WELCOME! We are beyond excited for the start of the season and have included some important season information below. Please always feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns as we are here to help.  We hope your players have a wonderful season with Melrose Youth Soccer!

FALL 2022 IMPORTANT DATES:
• Week of August 29 - Travel Practices Start
• Week of 9/5- City Practices Start
• September 10 - First games of fall season for City and Travel
• September 17th – Discounted REVs tickets (More info coming soon)
• September 23rd – Soccer Night in Melrose (See attached flyer)
• October 8th - Indigenous Peoples' Weekend - Travel has games BUT City will not unless they need a rainy-day makeup.
• November 5th- Last game of fall season for both Travel and City

IMPORTANT SEASON REMINDERS:

PLEASE BE PATIENT – We too are just volunteers trying our best. We appreciate your patience as we navigate the kinks with our new Sports Connect system.  Our hope is you will find it much easier to work with than SportsManager.  

We also appreciate your patience as we try to find field space for all of our players.  We are experiencing record high number with more 1200+ registered players.  Not only does sunlight decrease over the course of the season but we also share the fields with many other sports teams in Melrose thus making field space a hot commodity.  Many practices have had to be shortened to provide adequate practice time for all of our teams. Our fields coordinators have been working tirelessly to come up with creative solutions to accommodate all.  Thank you for understanding.    

THANK YOUR COACHES - We could not do what we do without all of our wonderful volunteers.  We have had to recruit a large pool of coaches to help this season and we are so appreciative of their time, patience and energy.  Please remember to thank your coaches for all that they do.  

LET THE REFEREE CALL THE GAME - Referees, especially young and inexperienced ones, need time to develop. You can play an important role in helping them to improve by letting them concentrate on the game. You can help by accepting their inevitable and occasional mistakes and encouraging them to continue to ref. We are experiencing a huge ref shortage because we are policing from the sidelines. Referees are an important part of the game, and we need them.  

CHEERING SHOULD BE POSITIVE - Sports are all about problem solving.  We expect your players to make mistakes so they can learn from them.  When mistakes happen, we don’t need you to point them out, let’s encourage instead.

LET THE COACHES DO THE COACHING - The worst thing for a young player is to have their parent yelling something in one ear and for the coach to be suggesting something completely different in the other ear. It creates confusion and pressure and it’s not fun for the player.

YOUR EXAMPLE IS POWERFUL - If you insist on fair play, if you concentrate on your players' enjoyment of the game and their overall, long-term development, and if you support the referee, your players will notice. If you encourage (or allow) your players to play outside the rules, if you're overly concerned about results, and if you criticize the referee harshly, your players will also notice. Youth soccer belongs to the players. Please review our Code of Conduct – HERE

WE WANT TO SHARE IN THE FUN - We’d love to hear how your season is going.  FOLLOW US on Instagram @melroseyouthsoccer and TAG us in your soccer photos on Facebook.