CYS History
(Written in 1994)

Celebrating our First 25 Years (1979-1994)

Travel by any recreational field in Cambridge on any given day this fall and chances are you’ll find a group of young people and adults enjoying a game of soccer. From the exciting action on the U8 Girls at the Cambridge Common, to the U12 boys practicing their corner kicks on Glacken, to the fast-paced coed U15 program at Danehy on Sunday afternoons, soccer is alive and growing in Cambridge.

It wasn’t always this way. 

Twenty five years ago there was no soccer league in Cambridge. According to former CYS president and current board member Anne Strong, it all began in the spring of 1979 with one mother, her 9-year-old boy, and a hairdresser. The boy wanted to play soccer and his mother, Phyllis Kerr, was eager to find him an opportunity to play. By chance her hairdresser, a fan of soccer, told her about the existence of BAYS, the Boston Area Youth Soccer organization. Phyllis mentioned the idea of fielding a soccer team to various parents and word started spreading. That spring Cambridge fielded a U10 boys team and a U10 girls team in BAYS.  

Anne recounted how she recruited her own third grade son to play. “He had a crush on a girl named Heather who was going to play and I just never mentioned that the teams would be gender separate,“ said Anne with a chuckle.

These two groundbreaking U10 teams played 11v11 with the Cambridge Common as their home field.  When the fall arrived, these enthusiastic families decided to start an intown fall season as BAYS only offered a spring season at that time. Four coed teams of fourth and fifth graders continued playing at the Common. Anne shared the memory of bringing the goals to the field. “At the time we had full-size portable goals that we stored at the VFW building on Huron Avenue.  Every Saturday a parent would have to drive there, haul the goals out of the alley, and rope them on top of the car.” Anne remembers fondly the vision of goals bouncing on top of her bright yellow Volvo station wagon as she maneuvered her way across West Cambridge.

By the fall of 1980 the program had expanded to two age groups, U10 and U12, with separate boys and girls teams, for the intown season. Anne, as head of the program, made a supreme effort to mix up kids from different schools and neighborhoods to make it a citywide opportunity and reflect the city’s diversity. As Anne recalls, she received a huge boost from a Harvard undergraduate named Wayne Meisel, who recruited college students to coach the newly forming CYS teams.

Cambridge residents Harvey Silverglate and Elsa Dorfman approached Anne about offering a program for U8s and Anne promptly recruited them to start a program for that age group. 

By 1983 the program had grown to approximately 600 kids. As an organization, Cambridge Youth Soccer did not officially incorporate until the late 1980s. During this period the Alewife League was formed. Teams from Belmont, Arlington, Watertown, and Cambridge played against each other in the fall until BAYS began to offer a fall season.  In 1990 Anne and Charlie Allen entered a U12 girls team into BAYS as the first Cambridge team to play the fall BAYS season. By the mid 1990s the number of kids, including high schoolers, playing soccer in Cambridge rose to more than 1100. Soccer had indeed arrived. 

Today, CYS boasts 70 teams. The program currently serves 800 kids ages 7 to 19 representing more than 20 schools. More than 130 coaches and assistant coaches dedicate their time and expertise to developing our players last year. CYS has developed affiliations with local soccer organizations Play Soccer and Mass Premier Soccer to bring multiple opportunities for additional education and play through clinics and camps. In the winter, gyms across the city are reverberating with the sound of soccer balls bouncing off walls as the winter program, winter workshops and practices continue to engage experienced and novice players. Fall, winter, spring, or summer, CYS offers opportunities for player, coach, and referee development. And opportunities for fun, safe, and positive play.

Hundreds of kids have learned to love the game of soccer through CYS in the twenty-five years since its inception. Many CYS graduates have continued their passion for the game in high school and college. Former CYS players currently play for Colby, Wesleyan, and Amherst, among dozens of others. You’ll find CYS players and graduates leading middle school and high school teams as captains and co-captains. 

In addition to player development, CYS has been an invaluable source of connection for kids across our diverse city. Soccer is often the means by which kids of all ages form friendships that traverse the boundaries of school and neighborhood. Friendships develop that move beyond the team and connect kids from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Often the prospect of entering a new, larger school such as a high school can be daunting – but many CYS players find that the relationships they have developed with their CYS teammates over the years form an instant community of familiar faces when they arrive at their new school.