what is ODP and why is is good?????

ONLYASOCCERDAD wrote:My exprience WAS, that while the rules are to not wear club affiliation gear or bags, the coaches spent a lot of time asking kids where and for whom they played, my child made the cut but was relegated to third and fourth string teams and never caught the eye of any local coach. after being overlooked the first year for regional camp invite, my child went the second year ONLY after being selected as an alternate to replace a "chosen one". local coaches and admin returned from regional trip STUNNED that my child was selected to represent region 3 as one of about 60 kids in the "regional pool". moral to the story is, IMO horrible player ID locally but we enjoyed the experience and had time to do ODP. would do it again if had the chance to do it all over again. but very frustrating to watch inferior players selected over superior players time and time again. it will be fun. JUST DO IT

I agree. This why SoCal reign supreme over all region in ODP.. They put money into third party (PRO+) to identify players.  ODP here felt more like a money crab.  After I declined going to OK camp, I was emailed over, over and over asking for my dd to attend.  And from what I recalled, it was initially $300 for first timers to register for ODP.  I'm sure it as gone up since. SoCal, $100 I believe.

Pro+ is not 3rd party...it IS effectively socal odp that has been rebranded, refocused and geared more towards competing with the newer id platforms across the nation. Calsouth was very smart in how they've gone about it. Even though they compete in national odp events, they've clearly deemphasized odp branding.

NTX and other regions should follow suit. The two huge shifts socal odp made were 1) getting rid of the idea odp shouldn't know what these kids do in club. They go out and scout the kids in their club environment. I understand odp has those ancient rules in place to minimize politics, but it didnt work and ALL ID programs have politics no matter how you slice it. Go find the best players in the best place to evaluate them. Smart move!

2) They made smart choices to reduce cost. Biggest costs in odp are some of the travel camps. ODP Regional camp is a grand or more in some states. Socal skips region camp completely and organizes events to bring coaches local. Now you don't lose that huge block of talented players whose parents dont want to spend a grand for 5 days of training.

Reduce costs and go find the best players...seems like a good recipe.

4-3-3 wrote:Pro+ is not 3rd party...it IS effectively socal odp that has been rebranded, refocused and geared more towards competing with the newer id platforms across the nation. Calsouth was very smart in how they've gone about it. Even though they compete in national odp events, they've clearly deemphasized odp branding.

NTX and other regions should follow suit. The two huge shifts socal odp made were 1) getting rid of the idea odp shouldn't know what these kids do in club. They go out and scout the kids in their club environment. I understand odp has those ancient rules in place to minimize politics, but it didnt work and ALL ID programs have politics no matter how you slice it. Go find the best players in the best place to evaluate them. Smart move!

2) They made smart choices to reduce cost. Biggest costs in odp are some of the travel camps. ODP Regional camp is a grand or more in some states. Socal skips region camp completely and organizes events to bring coaches local. Now you don't lose that huge block of talented players whose parents dont want to spend a grand for 5 days of training.

Reduce costs and go find the best players...seems like a good recipe.

Love the concept!

I love the idea of reducing the cost. That gets my attention, but scouting talent is subjective, even in the soccer utopia of SoCal. I am not sure how using a third party scouting organization to assess talent is a better purity test than inviting players to play head to head in a tryout. A third party is not above corruption or poor judgment. I can only imagine the screaming if a scout saw most of our DD's on a day when she had an off day or bad matchup.

Most days ODP player quality/skill level looks like a middle of the road LH D2. Maybe my expectations are lower than others, but I didn't expect to see an elite level - best of the best roster from top to bottom at U11/U12.

Speaking of reducing cost, they went up another $10 ($60 in 2 years) and are not including uniforms/backpacks this year. Those are extra.

how many practices do they get in, and any other training? wondering how to cost /benefit the price vs the raw actual training/scrimmage.

4-3-3 wrote:Pro+ is not 3rd party...it IS effectively socal odp that has been rebranded, refocused and geared more towards competing with the newer id platforms across the nation. Calsouth was very smart in how they've gone about it. Even though they compete in national odp events, they've clearly deemphasized odp branding.

NTX and other regions should follow suit. The two huge shifts socal odp made were 1) getting rid of the idea odp shouldn't know what these kids do in club. They go out and scout the kids in their club environment. I understand odp has those ancient rules in place to minimize politics, but it didnt work and ALL ID programs have politics no matter how you slice it. Go find the best players in the best place to evaluate them. Smart move!

2) They made smart choices to reduce cost. Biggest costs in odp are some of the travel camps. ODP Regional camp is a grand or more in some states. Socal skips region camp completely and organizes events to bring coaches local. Now you don't lose that huge block of talented players whose parents dont want to spend a grand for 5 days of training.

Reduce costs and go find the best players...seems like a good recipe.

good points! but the biggest advantage SoCal has over NTX is population density. something like 26,000,000 people living in an area the size of Dallas Metroplex