Soccer
Opportunities
In Northwestern Connecticut
This page is about soccer -- specifically about youth soccer in Connecticut's Northwest Corner and the surrounding area. The intent of this page is to provide as much information about soccer alternatives in our area as we can. There are a lot of soccer opportunities here, but, until we created this web page page, no one place provided convenient access to all of them.
We suggest that you bookmark this page if you are involved in youth soccer in our area in any way -- player, parent, coach, official -- because things change constantly and you definitely do need to keep your eyes open. We do attempt to stay abreast of what's happening in the soccer community, but we can't do it by ourselves. We definitely welcome information that will help us keep this page updated.
Send us more information about soccer in Northwest Connecticut!
Soccer Opportunities:
Trinity Episcopal Church, Lime Rock: summer soccer program.
This small parish church is unique in Northwest Connecticut for two reasons: they have a phenomenal eight acre field for a back yard and, for the past two summers, they have provided Sunday morning soccer for young people from the area -- and also for visitors to the area. You do not have to be a member of their church to participate, although the program operates as a summer alternative to that church's Sunday School. Children as young as four are welcome, and, although an offering is taken, there is no charge for the program (the shirts -- free for all participants -- were contributed by a parishioner). Visit their Summer Soccer page. This program operates only from mid-June until the end of August. Contact information is on Trinity's website.
We don't know if they will repeat the program in 2007, but we hope they do. It's a great idea -- something more churches and other community organizations would do well to learn from.
Berkshire United Soccer Club
Here in the Northwest Corner, Berkshire United is the youth soccer organization providing "travel teams" for the towns that make up public school region #1 -- Salisbury, Sharon, Kent, Cornwall, North Canaan, and Canaan.
Open sign-ups for the BUSC Spring 2007 Soccer season closed on Feb 10. There's an additional fee for registering now. Check their website now for more information!
Berkshire United (or BUSC) provides both traditional competitive fall soccer as well as spring soccer, plus soccer clinics and a one week soccer camp each summer, with much of the training conducted by professionals from Challenger Sports, Inc. Others associated with coaching functions at Berkshire United tend to be very knowledgeable -- in fact, varsity coaches at area schools frequently moonlight as BUSC coaches.
Be aware: advance signup is ALWAYS required to play on a Berkshire United team. Furthermore, the signups always seem to be long before the season starts. For example, for spring soccer, January is the main month for sign-ups. This is required to permit equitable scheduling to take place before the first games of the season.
Ability is needed, too (particularly for fall division 1 soccer), and try-outs are nearly always a requirement for fall soccer, and sometimes for spring soccer.
Finally, there is a cost associated with playing for Berkshire United. See our Soccer Q&A page for more on that.
("Travel" for BUSC means, basically, outside the Region I school district, but largely within the remainder of Litchfield County and northern Fairfield County. Since BUSC covers all of Region I, there can also be a distance to travel to team practices, particularly if you live on the outskirts of Region I.)
SARUM SOCCER CAMP
is a for-profit soccer day camp that holds forth during July each summer. It's definitely a popular place for area kids and summer visitors to polish their skills and the instruction is of high quality. We would be delighted to provide a link to their website, but as far as we can tell they do not have one! We also lack specific contact information for this program. However, the Sarum people make use of the fine facilities of Indian Mountain School; so possibly that institution can provide contact information if you are interested.
RUMSEY HALL SUMMER SOCCER SCHOOL
is a bit out of a drive for people in the northern townships of our area (Salisbury, particularly), but it's well within range, and well worth a trip, for those in Kent and Cornwall. It's located on the campus of the Rumsey Hall School in Washington Depot, CT, and offers a pair of one week summer programs for ages from four to fourteen.
One very focused program they offer that appears particularly attractive is called the "Striker Academy" -- open to ages seven to fourteen -- for those who are interested in specializing in being a striker (if the lingo is not familiar to you, strikers are the two -- usually -- forwards whose main reason for existence is putting the ball in the net. Given soccer's increasingly defensive orientation in recent years, scoring goals is almost as much of a specialty as being a goalkeeper). You can contact these folks via the Rumsey Hall School or via the Soccer Extreme website.
