$3/gallon gasoline is not shocking for people any more as we’ve seen prices at that level for some time now. But the latest Energy Dept forecast calls for prices to peak at $3.40/gal in the Spring, though given how fast they have risen already, some expect $4/gallon is not out of the realm of possibility. Just the other day I drove into town in the morning and it was $3.05, after breakfast it was $3.09 and by soccer practice it was $3.20! When you adjust for inflation, gas prices are at or have surpassed the all-time peak set in 1981, depending who you ask. With the cost of travel skyrocketing, when will that have an effect on youth soccer?

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I often joke with friends of mine that I’ll be able to write a book in a few years about the exploits of my U11 Girls team, The Lunachicks. Regular readers are already familiar with some of my tales. In lieu of a book, I might as well start a regular feature here at OTP called “Tales From The Lunachick Fringe“. Even though the Spring season has just gotten underway, I’ve already got a few stories to share - of course.

You hear a lot of things from your players as a youth soccer coach. But then they usually pertain to soccer. Well, during a recent tournament where the conditions were pretty intense (strong winds with lots of sand mixed in), the girls decided to seek shelter in a few team cars to eat lunch between matches. Being a nice coach, I let 6 or 7 pile into my pickup truck (long ago dubbed The Lunachick Mobile) to eat lunch and listen to music.

One of our parents quickly asked ‘Is your insurance paid up?’. I think they were joking. But as our afternoon match approached, they all piled out and the doors were all still on it with all the windows intact, so it was all good.

As the team huddled up on the sideline for some coaching insights before the girls took the field, one of the girls pipes up “Coach? Man your radio SUCKS! It only goes up to 38!!! What kind of radio only goes up to 38?” I’m still trying to decide if she was serious or just wanted to disrupt my usual pregame speech. If the latter, she succeded - what do you say to that? “Um yeah… GO TEAM!” just doesn’t quite cut it. And for the record - yes my radio is odd, the volume counter maxes out at 38.

I have to say though, the girls have team spirit. One of our players recently got braces and was all excited at the next practice showing them off, as she had gotten blue and yellow mounts - the same color as our team uniforms. Now that’s cool!

Stay tuned for more Tales From the Lunachick Fringe!

ADDING: Lest I get in trouble with my team, I should also mention that all their hard work has has started to pay off as they already have as many wins this Spring in five matches than they won all last Fall and they have only allowed in three goals so far. Keep it up ladies!

This is just tragic:

TAMPA - Two teenagers in town to play in a college soccer showcase left their hotel Friday to get a late night snack. Moments later, Kaitlyn M. Grogan lay dead in the street and Brittany J. Gruber had a fractured skull and other serious injuries.

“They had gone to Albertsons to get something to eat, but they never made it back,” said team trainer Paul Allen. He said the girls’ teammates - members of FC New York United Tigers from Queens, N.Y. - were in shock from the incident.

The teens were struck by a 2006 Acura driven by Aaron M. Carr of Temple Terrace, 23, as they attempted to cross Dale Mabry at Waters Avenue, the Florida Highway Patrol reported. They were running westbound across the southbound lanes of Dale Mabry when they ran into Carr’s path. The Acura was headed south in the center lane approaching Waters Avenue on a green light, the highway patrol said.

The road our soccer complex is on (and only yards away from) is a dead end road - that the NCDOT has decided should be connected through to another main road in town. We’re extremely concerned about the dangers this will present!­

H/T realist @ NC Soccer.net

Over at The RefBlog, The Ref has been doing a ‘best of 2007′ series and he highlighted an excellent post he did last year about how the worst behavior exhibited towards referees seems to come from youth matches, not adult now professional matches:

The only thing that really caught my attention to the article was at the beginning, where they listed the possible consequences: vandalism, death threats, changed lifestyles - all because of a call the big time officials made… except it’s not. All too often we get those same problems in the trenches of community leagues. How difficult is it to find the name of an official then look it up in the phone book? How about when you see the referee later? When I had to quit playing soccer because of threats of bodily injury, I had people write back that they had to make the same decision: to run the risk of someone taking it out on you because you reffed in the past - who cares about present tense - you can quit and they can still be after you.

Now that may sound extreme, but anyone involved in youth soccer as a referee or league administrator will tell you it’s not.

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Wreave over at the NC Soccer Forum has a 5 question quiz to see if you are ready for the upcoming youth soccer season and any obscure calls that might be made. Check it out. Don’t scroll down until you answer the questions!

Are you ready? 

There is an interesting thread going on over at Talk On The Pitch about the pros and cons of travel soccer for U10 age players. I see a number of search referrals for ‘Pros and Cons of Travel Soccer‘ both here and at TOTP. Even locally I know a number of long time Rec parents who have kids who have played since they were U4 or U5 are unsure what travel soccer is all about. So it would be interesting to hear from some of you who have kids in travel soccer what some of the less obvious pros and cons are, either for younger players (ie U10), or overall.

So share some of your thoughts on travel soccer, be it ‘entry level’ like our regional Challenge program, state-wide (Select), or regional (Premiere). I’ll put some of the best ones together in a future post and maybe we can help parents unfamiliar with travel soccer with what to expect if their child makes a team.

Since we’re talking about referees this morning… At the recent NCYSA Annual General Meeting, two international FIFA referees (Kim Oberle and Sandra Serafini) presented a new program they are championing in North Carolina called the NCSRA Referee Mentor Program. The program is designed to take referees who want to go beyond entry level and help them develop:

The NCSRA Mentor Program Program’s mission is to build a solid base of knowledge and skills in the art of officiating soccer, as well as give opportunity and exposure to the referees who will be the driving force of tomorrow tomorrow’s NCSRA

The goal is to get aspiring referees into regional groups and bring in National referees, FIFA members, etc. to share experiences and teach the ‘next generation’. They also plan to use technology to provide analysis and feedback as well as peer review of on the pitch performance. Given the concerns over the shortage of good referees, this is a great idea. I hope they can find enough referees to fill all the regional classes.

