Emily Wyffels: Former Cornell University Soccer Player

Emily Wyffels is a former member of the Women's Cornell University Soccer Team. Currently, Emily is a Communications Associate for the Positive Coaching Alliance based at Stanford University.

Last week, our nine-year-old daughter was invited to play on a travel soccer team. I had one huge concern - there was only one coach for the team. When my older children played on travel soccer teams, they had a coach and an assistant coach.

Knowing that Emily had played college soccer, I asked her to share her youth soccer experience with me. Here's what Emily had to say: (Posted with her permission.)

Thanks for thinking of me regarding your soccer question.

U10’s was about the time I started playing travel soccer, too. I first started as the only girl on a boy’s travel team because our town was so small and no one was really all that interested in soccer. In one of our league games, we played the only girls travel team the area. I ended up getting recruited to play for that team, and subsequently, played with the same team for eight years.

Granted, I grew up in a very rural area in Illinois, so my parents had to start driving fifty miles one way so I could continue playing with this team. Under those circumstances, there were not a lot of coaches in the area who were coaching travel soccer, let alone girls, so I had only one coach to start off with. He was the father of one of the girls on the team and did a great job of being very fair and consistent with all the players, and didn’t show favoritism towards his own daughter. He also had a great reputation as the club president, and it was always known that he had the best interest of the club and our team in mind at all times.

As we progressed through the years, we eventually had a few parents volunteer to assist, but they served more as the adult presence when our coach couldn’t be there for games.

It seems like just yesterday I was playing club and my parents were there learning about the whole process right along with me.

Thanks for sharing, Emily! It's helpful to hear what's worked for others.

-Kim