Ah, the pounding of little cleats on Bermuda. The grimaces of sweaty, cherubic faces. The imploring screams of over-amped coaches. The gently scolding tone of embarrassed coaches' spouses. Yes, it's the youth soccer season once again.
And against my better judgment, I'm right in the middle of it.
Program organizers couldn't convince anyone to coach my 9-year-old's team so, somewhat reluctantly, I stepped forward.
If they'd known what they were getting they might have pretended not to notice. Here I am, still grappling with the subtleties of soccer's offside rule and now I'm faced with trying to explain it to my 10 little dirt-streaked Thunderbolts.
I'd like to think a few other volunteer coaches are dealing with similar issues. If I'm wrong I'd prefer not to know.
But that's AYSO, the American Youth Soccer Organization, a 41-year-old phenomenon that packs regional parks all over the country this time of year. Kern County alone is home to 13 divisions, or regions as they're called, including four in Bakersfield. Several local regions began play on Saturday; most will be in action by Labor Day.
Without volunteers, knowledgeable or not, AYSO would be nonexistent. And without AYSO or something like it, we might have 9,000 Kern County kids blinking vacantly at their Xbox screens every Saturday morning.
That's impact.
Youth sports volunteerism can be a beautiful thing. Except when it's not. From time to time, AYSO regional boards implode from personality friction or burnout, but inevitably they bloom again like midfield dandelions. Many Kern County AYSO regions have been in business for 20 years or more, a testimony to the power of patience and diplomacy.
"One year is good. The next year somebody gets mad at somebody," said John Buckley, the assistant commissioner of Tehachapi's thriving AYSO Region 479. "That's just the nature of it."
The thrill of the game and the joy of watching kids grow in physical aptitude and confidence bring many volunteers back.
"Coaching the older kids is fun -- working on strategy and all that," said Gail Jennings, commissioner of Frazier Park's Region 382 and an AYSO volunteer for 19 years. "But the opportunity to see the younger ones do the best they can, keep their heads up and have fun whether they win or lose -- that's the best. That keeps you volunteering."
But finding enough volunteers can be a challenge. AYSO organizations require coaches, referees, concession-stand workers, groundskeepers and first-aid coordinators.
Often they need money, too. Occasionally they need lots of it.
That's the situation for Kern County's largest and oldest AYSO division, Region 73, where I coach. In fact, the group faces the most daunting challenge in its 30-year history.
Region 73 has played its games on the eastern portion of the Cal State Bakersfield campus for two decades, but CSUB intends to develop that acreage in the next two or three years. Region 73 must move.
The city of Bakersfield offered Region 73 two options as a prospective new home: yet-to-be-developed parkland on Stockdale Highway and a larger site on Taft Highway between Gosford and Ashe roads.
The Region 73 board picked the larger, 250-acre site on Taft Highway. Problem is, that site might not be ready for three or four years; the Stockdale site, too small to meet Region 73's needs, might be ready by this time next year.
"We're having trouble reconciling the fact that Cal State has said, 'You've got to be off that land in a year,' with the fact that there won't be any (sewage or water) services out there on Taft Highway for three or four years," said Bakersfield Assistant City Manager Alan Christensen. "We're not sure what they (Region 73) have in mind."
Robert Greco of AYSO Region 73 explains: It's a matter of best-case scenario vs. worst-case scenario.
CSUB's timeline for the development of its east-campus acreage is not set in stone, he said, and the timeline for the development of the city's Taft Highway park may not be, either. If one can be pushed back a little, the other moved up ...
"We are not forecasting any kind of hiatus," Greco said. "There will be no interruption in play for Region 73."
As envisioned, the new Taft Highway park will have space for soccer, golf and baseball/softball. Christensen figures it'll take about $11 million to create 16 full-sized soccer fields -- more in actuality, since many will be smaller, youth-sized fields -- on about 11 acres.
Developers' fees and other city-government sources will pay for much of that, but AYSO Region 73 is in full-steam-ahead fund-raising mode just the same. It has contracted with a local company to sell so-called discount cards, and it's asking its 2,700 players to sell them. These being kids, the organizers are offering prizes and recognition for the best sales jobs.
Greco says Region 73 is also writing nonprofit grant proposals and, perhaps most promising, working with a Fortune 500 corporation he won't name on a hopefully soon-to-be-announced $25,000 donation toward development of a new home.
If Region 73 pulls this off, it might represent the greatest feat of soccer volunteerism in these parts yet.
In view of all that, my willingness to shout at a bunch of 8- and 9-year-olds doesn't seem like quite the sacrifice I thought it was. And just as well -- the martyr act was starting wear thin. Besides, we won our first game Saturday. Funny how that helps your mood. The Thunderbolts are ready. Bring it on, world.
