Will the fledgling Super Y fly in soccer-happy Snohomish County?
Established in 1999, the Super Y-League is a national youth soccer organization dedicated to creating a highly competitive environment where top players can better hone their skills.
"This is another avenue for players to get the opportunity to get identified for regional and national level teams," said Paul Hurme, who coached a Snohomish-based under-15 boys team in the Super Y-League’s Northwest Division for the first time last summer.
Most of the area’s youth soccer programs, whether recreational, select or premier, are part of the Washington State Youth Soccer Association and United States Youth Soccer.
Super Y-League teams fall under the purview of the United States Club Soccer and United Soccer Leagues. The latter includes two men’s professional leagues (A-League and D3 Pro League), a women’s open league (W-League), a men’s amateur league (Premier Development League) and the Super Y-League.
Traditional premier and select youth programs often play four or five tournaments from late spring through the summer. In the fall, they play a statewide league schedule against other teams in their classification. Their seasons culminate with a state tournament in March.
Super Y-League teams, meanwhile, compete in few, if any, summer tournaments. Instead, they focus on playing other Super Y-League teams from May through August. The idea is to pit the best against the best week in and week out.
"For truly competitive players, summer tournaments may not do much for them," Hurme said. "Getting our players into this competitive environment is the best way to develop exceptional youth soccer players."
One of the goals of the Super Y-League is to groom players for the Olympic Development Program. The Washington State Youth Soccer Association also has an Olympic-development component, but critics hold that the selection process is often based on the assessments of independent scouts or on open tryouts, where a player’s true talents may not be fairly judged.
In the Super Y-League, the selection process is based on an on-going evaluation over time by opposing coaches. At each game, a coach nominates up to five players from the opposing team for the regional Olympic Development Pool team.
Players are known to opposing coaches by their on-field performance in actual games. Over the course of a 16- to 28-game summer schedule, the theory is the best players will stand out.
"The way I see it, there’s less politics involved and I think that’s a good thing," said Randy Hanson of Lynnwood, whose daughter Miranda, 15, was selected as a goalkeeper for the Northwest Division Olympic Development girls U-15 pool team. "The coaches picked the girls based upon how well they played and left it at that. Whether or not they made it was based upon their skill."
Acronyms and possible acrimony aside, it appears both selection processes have merit.
"Both systems are good," Hurme said. "(SYL) is just a new way to go about things."
Snohomish County offered Super Y-League teams for the first time this past summer. The newly formed Snohomish County Select organization fielded U-14 and U-15 boys and girls teams. The squads played against teams from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.
Five Snohomish County Select players — Brandon Kelly of Snohomish, Kaleb Kuehn of Marysville, Mirando Hanson of Lynnwood, Jillian Lindsey of Edmonds and Kass Riozzi of Marysville — recently were named to the Northwest Super Y-League Olympic Development Pool teams and are eligible to compete against the Northern California, Southern California and Southwestern pool teams in Fresno, Calif., on Dec. 4-6. Top players will be selected for the Western Region Olympic Development Team, which goes on to play other regions.
"The opportunity to play Super Y came up at the last minute," said girls U-14 coach Shannon Murray. "We threw a lot of stuff together on a whim and part of that was the scheduling."
One of the drawbacks, organizers learned during the first season, was the schedule, which required teams to travel to Oregon and British Columbia for a single game. Local Super Y-League officials said one of the goals for the 2004 spring/summer season is to schedule two games during each Oregon and British Columbia trip to make it more cost effective for families.
"We got used to the travel quite some time ago," Pam Lindsey of Edmonds said with a laugh.
Lindsey’s daughter Jillian, 14, was selected for the girls U-15 Super Y-League Olympic Development Regional Pool team and plays year-round with the Everett-based Shooting Stars, who will compete in the Surf Cup in San Diego this weekend. This marks the fifth consecutive year Jillian will be playing soccer out-of-state on Thanksgiving.
"They really have to love it to invest all this time and energy," Pam Lindsey said.
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