Earlier this year, the US Youth Soccer Association published their Vision for Youth Soccer in America. It generated a smattering of debate, but not much. It certainly should, because this vision sums up much of what the USYSA is thinking and advocating for youth soccer in America:

Too often in America a professional sport model is used in measuring youth sports success.

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There is little doubt that playing soccer directly affects one's heath. The amount of physical activity and the emphasis on proper diet found in competitive soccer clearly reduces the risk and incidence of health-related problems such as childhood obesity. It also seems that the benefits of youth sports carry over to adulthood. Click to continue reading...

By design soccer is an activity that promotes health and fitness. The amount of exercise performed at practice and the emphasis on proper diet directly affects players' fitness and promotes a lifestyle that influences health well into adulthood. A recent study now suggests that participation in youth sports may have other, unanticipated effects that may lead to an overall healthy lifestyle. Click to continue reading...

From the Evansville Courier Press, July 26, 2009
Youth sports suffered a great loss this past week when long-time little league baseball coach Larry Collins lost his battle with cancer. Larry was a great mentor of young children, and used sport to teach valuable life lessons to those who were fortunate enough to know him and play for him. Click to continue reading...

Inside Minnesota Soccer was informed this afternoon that the Minnesota Thunder Academy has handed down sanctions to Technical Director Mark Abboud. The Minnesota Thunder Academy Executive Board's decision can also be found on their website.

MTA Decision

The Minnesota Thunder Academy Executive Board has met with regard to the incident that occurred during the Minnesota State Cup on May 17, 2009, where a Minnesota Thunder Academy East team voluntarily ceded a game to a Minnesota Thunder Academy Elite team.

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Inside Minnesota Soccer was informed this afternoon that the Minnesota Thunder Academy has handed down sanctions to Technical Director Mark Abboud. The Minnesota Thunder Academy Executive Board's decision can also be found on their website.

MTA Decision

The Minnesota Thunder Academy Executive Board has met with regard to the incident that occurred during the Minnesota State Cup on May 17, 2009, where a Minnesota Thunder Academy East team voluntarily ceded a game to a Minnesota Thunder Academy Elite team.

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Fellow WTS blogger, Nicole LaVoie, at One Sport Voice, writes about a recent youth soccer match in Minnesota:

The scene: Two Minnesota Thunder Academy (MTA)Â teams played each other in the State Cup final to see who would advance to the Regionals. The 12-and-under girls soccer club, playing above their level, fought to a gutsy 1-1 tie through two overtime periods against the favored 13-and-under team from the same club.

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The runaway train of youth sports Click to continue reading...

A response to: The runaway train of youth sports Click to continue reading...

• RT @kettlebellcoach: Great practice w/gu10 soccer team. Everybody should coach youth sports. keeps u young & working w/kids is lots of fun #
• My girls soccer team has a tourny this wknd & weather forecast calls for clear skies & temps in the 80's. That's just... not... normal... #
• Pouring cats and dogs two minutes ago, now it's sunny.

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A league in Bethesda, Maryland, has tried fining parents who misbehave at youth soccer games, but that didn't work. They just paid it and kept yelling. So now they banished them from the sideline - forcing them to watch from 100 yards away. Many used binoculars to see the action.

The trouble began when a parent from the Springfield Youth Club's Xplosion working as an assistant referee raised a flag in the air and called an offside violation on a Bethesda player, according to the minutes of the disciplinary hearing.

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Ah, the joys of AYSO!
Many people in the U.S., including Cobi Jones, first kicked a soccer ball around in AYSO. Besides introducing kids to the joys of soccer, the organization also supports projects to make the world a better place. They're working on a new venture with Barsa these days.
An AYSO worker explained: AYSO is working with FC Barcelona on a Malaria No More campaign. Click to continue reading...

AEG boss Tim Leiweke said he'd come to the Houston Community College's South Campus to cheer Mayor Bill White on at the unveiling of plans for an 18-field youth sports center near Texas 288 and Airport Boulevard. White jokingly described... Click to continue reading...

CNN picks up on something we were talking about a few months ago - how will high gas prices affect youth soccer? They have a video up that talks about the impact of high gas prices on youth sports, with the reporter following a girls soccer team to the Georgia State Cup. The interviews with [...] Click to continue reading...

As anyone watching cable TV knows - ultimate fighting is all the rage on pay-per-view. So it was only a matter of time until some parents decided their ­kids needed to 'train' to participate in this 'sport': Ultimate fighting was once the sole domain of burly men who beat each other bloody in anything-goes brawls on [. Click to continue reading...