Originally published 8/28/2005
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Bakersfield needs more soccer facilities
Bakersfield is experiencing a community parks crisis. Too many energetic people, not enough room to recreate.
It may not seem like it if you've driven west on Stockdale Highway and checked out the Park at RiverWalk, a 32-acre patch of gently rolling terrain, man-made ponds and public barbecue grills. Or the Kern River Parkway greenbelt along Truxtun Avenue near Mohawk Drive, or the sports courts at Silvercreek Park, or any number of other municipally manicured settings.
But if you've ever tried to find a public field where your soccer team can practice or a neighborhood park that can accommodate weekly pickup games, you know the frustration.
It's usually not difficult to find a place for a family picnic. But a place for a couple dozen 11-year-olds to chase each other around? Tougher than you might think.
"Simply put, there's a playing-field shortage in this town," said Ron White, president of Golden Empire Youth Football, a homegrown league that's bursting at the seams with 1,700 children.
"It's not just football, it's soccer, too," he said. "We're not keeping up with the recreation needs of this town. When you start planting trees and discouraging youth activities, you know there's a problem."
He's referring to two recent dust-ups involving regular, weekly soccer games in neighborhood parks not built to sustain that kind of activity. Neighbors complained about the crowds, the noise and the cars at Seasons Park and Wilderness Park, both in southwest Bakersfield.
Workers from the city's recreation and parks department responded by planting trees along three sides of Seasons Park, rendering them too small for soccer games. Then they added permanent picnic tables at Wilderness Park, ruining the playing pitch for members of the Bakersfield Youth Soccer League, a predominately Hispanic organization that has about 1,600 kids citywide.
Bakersfield Recreation and Parks Director Dianne Hoover says the parks in question were never intended to support the type and level of activity that full-scale weekend soccer games subject the surrounding neighborhood to. "Those little parks don't have restrooms and they don't have the parking to accommodate that activity," she said.
Allen Abe, the parks department's assistant director, said the city is all too aware of the shortage of playing fields. "It's the explosion of the various sports, not only soccer but other groups as well, combined with the explosion of the population. We just don't have the facilities. The whole growth issue has caught up to us."
Tell us about it, coaches say.
"At some parks we've got four or five teams trying to practice in a space where there's room for maybe three," said Mike Radsick, an organizer for the new Brigade Recreational Soccer League, which starts this fall. "We can't fit everybody in."
The playing fields that are available often suffer from excessive wear and tear. Inspect the battered, dusty soccer pitch at Beach Park some Monday morning -- it looks like a herd of longhorns stopped there to graze.
The Kern County Soccer Park, which occupies county-owned land near Lake Ming and is managed by a foundation, also suffers the effects of heavy use. "It can take you 20 minutes to find a parking space and walk to your field and 20 minutes to get out of there at the end of the game," Radsick said. "I worry parents and grandparents will get tired of dealing with it."
Two trends make the need for additional public playing fields bigger than in generations past. One, kids tend to participate in organized sports more frequently than ever. Gone are the days of the sandlot baseball game. You don't even see kids throwing footballs in the street anymore. Two, the consequences of youthful inactivity are increasingly evident. Children's present-day tendency toward obesity makes the disparity between supply and demand even more critical.
More parks mean bigger maintenance budgets, but consider this upside: a bustling, lively park is a safe park. Abandoned parks breed trouble. Active kids are less likely to go looking for it anyway.
"We're just trying to keep these children off drugs and off the streets," said Ernesto Garay, an organizer with the Bakersfield Youth Soccer League. "Without soccer, maybe they go back to their Nintendo games. Maybe something worse."
At least one new, major city recreation facility is coming, but youth sports organizers wonder if it will come soon enough. The American Youth Soccer Organization's Region 73, which plays at Cal State Bakersfield, is particularly vulnerable. The soccer group faces eventual eviction from the university, which intends to build dormitories where thousands of soccer-playing children now spend Saturdays during the fall.
Region 73 is one of several local youth sports organizations with an eye on the new sports village slated for Gosford Road and Taft Highway. But the park is perhaps five years away.
Meanwhile, Bakersfield continues to grow at a breakneck pace. What will the recreation situation look like in 2012? Not good, from all appearances.
"We'll be in trouble," said White, the youth football organizer. "Some people have nowhere to go now. I'm afraid to think what it might look like then."
Me, too.
