I'm torn about it so I'm going to list both pros and cons and think through my typing fingertips. I'm not an expert by any stretch.
Boys play baseball on a full sized field after they leave "little league"...and boys develop later than girls. Many girls are getting close to adult size by the time they finish U13 and many are hitting a pretty good growth spurt in U12 and U13. Boys play football on a full sized field from U8 forward and they certainly can't punt or pass the full length of the field, but they learn the value of space, distances and measures (it's still 10 yards for a first down). I'm not sure I buy the "half-sized" / "half-field" argument. Many of the girls are pretty big by U12 (though I'll grant that some are still small) and many are pretty quick and "half-sized" is too small for them. It's amazing to line up U11's next to U13's....the size difference is astounding. I can't remember their heights at the end of U12, but I know my older daughter's team had 4 kids that were 5'9" and above by the time they'd finished U13.
I like the idea of really working hard to develop the basic individual skills and tight passing and that seems to be easier on a small field. With girls though, I think the thinking part of the game is very important and while there are many similarities, there are also many differences between 8v8 and 11v11. On the bigger field, there's more room to manuever so there's more incentive to "create space" by thinking and making smarter runs and there's more opportunity to make passes. With the small field there's less space to cover, less space for runs and there's more "mob play" which is messy. Because the defenders can move so quickly, and there's far less space on the small field, there's a lot of double teaming and that disincentivizes 1v1 skills and 1v1 skills are critically important to learn at this age. I like the idea of having a team that's smart enough to move the ball around and create a situation where you can get a player in a 1v1 situation near goal...or at least start teaching them the foundations for that and have them strive for it...the size differences are applicable on both teams and at these younger ages, the benefits of making smart passes give you more advantage.
The small-sized game emphasizes more of a futsal type game that emphasizes quick footwork, quick passes and angling for position, (getting a shoulder inside a defender while making an inside run for example). Those are good skills to have too.
The logistics of having 8v8 to 11v11 transitions at U12/U13 is problematic too. I like the idea of having more kids getting travel-level coaching from the begining rather than having teams cannibalized at U12/U13. I'd rather see kids drop out of soccer on their own terms (interest in other sports, academic, music or other interests) than quitting because 9 of the players from the team left for other teams and there's not enough people left standing for the team to continue.
With my older teams, there's usually 16-18 players and we play a lot of 8v8...in small spaces so we get the benefits of both styles.
Experts believed the world was flat for several thousand years too.
I'm torn about it so I'm going to list both pros and cons and think through my typing fingertips. I'm not an expert by any stretch.
Boys play baseball on a full sized field after they leave "little league"...and boys develop later than girls. Many girls are getting close to adult size by the time they finish U13 and many are hitting a pretty good growth spurt in U12 and U13. Boys play football on a full sized field from U8 forward and they certainly can't punt or pass the full length of the field, but they learn the value of space, distances and measures (it's still 10 yards for a first down). I'm not sure I buy the "half-sized" / "half-field" argument. Many of the girls are pretty big by U12 (though I'll grant that some are still small) and many are pretty quick and "half-sized" is too small for them. It's amazing to line up U11's next to U13's....the size difference is astounding. I can't remember their heights at the end of U12, but I know my older daughter's team had 4 kids that were 5'9" and above by the time they'd finished U13.
I like the idea of really working hard to develop the basic individual skills and tight passing and that seems to be easier on a small field. With girls though, I think the thinking part of the game is very important and while there are many similarities, there are also many differences between 8v8 and 11v11. On the bigger field, there's more room to manuever so there's more incentive to "create space" by thinking and making smarter runs and there's more opportunity to make passes. With the small field there's less space to cover, less space for runs and there's more "mob play" which is messy. Because the defenders can move so quickly, and there's far less space on the small field, there's a lot of double teaming and that disincentivizes 1v1 skills and 1v1 skills are critically important to learn at this age. I like the idea of having a team that's smart enough to move the ball around and create a situation where you can get a player in a 1v1 situation near goal...or at least start teaching them the foundations for that and have them strive for it...the size differences are applicable on both teams and at these younger ages, the benefits of making smart passes give you more advantage.
The small-sized game emphasizes more of a futsal type game that emphasizes quick footwork, quick passes and angling for position, (getting a shoulder inside a defender while making an inside run for example). Those are good skills to have too.
The logistics of having 8v8 to 11v11 transitions at U12/U13 is problematic too. I like the idea of having more kids getting travel-level coaching from the begining rather than having teams cannibalized at U12/U13. I'd rather see kids drop out of soccer on their own terms (interest in other sports, academic, music or other interests) than quitting because 9 of the players from the team left for other teams and there's not enough people left standing for the team to continue.
