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Starting a New Youth Sports Club

How One Dedicated Mom Started A New Youth Soccer Club

Clerk

The clerk will need to check with the league to get a list of all the paperwork necessary to enter a team (teams) in the league.  Keep in mind that some organizations  will not offer much in the way of help and this is where you will need to use a mother's skills as a detective to anticipate what will be needed.  This part of entering a team is critical. In most cases, a miss is as good as a mile: If you fail to furnish every piece of the required information in the proper format your application to enter teams may be summarily rejected. 

The following are some of the basic requirements:

  • Rosters (the minimum number of teams in most leagues is two or three).

  • Birth certificates (copies) for every player

  • Coach and co-coach names, proof of identification, and social security numbers. Hopefully, the league in which you hope to enter teams requires background checks on coaches and any other adult volunteers. Your local police department should be able to provide you and the coaches with a clearance letter that should be sufficient for the league. You will need to find out what the league will accept. Even if they do not require this information you will want to keep a record to let parents know that you are looking out for their children's safety in selecting coaches.

Field permits

Some organizations will not allow you to enter teams until you provide proof that you actually have fields, courts or diamonds on which the kids can play.  Remember that the league will be scheduling you to play with many other towns or teams and they do not want to schedule home games for your teams with no fields to play on. 

Game officials

In most instances it will be your responsibility to line up licensed officials for your home games and you may be asked to submit the names of the game officials as part of the registration process.  Locating officials can be very tricky as most of the time the list is maintained by the existing organization.  When it comes down to actually hiring referees, you may need to motivate them to ref your games by paying them more than the going rate.  Look for younger referees at the high school level, since they usually have no allegiance to an existing club.  This is an excellent time to think about taking a referee course yourself and encouraging other mothers and older siblings of players to become certified.  Not only can they earn extra money, but they will learn to appreciate just how hard a job it is to officiate a youth sports contest and understand why there should be zero tolerance for yelling at referees.


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