Skills Academy marks new youth soccer collaboration
Feb 27, 2019
Felix Watt (left), Sophia Pomerleau and Aidan Costa and Chase Kuppens go after the ball. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
Justin Carvalho prepares to kick the ball. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
Sophia Pomerleau concentrates as she prepares to kick a ball. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
Chase Kuppens and Sophia Pomerleau have some fun for the camera. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
Skills Academy participants perform exercises designed to sharpen their thinking skills and agility. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
Kids play a tic-tac-toe game on Friday to learn agility, decision-making and teamwork. Photo by: Andrew W. Griffith
For the kids who participated in this past week’s Skills Academy, it was a good soccer camp, but for the youth soccer leagues that teamed up to organize it, the academy marked a thaw in a long-standing rivalry.
Old Rochester Youth Soccer and Mariner Youth Soccer, which also includes Fairhaven players, worked together to host a half-day and full-day skills clinic from Tuesday Feb. 19 to Friday, Feb. 22. Marion Recreation and Seaside Crossfit also provided support for the Futsal training, which was held at the Field House at Tabor Academy.
Futsal is a sport similar to soccer which is played with heavier balls and slightly different footwork. Organizers imagined the program as a way for kids to keep their soccer skills sharp, and even keep growing in the winter “off-season” for the sport.
Steve Wyman of Old Rochester Youth Soccer, Ryan Feeney of Mariner Youth Soccer and Eric Parada who helps with soccer at Marion Recreation saw a collaborative program as a way to combine the players, coaches, equipment and fields from Marion, Mattapoisett, Rochester, Fairhaven and New Bedford.
Wyman said that the program went well, other than an insurance glitch on the first day of the program, which the organizers were able to work around.
Feeney agreed.
“It went really well, with the two organizations working together. There were a few hiccups, but overall it was easy,” he said.
The rivalry between the programs has “never been good for the kids,” Wyman admits. So the Skills Academy was a first step toward a possible future melding of the two programs.
The three coaches think that combining programs could be huge.
“We would like [that program] to be the model program, not sure for Massachusetts soccer, but throughout New England,” Wyman said.
As an example, Wyman points to the girl’s soccer team at ORR, which is currently composed of girls who played with the Mariner Youth Program and half girls who played on the Old Rochester Youth program.
“Can you imagine what it would have been like if we had been working together the whole time?” Wyman speculated.