TOWN RECREATIONAL SOCCER PROGRAMS
During the fall soccer season, there are abundant soccer opportunities for youthful residents of the towns that make up our area. Each of our towns provides "rec soccer" programs beginning as early as second grade and continuing through junior high school. A few towns even offer opportunities for children as young as five. Some programs are stronger than others, some are better funded than others, and, since population of our townships varies considerably, some programs are better populated than others.
Because we're a rural area, there are occasional peaks and valleys in populations of soccer kids in each individual town. This can lead to U10s from one town playing on the U12 team for that town, simply because the town doesn't have enough kids to field both a U10 and a U12 team -- so it fields one at the higher level, and the younger kids in that town "play up" -- as much as three years up in some cases. (There's both good news and bad news in that. On one hand, it can lead to 9-0 blowouts -- not very challenging for the winners and somewhat discouraging for the losers -- but it does tend to virtually guarantee an abundance of playing time for all the kids who participate, and it certainly gives the younger kids some good mileage!)
Mainly the rec soccer teams play the other rec soccer teams in our immediate area, although some go a bit farther afield. A few of the programs make use of the Berkshire United professionals for instructional purposes, while others elect to go it alone or use other coaching resources, whether home-grown or affiliated with an area boarding school. Be aware: advance registration is normally required to play "rec soccer" and sign-ups are usually in early to mid-summer. Your town recreation director can provide specifics on this and should always be your first contact if you have an interested young person.
Town of Salisbury website. Follow the link on that site for the Recreation program and for contact information.
PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SOCCER PROGRAMS
Congratulations to North Canaan Elementary School! Their boys' team and their girls' team BOTH went undefeated during the 2006 season and, not surprisingly, in view of their won/lost records, also won their respective leagues.
The area public elementary/middle schools generally begin their school soccer teams with sixth graders, although the teams are often mainly populated with seventh and eighth graders. These teams play mostly each other (each of the townships in our area has its own elementary/middle school through grade eight) but some also play area private middle schools. Advance signups for school soccer are not normally required -- the teams are usually formed at the beginning of each school year -- but, depending on the year and the population of interested kids, you should expect tryouts in all but the smallest schools.
Most of the public schools coaches assume that youngsters entering sixth grade will come to them either with rec soccer (with their town team) or travel soccer (with Berkshire United) experience, although some of the coaches report that in occasional years, especially in the smaller schools, they are thankful to be able to field a team with any formal soccer experience at all. "It changes year by year" one coach told us. "Some years I could field three super teams, and other years I'm hard pressed to get one full team on the field."
In most towns, seventh and eighth graders can pretty much be assured of a spot on the team, while sixth graders may be excluded entirely or will have to compete for a spot on the team. Once on the team, however, coaches will generally play their better players, regardless of grade, more than their weaker players.
Some of the elementary schools do provide limited gym class and/or intramural opportunities, but it's safe to say that the schools themselves do not generally provide much meaningful soccer experience below sixth grade within the school physical education program.
PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER (Housatonic Valley Regional HS)
CONGRATULATIONS to the 2006 Housy Girls!! They made it all the way to the State Semi-Finals in their Division, losing a close one to keep them from advancing to the finals. We think they deserve a whole lot more credit for this accomplishment than they have received so far.
Housatonic Valley Regional High School soccer is an area where soccer in our area has improved markedly in recent years. Largely due to the efforts of Berkshire United in developing a population of young people who have experience as competitive soccer players, the Housatonic Valley Regional High School soccer teams -- both the boys and the girls -- have risen from the basement of their league to positions near or at the top end -- although depth continues to be a problem on occasion. Even though there has been soccer at Housy for decades, just a few years ago, Housy soccer was strictly a "walk on" sport -- but no more! We believe that there's every reason for Housy Soccer -- for both boys and girls -- to continue to improve.
Visit the Housy website. Take the tab for the "Sports Zone" and click on the schedules for all sports line on that page to see who and where the boys varsity team and the girls varsity and JV teams are playing. We're very encouraged that there are sufficient players this year to fill a girls JV as well as a varsity -- in a season where field hockey is another alternative for the Housy girls. And we wish that the Housy website gave the soccer teams more coverage! (A few pictures would be nice, for example).
