Three Ideas for Better High School Soccer in Maine

1. Reconfigure game schedules to establish "Soccer Saturday."

For as long as I can remember, most high school teams in Maine have played their games on two weeknights separated by only one day of rest between each game (e.g., Monday/Wednesday, Tuesday/Thursday, Wednesday/Friday). However, we should reconfigure the game schedules to create "Soccer Saturday" to bolster high school soccer's brand in the state and to develop better and safer soccer players.

To establish Soccer Saturday, we should designate Tuesday and Wednesday as the two weekday game nights throughout the state, and we should schedule girl/boy doubleheaders on Saturdays. Each team still plays two games per week, but Soccer Saturday would give the Maine high school soccer its own version of the gridiron's "Friday Night Lights." Instead of playing before sparse crowds on a weekday evening, a Saturday night doubleheader between two schools' girls and boys' teams would attract larger crowds and create more exciting atmospheres. The benefits of Soccer Saturday go beyond a boost in fandom, though. Adopting a Tuesday/Saturday and a Wednesday/Saturday schedule pattern also helps the two most important stakeholders in high school soccer: The game's coaches and its players.

During my brief tenure as the coach at Westbook High School, our program was relatively undeveloped and inexperienced. We had very few players participating in club soccer during the winter and the spring, so we had to take full advantage of our summer program and the first couple weeks of pre-season to focus almost exclusively on the technical and tactical development of our players. That's because once early September hit, the Tuesday/Thursday game pattern forced us into a rhythm that emphasized game recovery and game preparation above player development. With two, 80-minute games being played within 72 hours (or three games in five days during the few weeks we had to pick up a third game on Saturday), our weekly schedule throughout the season roughly consisted of this:

Monday- Game prep. for Tuesday's opponent
Tuesday- Game
Wednesday- Recovery from Tuesday's game, game prep. for Thursday's opponent
Thursday- Game
Friday- Recovery from Thursday's game, technical development
Saturday- Technical development or a game

Rinse and repeat for the rest of the season.

By adopting a Soccer Saturday, teams who play their weekday game on Wednesdays have two clusters of back-to-back training sessions, instead of only one under the current schedule format. And teams that play their weekday game on Tuesdays have a three-day stretch of training sessions, with Sundays acting as a game recovery day that doesn't show up on a team's session calendar.

This elongated training schedule also helps players, because it allows coaches to step off the game-to-game treadmill that runs throughout the season. And coaches who don't have to prepare training sessions with one eye on last night's game and the other eye on tomorrow night's game can then organize sessions that focus on the long-term development of the program's players.

Players also benefit from a weekday/Saturday format, because that schedule gives them at least two days to physically recover from each game. As noted above, the current scheduling format forces players to play two games in three days (or three games in five days), which allows for a recovery rate that falls way short of U.S. Youth Soccer's recommendation of 36-92 hours of rest between competitive games. (The Soccer Saturday schedule also doesn't meet that recommendation, but it guarantees at least 48 hours of rest between each competitive game.)

The reconfiguration of a Soccer Saturday schedule boosts the high school soccer brand in Maine, allows coaches to focus on the long-term development of their programs during the season, and is a safer alternative for the state's players. Who can argue against that? (Just kidding, I recognize there are possible counter-arguments--especially related to logistics.)

2. Establish a Maine Soccer Hall of Fame.

To build a brighter future, soccer in Maine in general (and high school soccer in particular) needs to shine a spotlight on its history. What better way to do that than to establish a Maine Soccer Hall of Fame?

This endeavor doesn't necessarily require a lot of capital. A well-designed Web site, with an annual induction ceremony should be enough to ensure the Maine's soccer history is given the attention it's due. Couple that induction ceremony with a pre-season tournament that consists of the finalists from the previous year's state finals, and you've got a weekend that kicks off the high school season with a little extra oomph.

And though our state is only one of about a dozen states without a men's Division I soccer program, we could rotate the hosting responsibilities of the annual Hall of Fame induction and tournament among the state's eleven Division III men's and women's programs.

3. Use #mesoccer.

And finally, an idea that is much simpler and more immediate than the previous two: Use #mesoccer when discussing soccer in Maine. The common hashtag of course ensures all Twitter conversations about the beautiful game in our beautiful state are deposited into a common stream of observations, score updates, etc.

- John C.L. Morgan  

Introducing the Pine State Table

(Editor's Note: Click on table to enlarge.)

Beginning on August 29 when the University of New England hosts Maine Maritime Academy in Biddeford, Maine's eleven Division III men's soccer programs will play a total of 35 games among themselves.

The table above will be updated throughout the season to track how the eleven programs stack up against one another in direct competition.

- John C.L. Morgan

(Full disclosure: I am helping the men's program at USM as a volunteer assistant coach.)

SMAA Tops WMC in Annual Maine High School All-Star Games

WCSH:

All-star senior soccer players from Maine put on their cleats for a good cause. The 24th annual All-Star Soccer Tournament to benefit Special Olympics Maine was held Tuesday in Westbrook. For the boys, the Southern Maine Activities Association (SMAA) team topped the Western Maine Conference (WMC) 4-1. On the girls side, SMAA beat WMC 3-1. Organizers estimate that two games raise about $8,000 for Special Olympics Maine.

