Monday, December 19, 2011

Fall 2011 Session Wrap-Up.

I want to thank all of our volunteer Coaches for their help in making this Fall indoor session a great start to NKYA's first season at Midwest.   Congratulations to our Division Champions:

Coach Simon Cook in U8

Coach Jared Lett in U10

Coaches Todd Wartman and Beverly Coe in U12

The quality of play of these teams helped to raise the level of play of the whole league.  I watched enough games to see that each of these Champion teams were good sports and graceful winners.

I was able to be on hand for every game this weekend and I saw a lot of great soccer.  NKYA is still a fairly small league so after a few sessions of watching games I get to know many of the players by site and get a sense of their skill level.  It's wonderful to see how many of the kids are showing dramatic improvement in their skills and in their general level of confidence.   When kids are relatively new to soccer and they are just developing the basic skill set you need in order to be really engaged in the game they can be understandably tentative and they might not enjoy the games as much as you'd hope, especially when they face tough competition.  But as they develop those skills more fully and gain some confidence in their own abilities you see them start to really enjoy playing regardless of the score.   It's fun to win but to win you have to show up and play and what every Coach wants to see are players that are in love with the game, players who show up clamoring to go in, to play any position.  "Just put me in, Coach!"  That's what NKYA is all about.  We are lucky to have some highly skilled select and club team  players playing with us but the focus of our league is always on introducing new players to soccer, at any age, and letting them have the chance to fall in love with the beautiful game.

Registration for Winter I remains open until December 24th.  Teams are filling up fast and we are adding some new teams in each division.  Enjoy your Holidays.  See you on the field in 2012.


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