WHAT HAPPENS AFTER REGISTRATION

So, you’ve registered your child for soccer.  But, you may be wondering why the poor excited child has to wait a few weeks before practices start.  What happens during that period?  Well, the answer is that this is one of the busiest times for our management staff.  There is so much prep work that the parents and players don’t see to get everything ready for the start of the season.

Forming Teams – One of the major tasks for our management staff is to form teams.  For the upper divisions, this is generally pretty simple as we sometimes have just one team in that division.  But, for the younger divisions, this is far more complex than it sounds.  For the U5/U6 and U8 divisions, all players are evaluated.  We use this information to help develop teams, with the goal of forming teams as evenly balanced as possible.

• Developing Schedules – After we have formed teams, schedules have to be developed.  For the U5/U6 and U8 divisions, this is a bit simpler, since our teams just play within our region.  But, for the U10 and older division, we play other teams in the Area, so this involved coordination with other regions.  THIS PROCESS TAKES TIME!
• Training Coaches – At the same time as we are developing teams, we recruit and train our coaches.  All coaches MUST complete age-specific training.  In addition, coaches attend a meeting where they receive their team assignments, equipment, and other information they need.
• Training Referees – All referees MUST complete AYSO training appropriate to the age division for which they will be a referee.
• Late Registration – One of the biggest time consumers for our management staff is late registration.  Our new system requires online payment for late registration.  This is necessary to avoid our volunteers having to run around to meet and accept payment from late registrants.  But, late registrants still require several additional steps to check if space is available, assign the late registrant to a team, or process a refund if space is not available.

Our Regional Commissioner, Erica Ammons, bears the brunt of dealing with all the other problems, and believe me, there a many of them (ensuring concessions, organizing field day, ensuring we have appropriate field maintenance, ordering equipment, and the list goes on and on).  So, next time you see Erica out on the field, as well as all the other volunteers, be sure to say thanks for all they do.  It’s the only payment they receive.