u/Remarkable-Air3604

I asked this question in a thread before, but I’m obsessively trying to game out my daughter’s future. My daughter is a great goalie - she’s been playing since she was 6, and is also a gymnast so she hurls her body at balls and makes great saves, even though she’s smallish. She’s only 8 now. She’s 30th percentile for height, which will be about 5’4”. She also plays defense, and I put her in summer futsal to improve her ball handling so maybe she can play wing. She’s a “bubble” kid on the B team, and I wish she could move to A. I’ve noticed the club is a little biased against smaller girls in general (an awesome girl got held back on B team, and the only “issue” with her is she’s quite short), and they also preferentially pick taller goalies, even though my daughter has a better record in the goal.

Goalie training is its own thing, and she does get it through the club, but I’m debating getting her private lessons in it over the summer just in case she wants to keep playing it. It only occurred to me this year that maybe it’s not a great position for her. She’s been our primary goalie for years in rec.

Is it beneficial for her to be able to play goalie as well as something on the field, or should I try to steer her away because it’s a waste of her time given her stature?

Ok fellow homeschoolers… please help. Long story short, I pulled my 2nd grade daughter and kinder son from public school at the beginning of the year and homeschooled them. My daughter is bright, incredibly disciplined, loves to read, but is just below the cut-off for GT so she doesn’t qualify for the enrichment programs. My son is likely gifted but never got tested.

I personally think our public school isn’t great, though on all those rating sites it ranks as 9/10. My kids got a ***wonderful*** education at home, both are well into the next grade level in math, my daughter is an avid reader, and I’m super proud. At the end of April though, my spouse and I lost steam, and my daughter started saying she wanted to go back to public school. We maintained friendships with these kids, and I was curious about how she measured up, so I put her and my son back. It confirmed my fears, that the school isn’t rigorous, and my kids love it bc they just goof around with friends all day.

I don’t want to send them back in the fall. I want my daughter to be treated toe to toe with the GT kids, who get more rigorous academics and projects (many of whom I personally know and don’t think are that much smarter than her) but because her IQ isn’t quite high enough, she’s in with the rest, which is ok, there’s just so much fuck around time in school. And like… she has a very chill personality, so she doesn’t bounce off the walls and demand attention when she’s bored, she just sits there and reads.

I couldn’t have done more to keep my kids socialized this year. They each played a different sport every day, we did scouts, we did homeschool gym twice a week, we hung out with friends from school every weekend… it’s just not enough to squash the FOMO.

This summer, they’ll do two weeks of science camp, one week of mandarin camp, mandarin through the summer, and I’m going to try to bribe them to do math - either DreamBox (which I *hate* but public school insists on) or Beast Academy (much better) just so that if they go back to public school in the fall, they’ll be ahead.

Alternatively though - would it be totally bad parenting to make them do like half a year homeschool, half a year public?

There are very good private schools, but they’re an hour and a half away, across a major city, and $30k/kid/year. Other schooling options basically require us to move.

Ok, if you have mean thoughts, that’s fine, please just try not to bash me too hard. Like you all, I’m just trying to do the best for my kids.

Is this normal? She’s excellent in these positions, but she also likes playing midfield and rarely gets to. Consequently, she gets relatively weaker in forward positions when she gets the chance. Is the expectation that the kids positions are basically fixed at this point?

I also coach rec and let her play a wing or striker there for her development.

This is a good club, but how do I say, “please let her play forward positions too”? Should I?

Edit: One consideration here is that although my daughter likes playing goalie and has a good aggressive mindset, she’s only expected to be 5’3”, supposing she sticks w soccer past puberty.

We’re a newer team, and a weak team, but we’ve fended off losses for 3/4 quarters several games, only to have the kids dissolve and give up in the last quarter, often giving up 3 or more goals in the last 5 minutes.

We play 9v9 usually w 11 kids, 10 min quarters, and because my kids are all newer (even though this is the 3rd-4th season for some) midfield often runs the whole field in that position.

I try to rotate them between defense and midfield halfway through the game to give the tired kids a break, but this doesn’t work out as well as it should because some of the kids who like playing midfield just goof off or do nothing when they get put on defense, and some kids who I prefer on defense just struggle to dribble, so they’re not particularly effective.

This may just be how things are with an inexperienced team, but if there are things I can do as a coach to help rectify the situation, I appreciate the help.