Hello and happy summer to all soccer families,
Coming off another fantastic year of local youth soccer, I wanted to provide an annual CYS update and fill you in on a few developments about our program. All good developments.
As many of you know, we made a change to our program starting with the fall of 2021, moving away from a program centered around travel soccer in favor of the local, community based experience which we call our “City Leagues”. Since that change, our current numbers tell a good part of the story:
Greater than 2000 total registered players - compared to 1200 in 2019, 1000 in 2016.
Greater than 700 preK-8th girls - compared to 400 in 2019, 330 in 2016.
Approximately $80,000 of financial aid for Cambridge families to play - compared to approximately $20,000 in 2019.
Nine teams of Cambridge City Football Club competed, with considerable success, against local clubs in the New England Club Soccer League - at 1/10 the cost and less than 1/10th the logistical burden to families.
If you are at the fields on the weekends, you see what these numbers mean. Our kids are having a great time and playing a very good game of soccer. Some are also learning leadership skills as referees, and many stick around to enjoy the great outdoors (OK, Danehy Park is not quite Yellowstone, but we are outdoors and the sun is too bright for perusing social media) and watch their friends play or scout their opponents for next week.
We are excited to announce that we will be adding to our professional coaching staff this year to support all our wonderful volunteer coaches. Joining CYS Director of Coaching Alvaro Amaral starting this fall will be his good friend Mario Prata, former Benfica SL star and MYSA coaching legend who will be splitting his time between CYS and the US Men’s National Team (!!). Mario and Alvaro will work together to run our coach training sessions* and to attend and support coaches during City League and CCFC team practices and games.
It’s hard to enunciate how excellent Alvaro and Mario are, so I’ll just say there is not another club in Massachusetts that has such quality soccer educators at the top of the coaching staff, and we are thrilled for our coaches to be able to work with them. It’s hard to say this, but part of me can’t wait to get going this September!
Wishing you a terrific summer (and please register soon for fall soccer!).
Best wishes,
Jason
*Prior to every season, we have been running coach training sessions where coaches participate in a “play-practice-play” session run by our Director of Coaching Alvaro Amaral (play-practice-play is a format of practice recommended by US Youth Soccer and Mass Youth Soccer so players are challenged to develop their skills in game-like environments as opposed to drills. The idea is that development and fun work best together, not in opposition to each other). This spring, we had four coaching sessions, and almost 100 coaches attended. We can see the effect during weekday practices and weekend games, our coaches are doing a great job.