This weekends friendly in Lincoln was a great event, except the Taco dude ran out of food on Sunday.
Lots of player movement talk, Fall recruiting, and the usual drama made the down time exciting. The organizations should have had fall tryout information booths and uniform fitting in Lincoln.
Looks like the Tri-Valley mutual admiration society hit the panic button and awarded a Grapettes team in the San Jose area and another in Sacramento. I guess 2006 was a bad vintage for kids in the Stockton and Modesto areas.
The only thing I can think the Cabernet Grapes and the new San Jose Grapes will have in common is Brandy, the drink (not the stage name for your favorite "dancer") The Marin Grapette parent sips their brandy after dinner by a fireplace, and the San Jose Grapette parent will chase theirs with Strawberry Fanta around a barbecue.
The coach they picked to run the "new 06 San Jose Grapettes team" will look awesome in that purple leotard. Its going to take Love, Trust, and Belief for him to get into it, but just the mental picture of him in the leotard should enhance his tryout numbers.
The "Travel team search - Sacramento" facebook page created some nice drama this week, when a representative of an organization pretended to be a concerned parent and went on a ridiculous rant about about "parent coaches" and a bunch of other promotional crap disguised as a "Public Service Announcement"
It was obviously an overreaction to the addition of the new AASA Escobar, Firecrackers, Breeze Warren, Grapes 916 teams that will water down the Sacramento/Elk Grove 06 group to the point that any parent with $3K and a kid with an 06 birthday can live the same dream the rest of us are living.
Why not push the "academy"? Put out some cones and lots of bow-nets, roll balls at kids, have a muscular person there to make the kids do exercises they should be doing on their own, and to top it off some former college players who throw front toss for dollars while they utter slogans like "strong top hand" "dont cast" and "stay balanced", all while checking their texts.
Those of you on the anti-parent coaching bandwagon and falling for the "academy style" hustle should realize
the top 12U Norcal Teams all have parent coaches:
Grapes 06
AASA Mortimer
SJ Sting
Nuggets
Sorcerer
All the 06 "academy" players and their parents are welcome to come watch the parent coached kids play at PGF in Huntington Beach next week. Maybe your academy will pick up your admission.
The top 3 teams this weekend were probably:
Cabernet Grapettes Moose
Nuggets 06 Woods
AASA Mortimer
The "Super Friendly" should become a regular (rotating) event going into 2020. The 6GG - 90 min drop was a great format, the fields were nice and the competition (all PGF qualified teams) was good.
Last thought, would you rather see the addition of more 06 teams going into fall or would you like to see the better teams consolidate?
Is 1st year 14s the best year to consolidate and build a strong team? Imagine if two of the top teams combined their top players ....they could send the rest to the academy for "professional training"...
Good luck with the ping pong balls at PGF, pray you dont draw Birmingham Tbolts or Diamond Sports Hotshots in 1st bracket game and enjoy the end of a very long season.