Fall 2019 Development Player Info!!!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all are having nice Labor Day weekend. For anyone who is new to Haverhill Youth Soccer, my name is Ashley Derman and I am the Director of Development. This is my fifth season as Development Director, but it will be my first season doing this alone. I will be sending emails rather frequently from here on out. Please read through carefully, they usually contain a lot of information.

First, as you know, we do not have enough coaches yet to start this season. I want to thank everyone who has stepped up so far to volunteer, but many have still not passed through our new program and cannot coach until they are cleared. This program was implemented by Mass Youth Soccer mid-summer because of a new federal law, requiring that all coaches not only pass a CORI check, but they need to pass a SORI background check and receive trainings in both abuse prevention and concussions. This means now that we can no longer add coaches last minute. Unfortunately, because we found out so late in the summer, this ended up being a huge challenge for HYS.

This year, I am organizing the groups a little differently. We will now be mixing teams of U6 and U8. This means that Pre k and K will play in the same groups together, forming the U6 division; and Grades 1&2 will also be in combined groups, forming the U8 division. U6 (Pre K and K) will play at 9:30 and U8 (Grades 1&2) will play at 10:45. We have 9 groups in each division, so we need a total of 36 coaches (2 coaches per team). As of today, I have 10 coaches for Grades 1&2, and 7 for Pre-K and K. (These are the coaches who have completed the trainings or are CLOSE TO completing the program) I now need 8 coaches for Grades 1&2 and 11 for Pre K and K. If you have volunteered recently, please please start the certification process as soon as you can!!

With all that being said, I have decided that we cannot start our season as planned on September 7th. We simply do not have enough coaches who are eligible to be on the fields. We will now plan to begin our season on Saturday, September 14th, and we will run for the full 8 weeks from then on. Please note, this is still tentative because we still need more volunteers for coaching. Our program is run solely on a small group of volunteers. We ask that you consider volunteering so that everyone who has signed up gets a chance to play. I will not be pushing the program back any more weeks.

If you have any questions about volunteering/coaching, please reach out to me.

Lastly, I just want to remind everyone that you should have purchased your child’s jersey. If you have not done so, please do this as soon as possible so that their shirt gets here before the 14th. The link is https://www.challengerteamwear.com/store/haverhillsoccer/index and use code HAVERHILL for free shipping.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. I’ve had some issues with my email but that should be resolved now.

Thank you,

Ashley