this community.
18s games were physical and there was a lot of good play. The reffing seems to be overwhelmed by the physicality in both Superfinals and Quicksilver. The teams with a lot of graduated seniors are in the drivers seats this year. BB/CCU was great. Mission looks young and strong especially considering their roster changes. Vanguard looks good but they also appear to have more than the two internationals allowed for JOs. That’s a shame for a once very storied club.
Chapman and LBCC are great venues and should host more games.
Amazing for beast boys to play hard and to fight back as best as they could. also heard vanguard had a great game against CNAB and against CCU. I also heard there were alot of bad officiating in both 18u medal matches.