Originally published 5/23/2007
It may not seem like it if you've driven west on Stockdale Highway and checked out the Park at RiverWalk, a 32-acre patch of gently rolling terrain, man-made ponds and public barbecue grills. Or the Kern River Parkway greenbelt along Truxtun Avenue near Mohawk Drive, or the sports courts at Silvercreek Park, or any number of other municipally manicured settings.
But if you've ever tried to find a public field where your soccer team can practice or a neighborhood park that can accommodate weekly pickup games, you know the frustration.
It's usually not difficult to find a place for a family picnic. But a place for a couple dozen 11-year-olds to chase each other around? Tougher than you might think.
"Simply put, there's a playing-field shortage in this town," said Ron White, president of Golden Empire Youth Football, a homegrown league that's bursting at the seams with 1,700 children.
"It's not just football, it's soccer, too," he said. "We're not keeping up with the recreation needs of this town. When you start planting trees and discouraging youth activities, you know there's a problem."
He's referring to two recent dust-ups involving regular, weekly soccer games in neighborhood parks not built to sustain that kind of activity. Neighbors complained about the crowds, the noise and the cars at Seasons Park and Wilderness Park, both in southwest Bakersfield.
Workers from the city's recreation and parks department responded by planting trees along three sides of Seasons Park, rendering them too small for soccer games. Then they added permanent picnic tables at Wilderness Park, ruining the playing pitch for members of the Bakersfield Youth Soccer League, a predominately Hispanic organization that has about 1,600 kids citywide.
Bakersfield Recreation and Parks Director Dianne Hoover says the parks in question were never intended to support the type and level of activity that full-scale weekend soccer games subject the surrounding neighborhood to. "Those little parks don't have restrooms and they don't have the parking to accommodate that activity," she said.
Allen Abe, the parks department's assistant director, said the city is all too aware of the shortage of playing fields. "It's the explosion of the various sports, not only soccer but other groups as well, combined with the explosion of the population. We just don't have the facilities. The whole growth issue has caught up to us."
Tell us about it, coaches say.
"At some parks we've got four or five teams trying to practice in a space where there's room for maybe three," said Mike Radsick, an organizer for the new Brigade Recreational Soccer League, which starts this fall. "We can't fit everybody in."
The playing fields that are available often suffer from excessive wear and tear. Inspect the battered, dusty soccer pitch at Beach Park some Monday morning -- it looks like a herd of longhorns stopped there to graze.
The Kern County Soccer Park, which occupies county-owned land near Lake Ming and is managed by a foundation, also suffers the effects of heavy use. "It can take you 20 minutes to find a parking space and walk to your field and 20 minutes to get out of there at the end of the game," Radsick said. "I worry parents and grandparents will get tired of dealing with it."
Two trends make the need for additional public playing fields bigger than in generations past. One, kids tend to participate in organized sports more frequently than ever. Gone are the days of the sandlot baseball game. You don't even see kids throwing footballs in the street anymore. Two, the consequences of youthful inactivity are increasingly evident. Children's present-day tendency toward obesity makes the disparity between supply and demand even more critical.
More parks mean bigger maintenance budgets, but consider this upside: a bustling, lively park is a safe park. Abandoned parks breed trouble. Active kids are less likely to go looking for it anyway.
"We're just trying to keep these children off drugs and off the streets," said Ernesto Garay, an organizer with the Bakersfield Youth Soccer League. "Without soccer, maybe they go back to their Nintendo games. Maybe something worse."
At least one new, major city recreation facility is coming, but youth sports organizers wonder if it will come soon enough. The American Youth Soccer Organization's Region 73, which plays at Cal State Bakersfield, is particularly vulnerable. The soccer group faces eventual eviction from the university, which intends to build dormitories where thousands of soccer-playing children now spend Saturdays during the fall.
Region 73 is one of several local youth sports organizations with an eye on the new sports village slated for Gosford Road and Taft Highway. But the park is perhaps five years away.
Meanwhile, Bakersfield continues to grow at a breakneck pace. What will the recreation situation look like in 2012? Not good, from all appearances.
"We'll be in trouble," said White, the youth football organizer. "Some people have nowhere to go now. I'm afraid to think what it might look like then."
Me, too.
Originally published 5/23/2007
I have a keen eye for soccer talent
I have a keen eye for evaluating athletic ability, and I proved it once again this past soccer season.
I came home from my son’s first practice one evening last August and pronounced the season doomed. That’s pretty early to go into the tank, but these 11-year-olds couldn’t waddle 50 yards without gasping like beached trout.
Maybe a real coach could eventually salvage something. But these kids didn’t have a real coach. They had me.
The volunteer shortage that keeps getting worse in local youth soccer had initially rendered my kid, and perhaps 150 others, coachless. Seven days before Opening Saturday, young, sinewy coaches were already running their charges between orange cones like grass-stained dervishes.
