2020/2021 Season - U12 Pre-ECNL

Our U12 year got started on the wrong foot for a number of reasons.

As mandated by US Soccer, U12 teams played 9v9. MTA, like it has done from the beginning on the girls’ side of things, opted to play this team up to U13 to get to the larger 11v11 field a year early. However, I was informed that we would not be able to compete in the U13 National Premier League (NPL), a league that ran through the entire year and that was comprised of teams from the stronger TCSL clubs.

Instead, we would compete in the TCSL U13 Regional League - in effect, against the second-tier TCSL U13 teams.

I was pissed off.

Although it was a couple summers back (we had no summer competition in 2020), we had battled St Croix’s 08s in two tight games (L 1-2, T 2-2), and beaten (handily, I might add) both Edina 08 and Eden Prairie 08 teams.

How placing us in the Regional League was going to be good for anyone involved was beyond me.

Whatever. Stupid decision (IMO), but one we would need to live with.

Tryouts saw twenty-five girls in attendance, three more than last year. I remember thinking that there was no way I could build a competitive ECNL team with numbers like these.

The club then notified me that they were dropping Bella (our 2010) to her own age group - a move that I didn’t agree with at the time. Bella was extremely athletic and tough, and more than held her own playing up with us. But, I was not in a position to make decisions like this, and all I could do was move forward.

To top off the less-than-auspicious start, the club mandate was that we maxed our roster with eighteen players - another decision that I didn’t agree with at the time. Eighteen players would mean seven substitutes per game. I could handle that from a coaching perspective, but felt the lack of playing time would be tough for many of the girls. But again, I don’t make the decisions.

Ugh.

In addition to losing Bella, Abby had dropped in the post-COVID spring preferring to pursue other interests.

When tryouts were completed, we ended up keeping all twelve girls from our U11 seasons, and added six new players (Trippy, Emma, Maddy, Money, Savvy, and Gabby).

The team was now comprised of players from fourteen different communities - Minneapolis, Edina, White Bear Lake, Farmington, Rosemount, Inver Grove Heights, Hastings, St. Paul, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Eagan, Mendota Heights, Excelsior, and Lakeville.

Fall 2020

Opening game in the TCSL Regional League vs Blaine 08s, and my concerns about the level of competition for us and our roster size were realized.

Again, we play up an age group because as a magnet club it is difficult to find local competition at our own age group. As seen in the last two years, even though in most cases our team has been more skillful than our older opponents, the older teams have been more athletic in general. This difference in athleticism is what made for competitive games.

But against Blaine 08s, we were the more athletic team. Without the edge in athleticism, the older team could not hope to make it a competitive match.

More striking to me was the disappointment on the faces of the girls coming off the field. We have a competitive bunch of girls. I think that that trait is expected in the majority of girls who show an interest in playing in a club like ours, and I’ve done my best to nurture this spirit in the team over the last few years - yet always with a sense of balance. I don’t want a team full of uber-competitive, win-at-all-cost girls, but there is little doubt that competitiveness is a key component of excellence in this sport.

It was clear that every girl HATED to be pulled off the field. I could see the disappointment in the body language when a player on the field heard her name be called from the sidelines during a substitution. I could see the disappointment in their faces as they ran off. I could hear the pleading in their voices when they asked if they could go in again.

The girls want to play. This is what they enjoy. This enjoyment is why they are here.

I felt like I was the one taking their enjoyment from them, and I felt that I needed to do something about it.

The girls cruised through the fall season.

Tight game vs Hudson 08s, mainly due to the fact that their home field is very thick, lush grass. Real difficult to train and play mainly on turf, then try to play on a surface like this. I’m sure opposing coaches think the same thoughts when training on grass then coming to play us on turf.

Interesting to see the St. Croix 09 group playing up, but expected. St. Croix SC is arguably one of the strongest Minnesota clubs outside of MTA, and I’m sure they’re trying to match what MTA offers in certain areas. We handled them fairly easily in our two games, with our girls playing under restrictions in both second halves. They had a handful of athletic players, two or three who would fight for a starting spot (if we had starting spots) on this team. My guess is that they’ll be a magnet team for east-metro kids, and should battle Tonka Fusion Elite (establishing itself as the west-metro magnet club) for State Cup titles in the coming years.

Winter 2020/2021

So there is some overlap beginning at this point, as I started blogging about the season a bit.

See the blog post The Game is the Best Teacher for a winter recap.

Spring 2021

Still a bit hesitant to take the team on the road, we eventually made a decision to attend the Jefferson Cup (Richmond, VA) the weekend of March 13 & 14. You can find a fairly detailed recap of this event at our YouTube channel here.

We had been playing a 4-4-2 this entire year. Based on what I saw in Virginia, we spent the next month working on a 3-5-2 formation. The idea here was to better be able to control the center of the midfield - something that would have helped us tremendously vs Match Fit Academy (NJ) in the final game.

We got to try this new formation in action during the NSC Kick-off Challenge event in Blaine the last weekend in April, before a real test in Chicago the following weekend.

Bracket play wasn’t super competitive for us, but it provided a terrific opportunity to try the new formation under modest pressure.

The real challenge came in the Championship vs Prior Lake 08s - arguably one of the top 3-4 U13 teams in the state. They were very athletic and really put our back-3 defenders under pressure. The team battled hard, had the better of the play, but lost 1-0 when all was said and done.

We closed out our spring season with a trip to Chicago for an event I helped put together for many of the Midwest Conference 2009 Pre-ECNL teams. See the blog post Welcome to the Windy City for a recap.

Summer 2021

Lots of good soccer played by the girls this summer.

We would really only find competitive matches vs St Croix 09s - a draw at the end of May (more about this game in the blog post Nostra-Dumb-ass), then a 1-0 win in our second meeting in the league. Neither game was really as close as the scoreline suggested, but that’s soccer.

There are a number of blog posts that deal with the rest of the summer, tryouts, and the League Cup Final that was played a week after tryouts were completed, and readers can refer to the Development Blog if interested in any of this.

The girls finished the season on a high note with a dominant performance over St Croix 09s in the League Cup Final and set their sights on the upcoming ECNL experience.