Not uncommon for YNT players to make jump

Not uncommon for YNT players to make jump
April 19, 2010
It’s easy to think of each U.S. Youth National Team as one would any other club team.

The players practice together, play, travel, eat and compete together, just like every other team does.

Youth National Teams are unusual because they consist of players hand-picked from all across the country, but beyond that, each team is just a regular run-of-the-mill national all-star squad, right?

Wrong.

The Youth National Team system is unlike any other club program, because of the huge range in age of the players on any single team.

elite girls club soccer players and womens college soccer playersWNT players after their scrimmage last week.
Each national team has players playing two or sometimes three age-groups up, along with others who are on the team appropriate to their age. It is an extremely fluid system, where a single player may be eligible to play for three or four different national teams at a time.

After the U20 WNT scrimmaged the U18 team at the Home Depot Center last week, U20 head coach Jill Ellis talked about how important it is for coaches to evaluate not only their own players, but players on all the younger age groups who might be ready to make the jump to an older team.  

“It’s good for us to play another national team,” she said. “It’s good to get a look at the U18s, to see if there are some players there that can help us soon or down the road. I thought the U18s competed very well tonight, battled hard; it was a good showing.”

Ellis reflected on the symbiotic relationship between all the national team coaches, and how the coaches of younger teams prepare their players to take the next step.

“[U18 head coach Dave Chesler] is doing a terrific job with them,” she said. “There’s great collaboration between all of us coaches: [Chesler] is looking at what our needs are, and he’s doing a great job preparing his players to make the jump [to the U20 team].”

One example of the fluidity of the Youth National Team rosters came during the U17 Women’s CONCACAF Championships, when two U15 players – defender Katie Naughton and midfielder Ashley Meier – were first alternates to join the U17 team in Costa Rica.  

But not every player is prepared to make the jump.

Ellis highlighted some of the challenges younger players face when playing with an older national team.

“The game certainly gets more physical as you mature,” she said. “You hope there’s more sophistication in passing combinations and movement off the ball, and the speed of the game is different with the older teams.”

U20 coach Dave Chesler agreed, saying younger players sometimes are over-eager to make an impact.

“I’d say patience is the thing most young players need to work on,” he said. “They tend to play at too high a tempo for their technical ability. Instead, they need to secure the ball, slow things down and let the play develop. Most [national team players] are obviously used to dominating at home physically. But in this environment, they need to be a bit more aware of who they’re playing.”

And yet, easy as it is to draw a line between the “young” and the “mature” player, on the Youth National Teams, any distinction between age groups is very blurry. Every player is talented; every player has the potential to play for an older team.

“There’s not a whole lot of difference in the age groups, to be honest,” Ellis said. I’ve got some players on my [U20] team who are eligible for the 18s, and vice-versa.”

Chesler echoed Ellis’ sentiment.

“We’ve got a very mixed group – some girls that are younger, some that are age-appropriate. So this is a chance to filter through some of the different players in the pool.”

That “pool” is a broad one, and clearly, it is not unusual for players to make the leap from the kiddy pool – straight into the deep end of the Olympic-size one.
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