Club Soccer Pulls at Players’ Ties to the Hometown Team

Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Joseph Rodriguez, center, had to give up his role on Montclair High School's team to continue playing for an academy.

MONTCLAIR, N.J. — If ever there were a picture-perfect day for high school sports, it was a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon in early September when the first intratown soccer showdown in a dozen years took place in this bustling suburb.

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Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Earlier this year, the U.S. Soccer Federation said players in its affiliated developmental academies would no longer be able to participate on high school teams, like Montclair High.

Next door to Montclair High School's soccer field, the football stadium was packed for the season opener. Parked cars lined otherwise quiet neighborhood streets. The late-summer air was heavy with anticipation as fans filled the soccer bleachers to see if Montclair Kimberley Academy, small in size but having grown in stature as an Essex County power, could beat its larger, public crosstown rival for the first time.

Peering into the stands at familiar faces from families of both schools and then to the other end of the field at several of the Montclair Kimberley boys he had played with on youth teams, the Montclair High senior midfielder Oliver Murphy could hardly contain himself.

"The kind of game you dream about," Murphy, one of his team's captains, would say. "You see your parents coming in with all these other people from town, you're with your teammates getting ready — that's why we play, for those kinds of moments."

From the moment he had seen the 2012 schedule, Murphy — Oli to coaches and teammates — had been counting down to the first of two showdowns with the school known as M.K.A. The night before the game, he was wound up — excited, nervous, restless. On game day he had difficulty keeping down the little breakfast he ate.

Murphy, 17, was not the only Montclair High soccer star grappling with his emotions that afternoon. Up in the grassy area behind the visitors' bench that Montclair Coach Jack Weber liked to call Heckle Hill — because students traditionally gathered to razz the opposition — Joseph Rodriguez, 16, was getting sideways looks and pointed questions.

Why wasn't he — Montclair's leading scorer as a sophomore the previous season — out on the field? Was he injured? Academically ineligible? He tried to explain that he had quit the team but not because he did not want to play.

It is complicated, he said, and left it at that.

In addition to being Montclair High teammates last year, Murphy and Rodriguez competed together for Match Fit, a prestigious soccer academy boasting a cooperative relationship with the famed English club Chelsea. But when the United States Soccer Federation announced early this year that players in its 80 affiliated academies would no longer be permitted to participate in high school soccer in an effort to mimic the international player developmental model, Murphy and Rodriguez — like thousands of boys nationwide — were forced into the delicate position of choosing between club and community.

The United States has been able to produce world-class players in other team sports — like basketball and baseball — using schools as athletic spawning grounds. But national soccer officials have come to the conclusion that having young players split their time between schools and clubs will never produce enough world-class talent needed to compete at the top international level with countries that have had a huge training and cultural advantage. Hence, the decision to force teenagers into making profound choices that can be complicated — and costly — for their families.

In Montclair, the Rodriguez and Murphy families are vivid examples of how this issue — the increasing professionalization of youth sports — is playing out across the country.

"My first reaction when I heard about the rule was that I was devastated," Murphy said. "I was really upset that I would have to even make that choice. But I thought it over, and there was no way I would miss my high school season, my senior year."

A grade behind Murphy, Rodriguez weighed the attraction of his hometown team and friends against the benefits of academy training and playing against the best competition available, even if practices were more than an hour's drive away and game travel — along the Eastern Seaboard, stretching into Virginia — was typically much farther.

With a heavy heart, he pledged allegiance to the academy and left the team that admittedly was the more enjoyable social experience.

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