I find all this talk about "AA" teams hysterical. Express and 91 are clearly very good in comparison to the other club teams on Long Island. It appears they won the game of musical chairs for this age group But that's not good enough, apparently, for those obsessed with organizational status seeking for their prepubescent kid. We must also be subjected to their opinion on what other teams are A or A minus quality, and who left what club and why. And how do they know this? Because these adults, who are not coaches or directors and who presumably have jobs and lives of their own, are actually engaged in the process of rating 12 year old boys. Which is weird, but also amusing and disturbing at the same time. So your budding future ex-college superstar/entry-level mail room employee plays for a "true" AA team. We understand that you're very, very proud and that this is a very, very big deal. "Express or 91 - there's a big drop off after that!" you say. "He's self-selected with other boys of his caliber, and he gets to play with other "true" AA talent" you also say. Fantastic. But, while your envy-worthy son is playing with other AA talent, the other boys on the teams you ridicule are playing against it. Fighting, coming up short, fighting again, learning. Getting better. Getting better because they're playing better competition. You don't learn much winning 12-4, especially if you're three deep on a line. Maybe the kids on these A or A minus teams are not worthy at this point in their career of making that list you made up in your head, but who said being the best 12 year old was the point of this exercise, anyway? At the end of the day, all these LI club teams play each other. No one is being airlifted out to play on another level with "better teams"- they're all in the same circle. The difference between them is not as great as you'd like to think, when compared to the hundreds of other club teams nationwide. The question is: is your son growing and learning? And there's a bunch of us who think that playing against the "better" talent is better than playing with it. Anyway, mark my words. I give it two years before someone on this board makes the following statement: "Express and 91 are the only true elite AAA teams. The rest are maybe AA, single A at best."
I find the ranking posts just conversational and light hearted. It doesn’t mean anything, but it seems to irritate some.. People will often share their opinions, as you have, on blogs. All good, imho, I don’t even mind the self promoting or people taking about how great the team is. I only posts that insult a teams ability, I find annoying, but whatever.
Agreed with all of this. You have to take everything in these forums with a grain of salt and filter out some the worst schoolyard bickering. It is a source of entertainment (at least for me who check for new messages regularly.. and don't pretend you don't) and you may even find some of the threads quite engaging and useful, like this one in particular.