The NY Times has an article up about a new social networking website called weplay.com, designed for youth sports teams: WePlay.com, a social networking site for youth sports - something like Facebook for young athletes - is expected to start in mid-April. The site caters to youth athletes, parents and coaches - a vast audience. Click to continue reading...

Dad Gone Mad has a great post up about watching his son play baseball recently, and it should be required reading for all sports parents: I spent the rest of the gaming watching my son, and I felt myself getting emotional as I did so. It wasn't because I was living vicariously through him as he [... Click to continue reading...

Lets start this off with a hypothetical scenario. Your child's team is playing a team from a nearby town in a closely contested match. The score is 1-0 in favor of your team. Late in the 2nd half, one of your team's players, let's call them Player A, goes in hard for the ball and [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "What Would You Do If Parents Swarmed The Pitch? Click to continue reading...

A longtime OTP reader shared this with me recently: Today at my U14 game, my daughter made a diving save and deflected the ball past the post. The referee signaled for a goal kick and she shouted to him "Ref, it was out off my hand, it should be a corner." He listened [...] SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Highlighting Good Sportsmanship", url: "http://onthepitch. Click to continue reading...

Last year a new concussion testing system was released called Impact. A number of media outlets ran news stories that were quasi advertisements for the new system, but they still highlighted the dangers kids can face from concussions in youth sports: Doctors have concluded that concussions are especially dangerous for children and teenagers and, as CBS [. Click to continue reading...

A popular style of water bottle, used by many children in youth sports, is known to contain a chemical compound, bisphenol-A, that researchers know can cause problems with the human hormonal system. While industry trade groups believe the compound is safe, other research shows that trace amounts may be leaking out into stored contents. Click to continue reading...

­ Joyce Bassett of Youth Sports recently wrote about a spat of unsporting conduct during post match handshakes between opponents and wondered if that tradition had run its course: I remember several years ago my daughter was complaining about doing post-game handshakes because she once saw a girl spit on her hands. Click to continue reading...

MRSA caused quite a bit of hysteria in the media this past October. While it is a serious disease, it also is quite rare and clearly many school districts and other organizations over reacted. There is a lot of good information available to help groups prevent the spread of this and other communicable diseases. Click to continue reading...

Canada is all abuzz over a recent bench clearing brawl at a hockey tournament between eight year old players which was caught on video. This is very unfortunate and is not limited to hockey by any means. Joyce Bassett from the Youth Sports Blog, had this to say after it was announced no charges would [. Click to continue reading...

I've been coaching soccer for almost six years. To some I am still a naive rookie, while to others, I'm expected to have 'seen it all' and am an expert. It's not surprising at all - it just depends on a person's own experience and perspective. I'm definitely closer to the former than the latter! [... Click to continue reading...

Talk to most parents with a child in competitive soccer, and you're sure to hear about how much it costs. Just about every article written about the problems with youth development in the US will take about the barriers for many due to the high costs. When you participate in an activity that involves travel [. Click to continue reading...

From the Christian Science Monitor (H/T ncguy3), we find five ways to avoid becoming a Soccer Mom. My favorites: Rule 3: Don't do sports. After dumping your van, this is the most important rule. Don't, under any circumstances, let your child join a sports team - especially a travel team. No matter how talented your child [...] Click to continue reading...

I've mentioned this before, but it's still interesting how the media seems to relish in highlighting the behavior of soccer parents when other sports have their issues too. A few years ago, Raleigh's Parks and Rec department put up chain link fences to keep parents away from the (pointy) football fields. This was in [...] Click to continue reading...

Regardless of your political views or thoughts on global warming, there's no denying it's been hot. Very hot. Here in central North Carolina, the temperature has been below 90 degrees only one day this month (88°F on August 11th). Temperatures exceeded 95°F on 8 out of the past 14 days with temperatures above 100°F for [...] Click to continue reading...

Managing a youth sports team can be quite a daunting task these days. In youth soccer there can be many different forms to fill out, payments that need to be collected, snack schedules to create, tracking who can make it to various team events (practices, matches, tournaments, parties, etc), and much more. In our league, [...] Click to continue reading...

You just sort of expect that the week you officially start soccer practices - it'll be the hottest week of the year, and possibly on record. With our teams starting practice on Monday, we've set a new high temperature Monday, Tuesday, and Today, with temperatures of 99 or higher. With extremely high temperatures forecast for [...] Click to continue reading...

I saw this in the NY Times today and was just speechless - parents sending their kids to sports psychologists: The idea that mental coaching can help the youngest athletes has pervaded the upper reaches of the country's zealous youth sports culture. In the pursuit of college scholarships and top spots on premier travel clubs, the [...] Click to continue reading...