Originally Posted by Anonymous
This trend has reached a new level in Ward Melville. For years, the youth program has said if you play outside of our 3 village program you can’t play on the town travel team. That was fine and everyone understood their options. Some families stayed with the town program, but some also left for select teams like express, 91 team LI...The families that left generally have either really good players that wanted more competition than town team tournaments, or players that weren’t as strong that weren’t getting playing time on the town team. It was sad that the teams lost players and the boys lost the opportunity to practice and play with their friends, but generally it worked out ok for all.

Now, at the HS travel level they have two teams-Green and Gold (JV and Varsity) being coached by HS coaches. At the recent try-outs, there were approximately 100 boys for roughly 50 spots. There were several boys trying out that had previously played on select teams (all whom are now very strong players). Having talked to some of those families I learned that they were trying out to make sure the HS coaches knew their kid existed…

At the end of the try-out, the coaches thanked all for the boys for trying out and were pretty open about their expectations. They don’t want any Ward Melville boys playing outside of their reams. The threat is clear, play elsewhere and you have no shot at playing on the Varsity team ever. Now, for most of the boys, the threat is really nonsense as the HS varsity team rarely plays more than 12 or 13 boys during any game (except for last Q in a blowout, starters don’t leave the field). So unless you have a real shot to be one of those 12 or 13, you should tell the coach to jump off the local bridge. However, if you have a shot to be one of those, then you are in a ridiculous bind. The coaches want the boys together because they say it makes the HS team stronger and it is a fair point. But all the boys want the chance to play. So if you are one of the 12 or 13 you get looked at by colleges and have a shot to get recruited, but if your are not and only play at junk time, no one ever sees you.

The summer team plays 5 tournaments and so unless you are on of the 12 or 13, you need to get really lucky to get an opportunity for a college coach to see you do anything…It is left to each kid to figure out how to get himself recruited.

The net result in WM is that at any given time there are 10 kids that won’t see the field that would get a starting job at most other HS programs. They are giving up their shot to play and get looked at by colleges (remember D II and D III are really great options for most kids) –all to make the HS program stronger???

In my humble opinion this is a completely inappropriate use of power by a HS coach, by a school district and a complete shame. I have heard a rumor that Smithtown is making a similar threat and as a result I suspect Turtles team will also be impacted as some will choose HS team over Turtle team.

Excellent post. There are many other HS coaches trying to do the same thing. It is unfair for any kid or family to be strong armed into playing for their town team on their own FREE time. In addition, in most cases it borders on extortion. These coaches are profiting Big time! The coaches use the fear of not playing to line their pockets! There is also the issue that most of the town teams will not compete with the best travel teams. In those recruiting tournaments it is tough to be seen by college coaches when you are playing in the B bracket or consolation games on the back fields. If you are a true A player that can compete on a top travel team you may never get recruited because nobody will see you. The shame of it all is that there is another 10 months out of the year that these HS teams can build chemistry by doing clinics, leagues an tournaments! If these coaches truly have the kids best interest in mind they would want them to get as many opportunities as they can and by doing both they will have coaching diversity and their stick in their hand even more! Parents should not let their kids be bullied and make sure that they don't miss out on the opportunity for their child to play in college!