Subject: USA U-18 Team

I am in agreement here. I enjoy reading the updates!

Thanks! I wish I could have gotten that last win though.

The World Championships start today. I'm honestly a bit worried. The second highest OR player on the U.S. roster wouldn't make the top 10 on any other roster in the group. On top of that, a substantial number of the promising players on the roster have various training issues. We're still close enough to get lucky or make up the OR gap through other means.

A win today against Canada will be important to having a realistic chance at avoiding the relegation round. The second game is against Slovakia, and the third game is against Finland.

It was a great game to watch!!

Agreed! Good luck tomorrow against Finland!

I didn't like the team's chances this season, so I decided to focus on conserving energy for the relegation round. I'd rather not spend a ton of energy on a small chance at advancing only to enter the relegation round with a lot less energy. In addition, there aren't any teams that will be easy wins in the relegation.

I took a shot at going all in against Canada, but the U.S. ended up losing in relegation after giving up the game winning goal in the last few minutes of the game.

Good luck in relegation round, it will be hard with Belarus this year.

Thanks! Good luck to you as well!

The disappointing shootout win against the UK will probably result in demoting this season even. We substantially outplayed them except where it counted most and ended up losing a point. Belarus is just a strong team this season; it's unfortunate that they are in the relegation round.

Tomorrow's game against Russia is set up. I believe we have a fair chance at winning. The hard part will be the UK beating Belarus.

Honestly, I haven't done a good job with the team this season. I was late setting up the schedule and ended up having to rely on scheduling games with U20 teams and the small handful of U18 teams whose managers also forgot to set their schedule on time (for a while it seemed like some of them weren't going to respond and I would be stuck without an opponent). I didn't really bother with subbing in 17 year olds for the 18 year olds who had 100% chemistry like I usually try to or injured players. I didn't rotate tactics during exhibitions as much as I usually do to maintain all the tactic chemistries. I really should have tried against Finland. I also neglected to update tactics against Belarus; I likely would have started with defense which would have resulted in making the game closer at the very least (that could be the difference for avoiding relegation if the U.S. gets only one more point than Belarus tomorrow). I haven't really bothered as much with posting about the progress of the team in the forum recently (though most NT managers probably don't bother in the first place, and I admittedly tend to get a bit quiet after getting some bad results).

While it's fun drafting a team every season and discovering the future potential stars, I think I'm a bit burnt out with managing a national team. It takes me many hours every season to go through all of my scouting to put a team together, and I'm not sure I want to keep doing that indefinitely. It takes a lot more time if I also help the U20 and senior teams with scouting.

Even if I do work a bit harder, the United States doesn't really have the depth to compete without getting lucky, and we keep losing good teams (like the Sierra Stars this season). We only have ~6-7 teams with elite facilities who also train their players consistently well, and some of those teams don't really pull too many players because they are more focused on being competitive than developing players (as they should be; I'm not criticizing that, it's just a factor that affects our depth). As a result I tend to burn a lot of energy early with an eye towards avoiding relegation which makes longer runs extremely unlikely. It's frustrating and a bit boring to not really have a chance and to be focused on just avoiding relegation (which I've generally been very successful at).

I think I'm going to take a break and won't sign up again for next season and the near future. I don't plan to scout for the other U.S. national teams while taking a break, though I can at least answer questions that any new NT managers might have. I'll at least go through my scouting history and call up the best players available in the first week of next season since the next manager will not have had the opportunity to scout for next season.

I completely understand how you must feel. I've never run for the NT because I know I'll feel burned out almost immediately. Really appreciate your work with the teams, and I've enjoyed reading your recaps on the forum. I'm hoping you recharge your batteries and get the itch to take the team again soon.

I really appreciate everything you've done for our teams in the various sports (this and handball come to mind!). Hopefully, you'll recharge and come back.

Thanks everyone! Good luck to whoever takes over the team!

In addition to setting up the team for next year, I'll also post some information about the players that didn't make the team and the promising younger players that should make the team in the future to give the next manager an idea where to focus scouting.