Changing Massachusetts Soccer Culture

Changing Massachusetts Soccer Culture - Mike Singleton's View

Mike Singleton is not frustrated, but he sees that much needs to change in Massachusetts before the state’s 185,000 registered youth players are getting all the guidance they need. A big part of the problem seems to be an over-reliance on old methods.

Singleton (right) with his Mass Youth Soccer Director of Coaching Predecessor, Dean Conway

“There are fewer open minds as far as new ways of teaching and developing players,” the State Director of Coaching says. “I think a lot of people are still hearkening back to the days when they played or to years past when we didn’t know as much about players and we didn’t know as much about children. Bottom line, we didn’t know as much about the game. What we should be thinking is, ‘what’s best for the player?’ I think oftentimes we, as adults, are getting too involved and too emotional about it, when the main question we need to be asking ourselves all the time is, ‘is it best for the players?’ I don’t think that’s the mantra being heard throughout the state right now.”

Singleton comes from a town-based club in Chicago where he had a full-time staff of nine to attend to the needs of roughly 2500 players. “I don’t believe there are nine full-time people in the youth soccer world in Massachusetts as a state,” he says wistfully. And Massachusetts has 185,000 players. He hesitates to say his constituents clutch to the volunteer ideal, “but I think we are clutching to this idea of ‘if it isn’t broke don’t fix it,’ not realizing that it’s broken. This is the way we’ve done it for years. This is tradition. But with all the new information that’s come out nationally, some of the clubs that have developed later, some of the areas of the country that have developed later, they’ve developed their clubs a lot differently.”

To illustrate the gap between Massachusetts and a state like the one Singleton just left, Illinois, he says, “From the last ODP team I coached in Illinois, which was one team in one year, I had six players from my team move on to the national pool, and then from those, three kids moved on to residency. Illinois only has 55,000 registered players or so, but there are fewer clubs and the best players make sure they end up playing for one of the handful of good teams, so they really develop.”

Singleton sums up, “It’s great that we have so many opportunities for people, but there comes a time when people need to train with the group they belong with at the level they’re at. Our best players will continually struggle if they don’t do that. As it stands now, we have a lot of mediocrity at a lot of levels.”