Originally Posted by CageSage
Originally Posted by Anonymous
what do you do when they start eliminating 7th/8th grade teams due to budget cuts. My school district had and A and B team. It looks like the B team is getting dropped. Just found out last week. Any ideas for supplement team play. His summer travel team does not offer spring league.
One of three options will be an outcome from the cutting of middle (modified) school sports.

The first is that the school district itself will form a pay-for-play structure similar to what district parents will form when an austerity budget is employed and a sports program requires saving. In this case, the funds for the entire team(s) must be raised to avoid just individual players paying.

The second option is that external programs involving middle school (sixth, seventh, eighth graders depending on the district) students will blossom during the Spring season. Here, you will have individual players in a pay-for-play situation.

The third outcome will be an earlier culling of marginal or lightly interested players from the sport resulting in a smaller field of players from which to choose at the High School age groups.

The most likely outcome will be the second of these three options.

In your case, your club team might not have a Spring program but there are many that do and there are training camps throughout the season advertised here on BOTC. Many of these options should prove suitable for your family and/or budget.

Not to sound silly, but there is also a thing called a "pick-up" game ... why not have the players pull together some school yard games themselves?


In our District the two team program was eliminated 4 years ago. My son's grade was the first early culled group. As a result, he is one of only 9 field players and 2 goalies left playing. This is down from 43 kids and two PAL teams when they were in 6th grade. Very sad to see. Some of the kids grew late, and some didn't play travel. There are some of them that are now big strong kids. Others are now part of small group that hang out before school and have their smokes... Not sure if this is a by product of early cuts, but I'm sure it didn't help.