What you notice this year is that the teams that have hold backs that are bigger kids are able to break APi/Diamondbacks zone denfense down because the players are smaller . The bigger kid just wears or breaks through the zone .The offense of API is strong but defense is small and can't handle the bigger kids or stronger .I also notice a lot of other club teams are playing zone this year.
But that is the thing -- in both the Friday night API game I watched against Next Level, and the Sunday API game I watched against Crabs, it wasn't holdback/bigger kids that were doing the scoring against them with very rare exception, but rather teams were scoring in unsettled situation, or where the extra pass was being made. They appear to be a gritty bunch (not an API parent) and were very well coached in the zone being deployed. When a bigger kid came down from top, the zone very effectively collapsed. Scoring from up top occurred twice in the games I observed -- once in the case of Next Level and once in the case of Crabs where the shot came from a severe angle on the run on the right hand side. Where a larger kid had an advantage (?) was in the velocity of the shot as the API goalie did see some heat from those two middies.
Got to give a lot of credit to API defensive coaching regardless of the size of the defenders as that was not an issue in my humble opinion. The scheme made up for 99% of any size differential.
