Hieght in Soccer

I have updated this Post to indicate what I found out about height in soccer with the results of my daughter's 2011 tryouts.  See at end of post.

Yesterday and this evening my daughter's soccer team is having tryouts.  I have blogged previously about my daughter getting to the point in her soccer career that her competitive team is much like a college or high school team in that they have seasonal tryouts.

Watching these tryouts, I have to wonder about the
about what will happen.  Will we loose some girls, to be replaced with better prospects?  Will we add some girls and increase the number of girls on the team?

The downside of loosing some girls is that I loose the friendship of that girls parents.  It is almost like a family moving out of the neighborhood, you typically loose contact with them when you don't see them every day!

As a sat and watched our team play in the semi-finals of the State Cup, I couldn't help but notice two of our forwards that are quite small.  They are both under 5 feet.  The girls they were playing against were a good half a foot taller!

Our poor forwards were constantly being knocked down.  Of course they would bounce right back up.  However, they just couldn't keep the ball away from the much larger defenders.

I proposed my concern about this to my daughter at dinner one evening.  (She is 5 foot 7 and still growing.)  Of course she defended her teammates.  Said that they are good ball handlers and great players.  But I have to worry.  Can you be the best ball handler and be small?  The way the other team was dominating over our forwards was quite convincing to me.

Most of our Middle Fielders are muscular, bigger, and taller.  They move the ball well, while providing an ominous presence.  Our Defenders are best of league.  They are tall, fast, and to brag a little, (my daughter plays defense) my daughter has only allowed two balls to get by her all Spring season!

My daughter is tall, lean, and very fast.  She has speed to chase down balls that get past the other two defenders!  But now I am getting off subject.

Really, size does have a lot to do with soccer.  I was talking with a co-worker this morning.  He has a couple of boys in basketball.  Of course height is everything in basketball.  He has been trying to convince me to get my daughter into basketball.  He claims that an athletic, tall, girl can get into basketball a lot later than a boy, and be successful.  However, my daughter has no interest in basketball.

My co-worker took his daughter to soccer tryouts last night also.  Different team, though.  All he could talk about is the height of the girls on the existing team.  He said they were all over 6 feet!  (I suspect he might be exaggerating a bit.)

So we will see what happens.  Tryouts are over this evening.  I will update and let you know if height played an important role in coaches decision this year.

Update - my daughter's team had their two days of tryouts with over 80 girls trying out for the 16 positions.  13 of the original 18 stayed on the team, with one deciding to play down a year and two deciding to play up a year (High School).  The two girls in question that are quite short DID stay on the team.  So -- I am sold on the idea that skill plays a much higher importance than height.  However, height does typically allow for longer legs, which typically will allow you to run faster.  So, I will eat my humble pie on this one.

Till next time,
Bill