With my older teams, there's usually 16-18 players and we play a lot of 8v8...in small spaces so we get the benefits of both styles.
Experts believed the world was flat for several thousand years too.
Well said Rightfield, you helped me make my case to why I like the 11V11 over the 8V8
The scramble will slowly start over the next 2 months and hit its peak in about 3 to 3 and a half months and will continue right up until a couple weeks before the WAGS season starts in September. We should get a psychologist to study this phenomina. Coaches, prepare your antacids!
How are you preparing? Have you identified candidates for your team from SFL already? Have you had anyone practicing with your team? Are you printing up flyers that describe your team, coaches, philosophy and goals? Is your web page ship-shape?
Last edited by Rightfield on Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
The scramble will slowly start over the next 2 months and hit it's peak in about 3 to 3 and a half months and will continue right up until a couple weeks before the WAGS season starts in September. We should get a psychologist to study this phenomina. Coaches, prepare your antacids!
How are you preparing? Have you identified candidates for your team from SFL already? Have you had anyone practicing with your team? Are you printing up flyers that describe your team, coaches, philosophy and goals? Is your web page ship-shape?
From what I understand, a friendly invitational U12 scrimmage league has been set up between most of the top teams in VA and MD (I think 10 or 11 teams) to play 11v11 this spring (Capital Friendlies?). Looks like teams will get 5-7 games. The purpose is supposed to give teams more exposure to playing 11v11.
The scramble will slowly start over the next 2 months and hit it's peak in about 3 to 3 and a half months and will continue right up until a couple weeks before the WAGS season starts in September. We should get a psychologist to study this phenomina. Coaches, prepare your antacids!
How are you preparing? Have you identified candidates for your team from SFL already? Have you had anyone practicing with your team? Are you printing up flyers that describe your team, coaches, philosophy and goals? Is your web page ship-shape?
From what I understand, a friendly invitational U12 scrimmage league has been set up between most of the top teams in VA and MD (I think 10 or 11 teams) to play 11v11 this spring (Capital Friendlies?). Looks like teams will get 5-7 games. The purpose is supposed to give teams more exposure to playing 11v11.
What an excellent idea! The teams that participate in these friendlies will have to field enough players. Most teams playing 8v8 have 11 or 12 players. To play a full duration 11v11 match, you need at least 14 and preferably 16. Each of these teams will need to find 4 or 5 "guests" to field a team. Where will these guests come from? To a player looking for a team, the fact that these teams are "thinking ahead" is very interesting. What are you doing to generate interest in your team?
Its even trickier this year because of WAGS recruiting rules. In the years before 2006, all the younger teams were in ODSL and the expansion took place during the same summer. ODSL doesn't have rules against recruiting and WAGS rules didn't apply if the teams weren't in their league...so it was a mad scramble and the WAGS rules didn't apply. Now the teams are in WAGS and their rules do apply. I wonder if complaints will be made.
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:34 pm Post subject: Re: 8 v 8....11 v 11
sammy4 wrote:
U13 players are probably half the speed of a full grown player as well, so they can only cover half the distance in the same time. They're not able to put in dangerous crosses from any further out than 25 yards consistently, and are only able to shoot dangerously from about 20 yards on average.
I don't think this is the case. I was at a soccer event last week that had U13-U19 players and if you were standing 40 feet away, you couldn't tell the difference between the U13's and any of the rest (you had to be 40 feet away to blur the fact that the older girls were all wearing makeup....but that's another story).
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 4:53 pm Post subject: Re: 8 v 8....11 v 11
SoCal wrote:
sammy4 wrote:
U13 players are probably half the speed of a full grown player as well, so they can only cover half the distance in the same time. They're not able to put in dangerous crosses from any further out than 25 yards consistently, and are only able to shoot dangerously from about 20 yards on average.
I don't think this is the case. I was at a soccer event last week that had U13-U19 players and if you were standing 40 feet away, you couldn't tell the difference between the U13's and any of the rest (you had to be 40 feet away to blur the fact that the older girls were all wearing makeup....but that's another story).
According to the statistical data published by our federal givernment the difference in running time for elite female athletes U13 and older is close to insignificant. At the 100 percentile level a U14 girl is actually fastest but a U13 girl is faster than U15 and older girls. The same is true for the top fifteen percent of all girls (the 85th percentile) which should cover the majority of WAGS players.
Despite differences in running speed the older girls speed of play should be slightly faster because they have more match experience that should enable them to process information and make decisions faster. Their speed of thinking during a match should give them the advantage..
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