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

Sports Parenting: General Observations

We had a fairly easy weekend. Since we weren't racing around from one place to another, (like we usually do), I enjoyed watching several youth lacrosse games and observed some interesting sports parents. I'd like to share some general observations, along with a review of our weekend:

Friday:

• Game one of the Ohio Cup Lacrosse Tournament (sixth graders).
• Thirty minute drive to tournament.
• Friday rush hour in Columbus.
• Two team members arrived twenty minutes before start of game. (Most of the team arrived at least one hour early.)
• Approximately 100 degrees. (Yuck!)
• Kids showed up ready to play hard.
• Player with very little playing time scored goal. Hooray! (Credit the team for great teamwork--the kids trusted their weaker teammate and passed the ball.)
• Ref without a doubt was calling the game with a preference for the local team. (That's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.)
• Our team won.

Saturday:

• Games two, three, and four of the Ohio Cup tournament.
• We arrived at fields at seven a.m.
• Game two was against a very strong all-star team. We lost.
• Game three was against a team that won in over-time. This team got no break between that game and playing us. Not fair. We won.
• Game four was against the same team that we beat in game one. This was our third game of the day and their second game of the day. Again, this was unfair. (Kids who played three games will be more tired that kids who played two games.) We lost.
• Ref got angry at parent. The parent backed off immediately, but the ref dug a little farther--he kept asking if the parent really understood that he had to stop yelling. How many times should the parent have to agree?
• Husband took oldest child to play in evening pond-hockey game.
• Child decided to play goalie, (he has never played goalie in his life), because the real goalie forgot to bring his skates. The entire team had a lot of fun cheering on their rookie goalie!

Sunday:

• No games.
• Took our middle child to lacrosse camp.
• Drove two hours to Akron for nephew's graduation party.
• One parent arrived late due to child's all-star-team baseball practice.
• One parent commented that she doesn't allow sports for her children on Sundays--it's her day off.
• One parent came alone because her son and husband were playing in a golf tournament.
• One parent made his daughter run the fields (next to the party) as punishment for not working hard in the child's last soccer game. (Ridiculous.)
• Drove two hours home.

This was a fairly easy and fun weekend. Thought you might enjoy the observations. There's always something interesting happening in the world of youth sports!

-Kim