Philosophy
To let the kids play without a lot of coaching during games. To smile a lot. To encourage a lot. To let the ball be the teacher. The kids like to keep track of the score. The adults should focus on managing activities and helping the players learn soccer, social skills, and team skills. Click on the list below to navigate to the desired topic.
Overview
The Concord Carlisle Youth Soccer travel program fields teams for players U9 to U18. We are members of the Boston Area Youth Soccer league. Games are played in Concord and Carlisle and usually in surrounding communities such as Acton, Lexington, Sudbury, Newton and more. If you're thinking about travel soccer for your child, the page covers more indepth detail about our program. Or, should you wish to speak with one of our program's age directors, you may contact the appropriate travel age director as listed on the Contacts page.
Eligibility
Children may begin playing Travel soccer in the Fall of their third grade year and play with us until the reach 18 years old. Players are placed in divisions by age groups running from August 1 of the current year through July 31 of the year following. Click here for a listing of the 2010 to 2011 Soccer season birth dates/grades.
Commitment
Playing in the travel program requires a commitment to attend two practices per week and all games, both home and away. Before registering for this program, please be sure you and your player can make this commitment. It is not fair to teammates and coaches to sign up for a team unless a player and their family can make the necessary commitment. To aid in properly placing players for fall soccer, the travel program holds player evaluations in the spring in late May/early June. Players considering our travel program should attend these evaluations.
Season length and start dates
The travel season runs for 10 weeks each fall and spring. Typically the fall season starts the Saturday after public school starts and for the spring, within the first two weeks of April. Games are played during holidays and vacations each season. For details on the current season, click here to go to the Registration page.
Team Placement
Age Directors use coach evaluations, evaluations from professional clinicians and their observations from watching games to place players on teams according to their skill level. School, grade and friendships are taken into consideration when placing players of equal skill on teams playing in the same division. When a player signs up to play travel soccer, they are signing up to play soccer, not to play on a particular team. Factors for team placement in order of pariority are:
- How many teams each age division can field and how many players are on each team.
- The ability of the players which is determined by their former coaches and field evaluations*.
- Who has played together before on a previous season's team
- Friendships between players.
*To assist in team placement, all players registering for the Travel program are required to attend the player evaluations held in the spring of each year in the late May/early June to determine fall's placement. Registration prior to attending the field evaluations is strongly urged. Field evaluations dates, times and places are announced to the club via email and then posted to the home page of our website.
Registration Fees and Uniforms
The travel program fees are $165 per season and include fees for the building and maintainance of Concord and Carlisle fields. It also includes a $25 non-refundable administrative fee. Financial assistance is available for those in need. A $50 fee is assessed for late registrations. All players registering for the fall soccer season must attend the field evaluations used for team placement. Click here to go to our registration page which contains up-to-date information on our current season registration including current field evaluations schedules generally held in late May.
Uniforms including shirt ($25), shorts ($20) and socks ($5) may be purchased on-line during player registration. If additional uniforms pieces are needed, contact our our travel registrar, Fiona for details about items in stock, payments and pickup.
Games
Games in the fall are played on Saturdays. In the spring, games for the U9 through U14 teams are played on Saturdays and for the U16 and U18 teams on Sundays. Make ups are usually scheduled for evenings and Sundays.
Practices
Two practices per week including professonally-run player clinics are required. Practice times are set by the team's coach just prior to the season opening and are set at coach's discretion after discussion with the parents of the players on their teams. CCYS philosophy for good practices:
- The coach smiles frequently and encourages with positive comments, catching players doing things right.
- Every player has a ball at his or her feet.
- No players stand in line, ever. They're always doing something with the ball or moving to a ball.
- The kids are having fun. The coach has organized games that teach skills. There are no "rote" drills.
- The practice includes a "live game" scrimmage for at least 15 minutes (30 minutes for older kids).
- The kids go home tired
Skills
See the Coaches section of the site for detailed descriptions of skills we'd like the kids to learn and activities that will help them learn while having a fun.
Click here to register for Travel soccer.
