ROYAL PALM BEACH STRIKERS COMPETITIVE SOCCER PROGRAM MISMANAGED AND POOR ORGANIZATION Royal Palm Beach Florida

My daughter came aboard with the Royal Palm Beach Strikers soccer club four years ago. I have seen everything from not being able to buy a t-shirt for myself to support being a soccer dad fan, to coaches getting arrested for sleeping with minor child players at tournaments while staying in hotel rooms. While I understand just how bad children’s sports has become since I played way back in the 70’s and 80’s, the level of drama and conflict within this organization is something that any parent of a prospective player should be aware of when searching for a place to play.

As I said, my daughter came onboard with the organization four years ago when a coach from Royal Palm Beach Strikers recruited her. I was told that this wasn’t allowed, but frankly both my daughter and I were flattered, and she decided to join the team. Right from the start, there seemed to be dissention between the parents and the two coaches, who were husband and wife.  I found myself being pulled aside by parents attempting to get me to join their crusade to oust this coach. Time and time again I told the parents that I didn’t have any issue with the coach, but they persisted. My daughter was happy. The girls seemed to play well together on the field, the team was travelling all over Florida to play in tournaments. The girls hung out by the hotel pools, barbeques were happening while at the hotels. It all seemed great. What finally came out from one of the parents as to what their problem was that the coaches daughter was on the team and the parents thought that she wasn’t good enough to play. This petty argument that they had was that this girl was playing soccer and the parents thought she shouldn’t be. The coach also had rules such as the players had to bring their playbooks and soccer balls to every practice, and they had to be on time. Parents also had issue with these rules. To me, these rules instilled responsibility on the girls.

Because I wasn’t a part of the proverbial lynching, I wasn’t invited (or aware) of their secret meetings to get rid of this coach. I don’t know how many meetings there were, but it ultimately got to the president of the organization. What happened next was the first of my flabbergast at the handling of this organization by its board. The president of the Royal Palm Beach Strikers sat every 12-year-old girl down separately and asked them what he should do about the coach of their team. Now let’s face it, dinner time conversation in each respective household is going to render the parental opinions on to their children. I thought that the interrogation of those children by the president was completely inappropriate. The coaches were asked to leave and did. The funny thing about this is that every parent then left the organization to go to the Wellington Wave soccer club. So now there weren’t just any coaches for this team, but only three players remained out of 16. My daughter was one of the three.

One of the next remarkable issues was the breaking news story that a young boy ended up in a Waffle House, crying because he ran from the hotel that his Royal Palm Beach Striker team was staying because he woke up to his coaches hand down his pants while he was sleeping. This young boy said the two had slept in the same bed four times in the past without incident and because he thought of his coach as a "father figure."

(13) Police: Lake Worth Middle School teacher molested player on traveling team - YouTube

 Oddly, this coach repeatedly appears at soccer games and has no children participating. He is reported to be suspended from coaching, but I have seen him at high school soccer games as well as Beach Bums Sand Soccer tournaments as recent as last week.

Moving on to last year and into this year (2022/2023), My daughter’s Royal Palm Beach Striker team has a coaching team of husband-and-wife John and Veronica. John coaches a total of five teams, a high school team, two Royal Palm Beach Strikers teams (11-year-olds and 17-year-olds), and two Beach Bums Soccer teams. He professes a 100% dedication to my daughter’s team yet is late for practices or cancels them because he is busy with one of his other teams. The president of the league continues to talk about how dedicated John is, yet the actions of John certainly do not show anything of the sort. From last year (22) to this year (23) 9 of the 11 girls that quit the team because of John. Most of them now play elsewhere, so it's not as though they were through playing soccer, just through playing under John. They quit because of John’s poor leading by example as he gets angry if any of the girls participate in any other activity. All while he merrily spreads himself too thin to benefit any of the teams that he continues to coach far too many teams for any of them to benefit at all. Ironically, none of his teams are winning teams, so what is this obsession with so much coaching of children? For example, in 43 of his high school games coached, his team scored zero goals in 28 of those games. I know it’s not all about winning, but I simply don’t see any true value in him being a coach as he is certainly not committed to any team, and more of a commitment to his own ego and objectives, whatever they might be. Since I have made my feelings known about John, he has tailgated me, threatened me both verbally and physically as well as tried to ban me from games. This all coming from a guy who rarely shows up to practices that only are scheduled two days a week. Additionally, there is this woman, Vanessa who is Vice-President & Competitive Program Coordinator and is just the nastiest person that I have ever met. There doesn’t even have to be a problem and she is just so naturally nasty. I don’t understand why she tortures herself and others by being involved with people for any reason. Asking her how to obtain a Strikers t-shirt for myself was as though I asked her to sign the deed to her house over to me. She called me on the phone, screaming at the top of her lungs for texting her at 8:15pm about this shirt request

. Parents have shared their disappointment in lack of games, lack of players on the team, etc. It continues to fall on deaf ears while the board members of the Royal Palm Beach Strikers ongoingly pledge that things will get better. It’s been over four weeks since there was a parents meeting, headed by the president of the organization and not one change has been made. In fact, at one point during the parent meeting audio attached, he stated that another organization that was having the same issues returned the registration money to the parents and scrapping the season was the right thing to do. Ironically, another organization has offered to pick up all our Striker girls free of charge, but the president of our organization has ignored the offer to date. So what does that convey is most important? Girls playing soccer? I'm thinking more ego driven.

 You can hear for yourself in the audio that The Strikers organization blame the girls because "they are 17-year-old girls" that they have "too many injuries", etc. Funny thing is that if the other nine girls from last year didn’t leave because of the coach, there’d be plenty of substitutes. I’m not saying the grass is greener elsewhere, this is merely my experience with the Royal Palm Beach Strikers Competitive travel program. The team has been so mismanaged, that we are at the midseason mark and there are absolutely no league games scheduled and our girls are not a part of any league and have not been registered to be in one. In the meantime, the Striker parents and players are expected to spoon into their mouths, chew, swallow, and repeat what matadors will often step in as a work related hazard.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14xTZsR7XBe4QtLPjmWM5JQQhH7WI1Xhl/view?usp=share_link