What's new

All-Stars and tournament team tryouts are at McKinley. See the schedule at ayso13.org/all-stars.

Final picture day is Nov 2 -- if your team missed their previous appointment, or you want an individual makeup picture, check the schedule at ayso13.org/pictures and come during any opening. Have your team number, coach name, and coach email ready on a piece of paper they can photograph.

4U5U

There are two more weeks of 4U & 5U soccer, and trophies will be awarded on the final day, Nov 2. 

On Nov 2, if you missed your earlier team picture appointment, corral your team together and mosey over to the picture tent near field #2.

Safety

Coaches, report any injury that leads to a medical evaluation through ayso13.org/safety. Besides AYSO covering all out-of-pocket costs, measuring injuries helps us reduce them.

Earrings, and all other jewelry, must be removed for both soccer practice and games. Law 4 (with English spelling) says,

1. Safety

A player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous. All items of jewellery (necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings, leather bands, rubber bands, etc.) are forbidden and must be removed. Using tape to cover jewellery is not permitted. The players must be inspected before the start of the match and substitutes before they enter the field of play. If a player is wearing or using unauthorised/dangerous equipment or jewellery, the referee must order the player to: • remove the item • leave the field of play at the next stoppage if the player is unable or unwilling to comply.

AYSO, in accordance with permitted modifications for youth games, allows the following:

Hair Beads and Clips: Hair control devices and other adornments, such as beads, worn in the hair must meet the following criteria:

• Be securely fastened to the head.
• Do not present an increased risk to the player, teammates, or opponents.
• Flat clips less than two inches in length may be used to hold the hair in place close to the head so long as their placement on the head does not present an increased risk to the player, teammates or opponents.
• Hair charms are still considered jewelry and are not permitted.

Medical Devices: If the device is needed to restrict mobility, protect an injury or support proper alignment to expedite the healing process of a temporary injury and is hard (cast, splint, etc.) then it is not allowed. If, on the other hand, the protective device is used to provide support, flexibility or enable an otherwise healthy player to function normally such as a knee brace, prosthesis, hearing aid, insulin pump/monitor, etc. then this would be allowed provided the device was sufficiently padded to prevent injury to other players. 

The Referee is the sole judge of whether or not the individual item in question is permissible to wear in the game. A league administrator will not override a Referee's decision on the field.

Reminders

Coaches and spectators should be behind the touch line, between the penalty areas. To be fair to both teams, this reduces visual distractions both for the players and the referees.

Everyone you meet could be a neighbor, schoolmate, or future teammate, so please treat everyone you encounter on Saturday as a friend.

No dogs! Seriously! Not even little ones in a basket.

Teams opening at Victory Park are asked to appoint a parent to come at 7am and help set up the park. At the end of the day, the 12U teams are responsible for packing away the admin tent. Please sign up at https://www.wejoinin.com/AYSORegion13.

Upcoming

See more by subscribing to the Region 13 calendar. The board meeting is usually the first Thursday of each month.

Players

This is about the time when players explore making their own decisions on the field. Should you press? Hang back? It's a judgement call, and every decision is a learning opportunity. Remember, it's polite to turn your head away from the parents before rolling your eyes when they try to be helpful with distracting and incorrect advice.

This also about the time players start acting silly, a sign that they're comfortable with their teammates and want to build friendships. Consider arriving extra-early to give time for goofing off.

Parents

Please let the coaches be the only adults giving the players instructions. If the game were played by robots, it would be rather boring to watch. Therefore, the Bob Ross rule applies: There are no mistakes; only happy accidents!

Ohio State University's youth sports coaching program is recommending How We Learn To Play by Rob Gray, which explains the science of why manipulating task constraints is so much more effective than telling athletes how and what to do. Here's a surprising discovery from sports psychology research: elite athletes do not "watch the ball." Their minds do something more complex, taking into account the motions of the other players. Soccer is especially complex, there being 20 other people to keep track of, all moving willy-nilly. So remember, all your kids need to hear from you after the game is, "I love watching you play!"