On the Rosevelt Soccer Club

American Journal:

Now, this brainchild is coming to life in the Rosevelt Soccer Club, a nonprofit, premier soccer option for boys in Westbrook, Windham, Buxton and Standish that should prove significantly more affordable than the few existing, for-profit outfits in Maine.

- John C.L. Morgan

(Full disclosure: I'm a co-founder of the Rosevelt Soccer Club.)

A Day in the Life of a DIII Soccer Coach in Maine

Bates:

“What do you do in the off-season?” It is a question many wonder about college coaches who compete for short two to three month seasons every year. We decided to follow Bates men’s soccer coach Stewart Flaherty for a day in the off-season to gain some insight behind the scenes of a Bates head coach.

- John C.L. Morgan

Saco Indoor Soccer Facility Being Upgraded

Portland Press Herald:

Kris Lamb sees gold in green turf soccer fields.Lamb's company, XL Soccer World, just bought Saco's Southern Maine Sports Zone for $2 million and spent an additional $1 million on upgrades to the 75,000-square-foot sports facility.Among the changes are replacing and upgrading the facility's two soccer fields, refurbishing the 24-hour gym and renovating the bar and restaurant area to create a more family-friendly, cleaner and modern facility.

- John C.L. Morgan

Observance of a Sad Holiday

Three years ago to the day, the University of Maine announced it was suspending its struggling men's soccer team.

According to an April 15, 2009 Bangor Daily News article, the men's soccer program had a $145,580 operating budget and doled out $175,000 per year in scholarship aid.* Besides one head coach and a paid assistant coach, the program included 26 players with 6.5 scholarships spread among them.

The university's 2009 decision forced Maine to become one of 13 states in the U.S. without a Div. I soccer program playing within its borders, according to the sidebar of this December 2011 piece in the The Birmingham News.

- John C.L. Morgan

*Another victim of suspension that year was the women's volleyball team. That team--which included a head coach, a paid assistant coach, and 15 players with 12 scholarships--had an annual operating cost of $232,564 and scholarship aid worth $343,238.

Maine Soccer's 'Golden Triangle'

American Journal:

Talent, as the writer Daniel Coyle argues, tends to be cultivated in clusters. Soccer in Maine is no different, as there is an 838-square mile swath of Maine that produces an outsized amount of soccer talent compared to the rest of the state. To visually appreciate this "Golden Triangle" of soccer talent in Maine, you would place three pins on a map of Maine with the towns of Gorham as the northwest vertex, Cape Elizabeth as the southeast point, and Richmond as the northeast boundary.

There are a few resources I should recognize, without whom I couldn't have written this column. First, there's Michael Jeffrey, whose curation of the Maine Soccer Coaches Web site allowed me to find information that would've been very difficult--if not impossible--to find otherwise. And, secondly, there's the staff at the Portland Public Library whose stewardship of newspaper archives dating back to the 1970s and beyond saved me much time and travel. And finally, the responses I received from various high school coaches were also very helpful.

Related: The Geography of Talent (December 15- December 20, 2012)

- John C.L. Morgan

The Question: Should Maine High School Soccer Adopt a Promotion/Relegation Format?

As most of us know, the classification of high school soccer teams (and other high school sports) in Maine is based on the various high schools' enrollment numbers, instead of the strength of a soccer program at a particular school.

The question to debate, then, is this: Should high school soccer adopt a promotion/relegation system so that the classification of programs has more to do with the strength of a soccer program than it does the number of students enrolled at a school?

To put this hypothetical question into concrete terms, the 16-team Western Class 'A'* classification would relegate two teams** per season to Western Class 'B,' and Western Class 'B' would promote two teams to Western Class 'A.' Based on results from this year, for example, Bonny Eagle and Biddeford would drop to Western Class 'B,' while the two regional finalists from Western 'B'--Falmouth and York--would be promoted to Western 'A.'

What are the pros and the cons of such an idea? What would the promotion and relegation format look like exactly? And if the pros overwhelmingly outweight the cons, what are the chances for something like this actually ever happening?

- John C.L. Morgan

* Cape Elizabeth and Greely, two teams that are included in the Western Class 'A' Heal Points rankings and tourney despite playing a Western Class 'B' regular season schedule, have been inserted into the Western Class 'B' Heal Points rankings for the sake of this thought experiment.

** The number of teams relegated and promoted is based on the Barclays Premier League's policy of 15% (or 3 of 20) of its teams being relegated to the Championship League.

Roger Levesque Caps Supporters' Tifo

Supporters of the Seattle Sounders FC unveiled an impressive choreographed visual display, or a tifo, on May 14 prior to its game against rival Portland, and Maine native Roger Levesque's face highlighted the display.

Levesque, a Falmouth product, was celebrated for a first-minute goal he scored against Portland in a 2009 U.S. Open Cup game. Of course, the fact that he also appears to be the most hated player in Portland fans' eyes (see here or here) probably didn't hurt when Sounder fans picked which Sounders, past and present, would represent the club.

- John C.L. Morgan

Soccer and Mud Season

Sun Journal:

While many local gyms are dark and most recreational sports programs are in a holding pattern, youth from the communities of RSU 58 and a few from Farmington are celebrating soccer. Indoor soccer, to be precise, played on a high school basketball court temporarily infused with the personality of a hockey or roller rink. "It’s dead time in the gym," association registrar Darren Allen said. "Mud season's here. What can you do outside, sink?"

- John C.L. Morgan