PAL is dying. Plain and Simple. Yes you get a town here or there that can put something together and make it work, but the majority does not. Complaining parents, uncommitted kids that show up randomly to practices etc. If your kid wants to play this sport and I mean really wants to play, your best bet is the travel circuit. PAL puts kids on the field that don't belong playing together and that creates a major problem. I understand the $ it costs and that its not doable by some, but the sport as a whole needs to recognize what can happen at this level. You get a defenseman who plays on a tier 1 travel team go up against a kid who only picks up his stick 1 or 2 times a week on PAL, he's either going to get trampled or hurt. What's the sense of it. Than the coaches get the backlash because "my kid should be coached on how to deal with that defenseman" on the flip side I have to watch my sons face as he leaves a field upset from the lack of effort from some his teammates who really don't want to be there. Listen mom and dad if your kid picks up a stick to go to practice and then puts it down until next practice, he's not into the sport. Period. Take some responsibility for this. For those who have a kid that wants to get better, and wants to be on the field, the coaches and players are a much better fit at the Travel level. As much as I want PAL to work the sport has grown so fast that Travel has made itself the place where kids who want it can go out and get it without having to deal with a kid who is just out there because his dad played back in the day and rarely picks up a stick. Didn't make the rules here but its obvious what s going on. Writing those checks is sometimes painful, but the difference in my sons Travel team to his PAL team is light years and I think its worth it. Skill wise. coaching wise, teammate wise and overall IQ wise.
Before the weekend, I would have argued against this post. After yesterday's game, I have come around more so to this POV - my son is one of a half-dozen plus travel players on his PAL team, and they have almost no one after them that can even begin to play with them. The game goes south very fast when these better players start trying to do too much to make up for the other players - the aspects of team O and D disappear and a loss turns into a beat down. My son is now not enjoying playing PAL, and I need to decide if playing in the community program is worth risking him losing his enthusiasm for the sport altogether. If the travel kids bail, then the PAL team will not have enough players in general, and would only be a hot mess if they could scrape enough boys together. The only way I can see this working, and that might only be a band aid, is to combine with another age and have an A and B team of each - so, in my son's case, combine the 5th and 6th better players and the the same thing with the sames ages' lesser players - both would play in the 6th grade PAL division, but one would play top tier while the other would play lowest tier. That would work out for the A team - not sure how that would for the B team. Either way, this would be sticky for the parents of players that are on the B team for both ages - too many parents don't want to acknowledge that their little Johnny is both not very talented (which is OK, and could be for numerous reasons - years playing, etc) and/or not nearly as committed as others. Tough spot for the local organization, but they will have to look longer term to see if their action or inaction is going to kill the program.