But no one had offered to run my kid’s team. I’d coached before, and the results hadn’t been too awful (except for a couple of times), so, reluctantly, I stepped up.
Soccer is not intuitive to me. My only experience with the game was one brutal week in eighth-grade P.E. The tough kids kicked each other in the shins for 45 minutes while the meek ones hid on the periphery, praying for it to end. Rules? Strategy? In soccer?
The team picked a name, choosing Quicksilver over Gray Goblins and Silver Boogers in a close vote. One player’s father agreed to help out with practice drills, and another eventually joined him. A couple of mothers volunteered to handle certain administrative duties, such as the halftime snack schedule — perhaps the single most important duty in youth soccer. We would be fine.
We won our first game 8-1. No one waddled and no one gasped. Perhaps I had misjudged these players. “I’ve molded them into Manchester United,” I boasted afterward. “With one practice.” It helped that soft-spoken Bernardo and a half-dozen others had Howitzers where their right legs should have been. I hadn’t noticed that earlier.
Quicksilver rolled, week after week. We lost just one of our first 11, avenged that lone defeat in the championship round and earned a spot in the American Youth Soccer Organization’s Section 10 Invitational. We would be facing teams from all over western Kern County — an area covering about 6,000 square miles.
We got through the first day without a loss and qualified for the Final Four. The next day we’d open with McFarland. I had seen McFarland teams play before, and I was afraid. Very afraid.
As my players stretched on the trampled grass the next morning, I resorted to the only coaching skill, other than shouting and pointing, at my disposal: the cliche-riddled motivational speech.
We were like the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, I told the kids — rag-tag underdogs not given a shred of a chance against the invincible Russians. We were longshots, outsiders. “And those guys over there,” I said, too hoarse to properly impersonate Al Michaels, “are the Russians.” If my kids thought I was behaving like an idiot, they had the decency not to let on.
The McFarland players, conveniently clad in red, were every bit as American as you and I, of course — just shorter and much, much faster than the average citizen. But this was not the time to get bogged down with facts. This was a time for bald-faced, unrestrained hyperbole.
We battled to a 0-0 tie, escaping three or four potential goals that clanged off the post. An excruciating pair of five-minute overtime periods followed. Then came the tie-breaking shootout — a series of alternating, point-blank, kicker vs. goaltender shots. Bernardo put us ahead, and when our man-child goalie, Alan, stopped McFarland’s final shot, there was bedlam.
An hour and a half later, as the referees were about to assemble us for the championship game against equally ferocious Taft, I realized I hadn’t finished the story of the U.S. hockey team. The match against Russia hadn’t been the clincher, I told the boys. The Americans would have to reach deep once again and summon the will to win the final game. “Those guys over there,” I bellowed shamelessly, motioning toward our opponents, “are Finland.”
We won again in almost-identical fashion, right down to the heart-stopping shootout. We were the champs.
Over the course of the season, I’d inadvertently recruited a couple of future volunteer coaches. Maybe next year, I figured, I could safely retire to a folding chair. Then again, with more than 6,000 rec-league kids in west Kern, maybe not.
In February, Quicksilver will play in the Southern California championships. How I’ll top the hockey speeches I have no idea — Sir Edmund Hillary and Mt. Everest? — but I’m certain we’ll win it all. I know this because (and I hate to brag) I am an astute judge of athletic ability. Did I already mention that?
Originally published Dec. 9, 2007
I came home from my son’s first practice one evening last August and pronounced the season doomed. That’s pretty early to go into the tank, but these 11-year-olds couldn’t waddle 50 yards without gasping like beached trout.
Maybe a real coach could eventually salvage something. But these kids didn’t have a real coach. They had me.
The volunteer shortage that keeps getting worse in local youth soccer had initially rendered my kid, and perhaps 150 others, coachless. Seven days before Opening Saturday, young, sinewy coaches were already running their charges between orange cones like grass-stained dervishes.
But no one had offered to run my kid’s team. I’d coached before, and the results hadn’t been too awful (except for a couple of times), so, reluctantly, I stepped up.
Soccer is not intuitive to me. My only experience with the game was one brutal week in eighth-grade P.E. The tough kids kicked each other in the shins for 45 minutes while the meek ones hid on the periphery, praying for it to end. Rules? Strategy? In soccer?
The team picked a name, choosing Quicksilver over Gray Goblins and Silver Boogers in a close vote. One player’s father agreed to help out with practice drills, and another eventually joined him. A couple of mothers volunteered to handle certain administrative duties, such as the halftime snack schedule — perhaps the single most important duty in youth soccer. We would be fine.