One interesting factoid about the Housy girls: on October 27, 2006 the girls played their 500th interscholastic game (they won). Few people realize that interscholastic girls' soccer at Housy has been around ever since its introduction as a club sport in 1971, and that it became a varsity sport the following year. According to the Lakeville Journal, the team won its very first game, against Simon's Rock, 1 - 0 on a penalty kick by an exchange student. For its first few years Housy's opponents were confined to prep school teams, because few public schools at that time had girls' soccer teams -- in fact, way back then in the dark ages, public schools, at least in this area, had very few athletic opportunities of any kind for girls. Here's a page about Housy Soccer back in 1973.
OLYMPIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM SOCCER
One of the more frequent questions we get from people who do not live here year-round, or who are contemplating moving to the area is "Is there an available ODP program?"
We're happy to say that while this is a pretty rural area, there definitely is ODP soccer nearby.
Another question we are often asked is "Just what is ODP soccer anyway?"
The answer to this question is that ODP soccer was established in 1977 nationally by US Youth Soccer to develop a pool of youth soccer players in each age range from which a national team can be drawn. Not just a system of licensed competitions, ODP soccer includes quite intensive and structured training, both of players and coaches.
The third most frequent question we (unfortunately) receive on this topic is "Who do you have to know for your kid to be considered for ODP soccer here?"
Since ODP players are selected on the basis of open tryouts at a state level, we can say that the official position is that personal contacts do not help, and if you are pushing your kid on the basis of who you know, you (and your young player) are likely to be disappointed. Having said that, it's important to say that there is absolutely no substitute for being well informed about the ODP program if your young person has aspirations in that direction. The best way to begin the process of becoming informed is to participate (players) and volunteer (parents) with the local youth soccer travel team -- Berkshire United in our case.
A bit more information about the OPD (stands for Olympic Development Program) soccer program in our area: ODP soccer, for those to whom the term is unfamiliar, is run in Connecticut by the CJSA (Connecticut Junior Soccer Association), and is part of Region 1, which extends from Maine to Virginia.
Scott McCarty, the Athletic Director of the Forman School in Litchfield (located only slightly outside the geographic boundaries this page covers) also directs the ODP program at the present time in addition to his duties at Forman. We suggest that inquiries about ODP soccer in our area be directed to him at Forman.
As we learn more of the "secrets" of ODP soccer in our area, we'll provide them here. Stay tuned!
PRIVATE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL SOCCER
The only soccer programs we're currently aware of in this category in our area are those of Indian Mountain School in Lakeville and Berkshire County Day School, just over the state line in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. BCD in particular has several offerings of interest. We understand that the Rudolph Steiner School in Great Barrington also has a soccer program for intermediate school students but we could not locate any information about it on their website. We would particularly welcome more information about soccer at Rudolph Steiner -- and from IMS or BCD as well. Again, slightly outside our area, the Rumsey Hall School, in Washington Depot, CT, also has a soccer program.
PREP SOCCER
This category refers to soccer for grades 9 - 12 (and post-graduate). Because the Northwest Corner is home to several well-known boarding schools who draw their student bodies from across the nation and around the world, there are serious soccer programs available in this spectrum as well. Some of the programs consistently field teams that contend for the New England prep championships.
Generally you can find more information about the school's soccer program on the athletics pages of the school website.
Soccer in NW Connecticut by age group
We realize that it can be complex to figure
out which alternatives are available for a young person in a particular age
group.
We offer a table of soccer opportunities by age group in Northwest Connecticut.
Soccer in NW Connecticut by season
Many people think of soccer just as an autumn sport, but it isn't one anymore! Here are the various programs arrayed by the season of the year they operate in....
| Spring | Summer | Autumn | Winter |
| --Berkshire United | --Trinity Lime Rock --Berkshire United --Sarum --Rumsey Hall |
--Berkshire United --Town rec soccer --ODP soccer --School soccer |
NONE (at least, none we know of!) |
Soccer in NW Connecticut: Questions and Answers
While there are always a lot of questions about Soccer in Northwest Connecticut, we think that we sometimes, at least, can provide some answers. Accordingly, we have started a new page of soccer questions and answers.
Other useful soccer links in Connecticut and beyond
| In Connecticut | Outside Connecticut |
|
visit Northwest District, Connecticut Junior Soccer Assn |
visit Berkshire County (MA) Youth Soccer League |
|
visit Connecticut Junior Soccer Association |
visit US Youth Soccer |
|
visit FIFA |
Equestrian activities in NW CT
Between the Lakes Group newsletter
Abbreviations for organizations