Coaches

Players want to make their own decisions. Coordinated attacks and choreographed plays are great ways to introduce building blocks: 

1. Two-person attack: when you're dribbling toward the corner flag, the fastest cross to the center is with a zing pass. If you swipe the ball upward with your sole, you can actually make the ball go a little bit backwards, compensating for the momentum that would otherwise give the other team a goal kick. Coaching point for the receiver: do a "banana run," first away from the ball, and then toward it, so that your final direction of motion overlaps with the ball's trajectory.

2. Three-person attack: the weave. Start by throwing and catching the ball, basketball-style. Once you get the hang of the motion, use feet, and eventually try to one-touch it.

3. Four-person attack: Outnumbered by defenders? Pass back to the defense, then across, then forward on the other side.

Want the ball to go to the corners of the net, instead of directly at the goalkeeper? Try encouraging the players to miss wide. It can be difficult to make a small change to an established behavior (looking at, and shooting at, the center of the goal). So introduce an entirely new behavior (looking at, and shooting at, the far post, and missing wide), and then steer that motion in a bit.

This is also a good time to revisit the Coach Handbook. Find it and other useful material at ayso13.org/coach

Referees

NO EARRINGS. Kids have worn earrings, and referees have overlooked it, and then they got hurt. Trust us, you don't want to google that. If a child just got their ears pierced, and can't remove their earrings at all for a month or two, then at least they'll still be able to play next year, and many years thereafter.

Expect Good Sporting Behavior, from the players, the coaches, and especially the spectators. It's ok for you to avoid a confrontation on Saturday, when everyone is hot and cranky. Report it at ayso13.org/feedback for later followup. On the bright side, it's wonderful that 6-year-old soccer game can be just as thrilling and engaging to watch as a Premier League match!

Managers

If anyone wants their name spelled in a particular way on their trophies (6U, 7U, 8U), please get that information to your coach right away. If a parent wrote a cheeky nickname on the registration form, double-check if that's what they want to see in print.

Nominate the next Region Commissioner

Terry Takahashi's 2-year term as Commissioner of Region 13 ends on February 28, 2025, at which time the Region 13 Board of Directors will elect a new commissioner for a two-year term. If you would like to nominate someone for the position, please email Taj Chiu at taj@ayso13.org before Nov 15. She will present viable candidates for a vote at the December 2024 Region 13 Board of Directors meeting. 

For further information on the role itself, click here.

Player Development

Why does AYSO encourage kids to figure it out on their own?

Here's the short answer: we need to have lots of kids play sports, because sports are more fun with an opponent. AYSO's system has evolved over 60 years to give your child an opponent to play with for the next 10-15 years. There are no shortcuts.

When AYSO started, the founders had grand aspirations of training future World Cup players. That organization has tried that, multiple times, and soundly rejected it as counterproductive. Kids in prescriptive training programs are often done with sports altogether around age 10. Skills acquired by rote to please adults are easily forgotten, while those which emerge (with a little guidance) and are reinforced through exploration and competition tend to lead to lasting mastery. After emphasizing development over winning, AYSO alumni have gone on to play sports in college and professionally, including the World Cup and the Superbowl. But you would never have predicted which ones, from watching them play soccer when they were 8.

The 4U/5U program explores the full range of motions of young bodies -- rotating, jumping, catching, throwing, rolling, skipping -- to prepare children for soccer, basketball, T-ball, tennis, lacrosse, and everything else. Soccer doesn't even use all these motions, but we cover them anyway because soccer is supposed to be only one of many sports that young children explore. The US Soccer Federation, US Olympic and Paraolympic Committee, and National Academy of Pediatrics all agree: let kids play and explore, rather than tell them how to do it. For sure, coaches can introduce motions that kids wouldn't have figured out on their own.

After the fall season, you can keep playing soccer with AYSO. There's a 5-week All-Stars season, tournaments with NEXT, Grad Series, and maybe an afternoon pickup game. And you can try something else! There's basketball, baseball and softball, lacrosse, hockey, flag football, swimming at the Rose Bowl, tennis, and always martial arts.

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