We won our first game 8-1. No one waddled and no one gasped. Perhaps I had misjudged these players. “I’ve molded them into Manchester United,” I boasted afterward. “With one practice.” It helped that soft-spoken Bernardo and a half-dozen others had Howitzers where their right legs should have been. I hadn’t noticed that earlier.
Quicksilver rolled, week after week. We lost just one of our first 11, avenged that lone defeat in the championship round and earned a spot in the American Youth Soccer Organization’s Section 10 Invitational. We would be facing teams from all over western Kern County — an area covering about 6,000 square miles.
We got through the first day without a loss and qualified for the Final Four. The next day we’d open with McFarland. I had seen McFarland teams play before, and I was afraid. Very afraid.
As my players stretched on the trampled grass the next morning, I resorted to the only coaching skill, other than shouting and pointing, at my disposal: the cliche-riddled motivational speech.
We were like the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, I told the kids — rag-tag underdogs not given a shred of a chance against the invincible Russians. We were longshots, outsiders. “And those guys over there,” I said, too hoarse to properly impersonate Al Michaels, “are the Russians.” If my kids thought I was behaving like an idiot, they had the decency not to let on.
The McFarland players, conveniently clad in red, were every bit as American as you and I, of course — just shorter and much, much faster than the average citizen. But this was not the time to get bogged down with facts. This was a time for bald-faced, unrestrained hyperbole.
We battled to a 0-0 tie, escaping three or four potential goals that clanged off the post. An excruciating pair of five-minute overtime periods followed. Then came the tie-breaking shootout — a series of alternating, point-blank, kicker vs. goaltender shots. Bernardo put us ahead, and when our man-child goalie, Alan, stopped McFarland’s final shot, there was bedlam.
An hour and a half later, as the referees were about to assemble us for the championship game against equally ferocious Taft, I realized I hadn’t finished the story of the U.S. hockey team. The match against Russia hadn’t been the clincher, I told the boys. The Americans would have to reach deep once again and summon the will to win the final game. “Those guys over there,” I bellowed shamelessly, motioning toward our opponents, “are Finland.”
We won again in almost-identical fashion, right down to the heart-stopping shootout. We were the champs.
Over the course of the season, I’d inadvertently recruited a couple of future volunteer coaches. Maybe next year, I figured, I could safely retire to a folding chair. Then again, with more than 6,000 rec-league kids in west Kern, maybe not.
In February, Quicksilver will play in the Southern California championships. How I’ll top the hockey speeches I have no idea — Sir Edmund Hillary and Mt. Everest? — but I’m certain we’ll win it all. I know this because (and I hate to brag) I am an astute judge of athletic ability. Did I already mention that?
Originally published Dec. 9, 2007
Friday, March 20, 2009
This isn't just any old blog
Soccer Dude has embarked on a daunting quest: saving the free world, and along with it, journalism and my ability to continue making mortgage payments. How, you may ask? By participating in the Bakersfield Californian's new business initiative, Printcasting. It's a way for schools, clubs and other organizations (including youth soccer teams) to create their own digital newsletters and make a little money in the process. The business end is explained below, but for me, the nuts and bolts will work like this: I write articles and gather other content, post it to this blog and, via an RSS feed, it's automatically downloaded to my own Printcasting magazine, which I hope to roll out in summer 2009. For now, I am posting soccer-related columns I've written over the years in the Bakersfield Californian, including the one about my team's 2008 county championship, which I continue to brag about ad nauseum.
As for the business model, here's an excerpt from a March 2009 Business Week article that lays it all out.
Your Own Digital Magazine, Anyone?
Newspapers had hoped that their Web sites would help them replace evaporating print revenue. But an online ad typically garners one-tenth of the revenue of a print ad, estimates Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. "The phrase in the industry is, 'You are trading dollars for dimes,'" he says.
But in the middle of it all, the independent, family-owned Californian is preparing to take the idea of Web-created niche magazines national. Using an $837,000 grant from the Knight News Challenge and about $200,000 of its own money, it's launching a site called Printcasting.com later in March. The site will allow individuals, schools, homeowners' associations, wine clubs, and the like to create their own digital magazines. "If we see a magazine that really has potential, we'll print it, place additional ads in there, and distribute it, [first in Bakersfield, then in five other cities as early as this summer]," Pacheco says. The Californian will get a cut of ad sales while spending little on the product itself. "This is cheap and targeted," Pacheco explains. "Even though there's an ad recession, it doesn't mean there're no more ads."
The entire article is here.
To learn more about Printcasting, go here.
To return to the Soccer Dude main page, click here.
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