If any of you actually participate in this program, I’d love to hear what it is like and how it goes!

Does it make you cringe when a longtime soccer coach yells at a referee over a call that the coach is a) absolutely wrong about and b) should know better? It’s often said one of the best things for an aspiring youth soccer coach to do is get their Grade 8 Referee Certification. Not only will it teach you about how a referee should approach a match, but it will also teach you about some of the finer points of the game, the ones that coaches often argue about and that many know little about.

But what if you just don’t have $60 and a weekend to dedicate to the Grade 8 course? Well if you have some downtime for reading, FIFA and the USSF have a lot of very interesting referee training information available online.

The FIFA referee training material is organized mostly by each Law of the Game. Some are more useful than others:

• Law 8 - The Start and Restart of Play highlights many of the less common situations. How many times have you seen a free kick awarded inside the goal box? Did you know that more than two players can participate in a dropped ball?
• Law 11 - Offside provides many useful insights about soccer’s most controversial and most mis-understood law. It has numerous illustrations that explain the finer points of the law, yet is written in an easy to understand form. I’d recommend sending it to all your parents, let alone the coaches.
• Law 12 - Fouls and Misconduct highlight how fouls should be assessed and what constitutes a free kick vs. a card.

All sections are worth checking out, but you’ll find some are more useful from a non-referee perspective than others.

The USSF also has a lot of referee development material up on their website including the complete set of course slides for the Grade 8 course (Parts 1, 2, and 3) as well as the Grade 8 course manual. There is a lot more than this, so be sure to give the training materials page a look.

February is when a number of southern travel soccer teams get their seasons underway while many Recreational programs get practices going. February is also the peak flu infection month historically. While it is still to early to tell if this will be a ‘bad’ year for the flu, early signs point to things ramping up quickly. Another warning sign is that while the flu shot generally does a good job of preventing infections (70-90% of the time in a good year), recent surveys indicate that it is only effective against 40% of the flu strains this year.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some teams are facing February matches short on subs due to illness. I know on my travel team I have one player out with it and two more that may have it. Could make for some interesting early season matches with few subs. What are you all seeing? Knock on wood, the flu hasn’t hit our house yet this year, though the general ‘ick’ has. What are you seeing in your neck of the woods?

If you travel to away soccer matches, it has probably happened to you once or twice. You go to the away team’s website or the scheduling league and click on the link to a map from Mapquest or Yahoo or Google to find your way to the soccer complex you’re playing at. It looks fine, so you get on your merry way only to find the map doesn’t matchup to reality anymore. You’re right where the maps says to be and all you see is a farm. Kickoff time is fast approaching so you panic trying to reach your team manager to get directions. Not fun.

If you are a team manager or a league, wouldn’t it be nice if you could create a map that you KNOW reflects the best way to get to a given complex? Now you can. If you don’t like the way Mapquest or Google route a trip, you can make your very own map, complete with submaps, alternate routes, and notes using Google Maps. Here is an example from a recent tournament one of my teams attended.

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I had a chance to grab some G2 the other day - better known as diet Gatorade. They had it on sale for 50 cents a bottle at Wally World, so I grabbed a case for my Challenge team before their tournament this past weekend. It was gone by the end of the day and the reaction from most of my players was positive. Personally, I think it tastes fine, and with half the calories of regular Gatorade it helps me battle the expanding waistline. No, I’m not saying you should encourage your players to drink G2 because they need to lose weight. That’s a concern more for the adults - most soccer players burn through plenty of calories to the point some Gatorade is unlikely to harm them. But given how popular Gatorade has gotten outside of hard core athletes, this development and release of G2 is a welcome event. I know I’ll be drinking it - and yes I know water has zero calories and rehydrates just as well. I just like a chug of Gatorade after exercising vs. just plain water.

I hope it succeeds so they’ll release more flavors. So far I like the purple kind the best. (one can never name Gatorade types by flavor - it’s all about the color! “Hey I want a light blue Frost!”) How about you? Have you tried it? What did you think?

If you haven’t seen them - these are hilarious. Let’s just say #1 is NOT my favorite. Add two or three.

Our league recently completed our first Youth Soccer Team Manager’s Handbook for managers of our youth soccer teams. It is intended to be a comprehensive guide to managing a youth soccer team from start to finish. While some of the information is specific to North Carolina, or even our own league, I thought I would share it with you all as some may find it useful for their managers while others may have ideas and feedback for us. I know many leagues have similar documents, but if yours doesn’t and you want to use this as a starting point in creating your own, you are welcome to.

Take a peek and let me know what you think. We’re hoping to continually update and improve it.

Let’s 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 gets called for an elbow/push. The opponent, let’s call them Player B doesn’t fall down or get seriously hurt - it was just a rough foul.

Suddenly the father of Player B comes onto the field and starts yelling at Player A over the foul. Almost immediately, the mother of Player A comes onto the field, worried about her daughter, and starts yelling at the father of Player B. Player A’s father comes out onto the field as well. At that instant, most of the parents swarm the pitch attempting to get their children off the field. Meanwhile, the coaches and referees are struggling, but succeeding, in pulling the initial parents of Players A and B apart. Not long after that, three police cars pull up and officers get out to restore order as parents are all over the field. The game is halted at that point.

What should be done? Which parents should be punished and how? Should team sanctions apply?

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All soccer coaches have their stories of extreme playing conditions, usually related to rain, snow, or extreme heat or cold. Well my U11 Girls played in what arguably could be the worst conditions they’ll face as youth soccer players this past weekend. It was surreal.

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