US Youth Soccer Region IV Fall Planning Workshop
October 16 - 19, 2003

Jodi Wells
Secretary
Utah Youth Soccer

RECREATION ADMINISTRATIORS WORKSHOP

I attended the Recreation Administrators workshop in place of Bruce Cuppett who was attending the President Meetings.

We defined the recreation player-

A recreation player is a competitive player with a life not playing soccer. They have the same passion-but do not want the commitment.

We then asked ourselves the question-

Are we meeting the needs of our recreation player?

We came up with the following areas that we feel are important in order for the Recreation programs to continue to improve.

*Continuity in National Workshop Courses

• Have a specific recreation track so all classes can be attended.

*Regional Services for Recreation

• Recreation Development
• Referee Development
• Recreation Summit

*Representation at Presidents Meeting

• At Region and National Workshops
• At State level

*Budget

• Create a Budget at Regional level to help the states.

We also talked on how each of the states have started implementing the small sided games. Most have done it in steps to make it easier to manage.

Club Soccer was also a big topic, how do we compete with them? The only service they render is insurance, we offer much more than that, we just need to market ourselves better. Education is the key; we need to educate our parents and players of our association on what all we do for them.

It was suggested that all states follow what Washington has done and have a VP over recreation that sits on the board with a vote. Our recreation players need a voice.

Each representative went back to their State President and asked that they ask for a budget proposal of $7,500 for regional services for the recreation program. We figured as a region we have approximately 500,000 players, which only equates out to 1.5 cents per player. We feel that our players deserve a voice as much as the elite players do.

After sitting through this workshop, I would strongly recommend that we as a Board of Directors have a spokesperson for recreation on our board, and it would also be nice to have youth players also serve on the board, so that not only will our recreation have a voice, but have youth input as well, because they are the reason we are here.