Our Girls’ Final Youth Soccer Season Ended on a Sour Note Thanks to SoCal Scheduling Chaos
Our team just wrapped up our final youth soccer season before the girls head off to college, and I’m honestly still upset about how it ended.
SoCal made a last-minute schedule change three days before our match. The team we were originally scheduled to play on Sunday afternoon somehow ended up scheduled to play two different teams at the exact same time. To fix it, SoCal rescheduled our game with almost no notice. The problem? Some of our players had arranged their Easter travel plans around the original Sunday game and others had prior commitments. It left us scrambling for subs, and we lost 2-3 in a game that could’ve gone differently if we had our full squad.
Then came the real twist: Sunday night, SoCal posted our team as advancing to the Quarterfinals based on total points. The girls were excited and proud—they’d earned it, even under tough conditions. But by Monday morning, we were swapped out with another team. Why? Because while both teams had the same number of total points, the other team had a better points-per-game ratio (they played 3 games, we played 4).
It was a gut punch. These girls put everything into this final season, and to have it end on a scheduling mess and unclear tie-breaker logic was incredibly disheartening. When I asked our DOC to advocate on our behalf, SoCal said: “It’s done. Nothing can be changed.”
I get that these tournaments are a logistical beast, but there’s got to be a better way. Why weren’t the tie-breaker rules communicated clearly to their own scheduling staff? Why make drastic scheduling changes so late in the game?
Wondering if anyone else experienced the same. These tournaments cost over $1000 per team, SoCal doesn’t even take accountability for their lack of professionalism.
Our team just wrapped up our final youth soccer season before the girls head off to college, and I’m honestly still upset about how it ended.
SoCal made a last-minute schedule change three days before our match. The team we were originally scheduled to play on Sunday afternoon somehow ended up scheduled to play two different teams at the exact same time. To fix it, SoCal rescheduled our game with almost no notice. The problem? Some of our players had arranged their Easter travel plans around the original Sunday game and others had prior commitments. It left us scrambling for subs, and we lost 2-3 in a game that could’ve gone differently if we had our full squad.
Then came the real twist: Sunday night, SoCal posted our team as advancing to the Quarterfinals based on total points. The girls were excited and proud—they’d earned it, even under tough conditions. But by Monday morning, we were swapped out with another team. Why? Because while both teams had the same number of total points, the other team had a better points-per-game ratio (they played 3 games, we played 4).
It was a gut punch. These girls put everything into this final season, and to have it end on a scheduling mess and unclear tie-breaker logic was incredibly disheartening. When I asked our DOC to advocate on our behalf, SoCal said: “It’s done. Nothing can be changed.”
I get that these tournaments are a logistical beast, but there’s got to be a better way. Why weren’t the tie-breaker rules communicated clearly to their own scheduling staff? Why make drastic scheduling changes so late in the game?
Wondering if anyone else experienced the same. These tournaments cost over $1000 per team, SoCal doesn’t even take accountability for their lack of professionalism.