In the spring of 3rd grade, LUSC families begin to have the option of having their child participate in either in-town or travel soccer. For Spring 2025 travel soccer, LUSC will be conducting its 3rd grade/U9 player evaluation session on Sunday, November 3rd at Diamond Middle School.
There is no fee associated with the evaluation.
Evaluation times:
- All 3rd Grade Girls: 11:00 – 12:30
- 3rd Grade Boys:
- Last names A-M: 12:30 – 2:00
- Last names N-Z: 2:00 – 3:30
Common Questions:
- What if my child can’t attend the evaluation, can they still play travel soccer?
Yes. Although we encourage any, and all, players that can attend the evaluation to do so, we recognize that sometimes this is impossible due to other conflicts. - How will my child be placed if they can’t attend the evaluation?
LUSC will use coaches’ feedback from the fall to try to best place a player that misses evaluations. We typically look for similarly rated players by coaches and compare them with the evaluations ratings and try to find the proper team. The goal is to place players properly as I’ll explain in more detail in the team formation portion of this note. - Is there an evaluation make-up?
No. We bring in independent evaluators to view all players within a division. It’s nearly impossible to hold a second evaluation that would have the same set of conditions
with the same set of evaluators to replicate the experience that all players that attended the evaluation were rated under. - What if we are still deciding whether or not to play travel soccer next year?
Attend the evaluation. It’s always helpful to have the data in case you do decide to play travel soccer. If you decide to remain in- town, your child will have experienced an evaluation and have less anxiety about them in the future.
Hope that clarifies a few items.
Travel Team Formation Process
Evaluations, even if unintended to do so, often place a level of pressure and stress on the kids, and waiting to hear about which team they will be placed on for the spring can add to that anxiety.
The number one goal of the evaluations and the team formation process is to get the kids placed accurately for the coming season on a skill-based team so that they can continue to develop and enjoy the game of soccer at an appropriate level. Recognizing that no formation process is perfect, we aim to be as transparent as possible, since we try very hard to have a fair process consisting of multiple inputs.
Evaluations
LUSC hires independent evaluators on an annual basis to rate our players. The evaluators are professional soccer coaches who, in the vast majority of the cases, do not know the players. These evaluations “set the table” for the team formation process. The evaluators observe all players within a division in the same game format of 1v1, 4v4, 6v6, etc. so they have consistent opinions on players within a division. Separate from the evaluations, ratings from the volunteer coaches of each team are also collected and used to help identify any outliers from the independent evaluators’ ratings.
Key events that take place after evaluations:
- Coaches Meeting: Once all data has been collected (evaluations and coaches feedback) the division director holds a meeting to draft rosters to be submitted to the Evaluation Committee. This allows for the coaches who have worked with the players over an entire season to have a voice in the team formation process. The LUSC Pro Coach that leads each division’s pro practice for that season attends this meeting to be a sounding board on the players under discussion.
- Draft teams are submitted to the Evaluation Committee for review. The Evaluation Committee is a 7 to 9 person panel of LUSC board members, DOC and ADOC, charged with the responsibility to review and pose questions about the teams submitted for each division. If questions are posed on the particular placements of players, the division director answers them and/or revises the teams to the satisfaction of the committee. Any committee member with a conflict in the division (e.g., a child) is allowed to respond to questions raised, but does not cast a final vote on the approval of teams.
- Once all divisions are approved, division directors alert their coaches and teams are announced. LUSC tries to have all teams announced at the same time, regardless of age group. This will likely take place in late January.
We will continue to offer a 3rd/4th-grade (U9-10) In-town program in the spring.
For more information on the team formation process, please see the team formation page.
