NIS Forms Teams

Players register individually and NIS puts together the teams.  We attempt to create balanced teams based upon keeping the ratio of boys and girls and ages roughly equal.  It is an imperfect system since we do not know the ability of each player.

While it is fun to play with friends it is also fun to make new friends and to play against friends.  In the end, having "stacked" teams in the league benefit nobody.  Winning a close game is much more satisfying than winning a blow out and, of course, it is no fun to lose in a blow out.

NIS reserves the right to reassign players if it is necessary to balance the teams. 

For Players of All Abilities

You do not have to be a traveling player or be a part of a soccer association to play NIS soccer.  We have players of all abilities.  Its a great way to get some exercise, have fun or sharpen your soccer skills.  Because this is not a travelling program, there is no pressure on the players.  For new players it is a great environment to try the sport.  For high level players, it is a break from high intensity soccer and allows them to work on different skills or at different positions.

The bottom line is indoor soccer is a great sport for players of all abilites, experience or goals.       

Player Requests: 10U – 14U Leagues

At the 10U through 14U league we place players on teams. We strive to avoid having a team or teams dominate their league. Since we do not know the abilities of the players we can only try to balance these leagues by making sure that each team has approximately the same number of boys and girls and of players at each age.

We do allow each player to make one request to play with a specific player (a space is provided on the registration form). While we try to meet all requests, we will only do so if we can maintain the proper ratio of players on each team. Requests are honored in the order received (we often receive more than one request to play with the same player or for the same coach) and only if timely received (look on the Calendar Page for when registration forms received are considered due).

Parents of players from school teams and outdoor soccer teams often request that their team be allowed to enter as a team. For the reasons stated above, that is not possible. While it is fun to play with friends and players that we are familiar with, it is also fun to play with new players, make new friends and play against existing friends and team-mates for bragging rights. Even when you can show that the existing team or group of friends can meet the league ratio, it is still not possible because we cannot risk that the team you put together dominates the league. How as a parent would you react if you found out that the team that just killed your team was put together by the team and not the league? We simply cannot take that risk - we may have an imbalanced league but we will be able to show you that we did our best to keep them balanced with the information we have.

 

In the U10 - U14 leagues, the league creates the teams.  The reason we do this is three-fold: one, if we allow teams into the league we will quickly lose all of the non-traveling kids; two, philosophically, we want younger children to be able to try all different sports, including soccer, without having to commit to a traveling program, and, three, for a the players whether on traveling teams or not it is good play a sport just for fun in non-intense environment.

Our children used to play backyard sports where everyone would play regardless of their abilities, they would divide-up into different teams each time they played and they played for fun.  More and more, children don't have the opportunity to do that, everything has shifted towards structured, parent and coach-driven sports.  Even our best athletes quickly become one sport, year around players.  

While there are positives to this change, there is also a negative - they never get to play just for fun.  These leagues are simply for fun.  There are no practices, no try-outs and no pressure to win.

Why This is Good for Traveling Players

I coached high level traveling teams for many years, my boys both played high-level traveling soccer but from U10 through U18 they play many coach driven, must win games with basically the same core players.  Many get burned out. By having a fun league where they could play just for the fun of it, it was a refreshing break for them.  They enjoyed playing against each other for bragging rights.  They enjoyed playing different roles than on their traveling team and they playing is a less structured environment.  

Why This is Good for Non-Traveling Players

Kids should be able to play more than one sport.  That used to be a given but it is getting more and more difficult to do.  But some things never change.  Players physical abilities and likes and dislikes change over time.  The fact that a 10 year old is a baseball player does not mean that he or she won't also enjoy playing soccer.  The fact that a 10 year old is a great baseball player does not mean that he or she will continue to be.

These leagues allow them to play soccer for fun.  Maybe they eventually decide they want to take it to a higher level but they don't have to.  We've had players who started out just playing soccer for fun but eventually became more interested and became very good players.  On the other hand, we've had many players who never played any other soccer than the spring NIS season simply because they had fun. 

How Player Requests Work

A player can request to play with another player.  We cannot guarantee that we can honor that request for a few reasons.  First, we have to make sure the teams are fairly put together.  We can't have one team with all of the oldest players or with all traveling players.  It is no fun to have unbalanced teams.  Its not fun to get slaughtered every game but its also not fun to win every game 11-0.  Part of the fun of sports is the uncertainty of winning.  If you win every game what joy is there is winning?  Would you rather win 4-3 in the last minute or 11-0?  

Originally, we allowed players to request whomever they wanted and pretty much honored every request and had few problems.  Eventually, it became clear that people were not using the system to play with a friend or for car-pooling but to put together powerhouse teams.  We then tightened the rules so that you could only request one played.  Soon we found out teams just created a string of players which allowed them again to put together their power team.

The result was we had a lot of terribly unbalanced leagues.  As a result, we have become much more restrictive.  We will try to allow players to play with a friend but not at the expense of a balanced league.  Siblings will always be pared together unless the parent request otherwise.  Since we don't know the abilities of the players, we can only go by certain factors:  ages, sex and traveling versus non-traveling players.  We try to have a balanced mix of each on each team.  While we still may end up with an unbalanced team the chances of that occurring are much less.

Putting these leagues together to try to ensure that they are balanced and to meet player requests is a very time-consuming and difficult thing to do.