Skills training and soccer education – the Newtown Soccer Club has renewed its focus on two critical areas of the game and has enlisted the help of Major League Soccer in order to do that.

“The main reason for this is that we have so many great volunteers, but only a handful have ever played the game,” said Larry Dunnigan, director of coaching. “We wanted to even the playing field with regards to the training that the kids receive. With MLS, each and every kid will have the same level of skills training and will be able fully benefit from guys who have played the game as well as been educated at a very high level.”

The way it works is this: the parent/coach volunteer runs the games on Saturdays and Sunday, but the trainers run the practices during the week for that all players, ages 4 to 14, have an opportunity to be trained by an MLS professional coach.

“We start travel soccer at age 10,” said Mr Dunnigan, “so our hope is that when these kids have the benefit of being trained by the MLS trainers for as many as five years, they will develop a true love of the game by the time they are 10.”

The trainers are all from England, where they have gone through an extensive coaching curriculum.

Fikile Khali of Newport, South Wales in the United Kingdom has been working with Newtown soccer players for three years and said, “The Newtown Soccer Club is huge soccer club in terms of youth development and has potential to grow even bigger. This all due to the hard work put in by the board of directors, Brian Neumeyer and, of course, Larry Dunnigan. All these guys have provided the club with a great platform for all to stand on. This success starts at grass roots (four- and five-year-olds) of the recreational level and has progressed to travel soccer and even all the up to high school level.”

Graham Nicholson of London, England loves the sports mad United States with its sun and friendly people and especially likes working with the kids every week. “There are lots of friendly kids who know how to have a good time,” he said. “But practices are well-organized, with all the teams turning up when they are meant to. We make sure the kids have fun and come away learning something new about soccer.”

Matthew French of Colchester, England, enjoys American food and enjoys training. “My personal focus training recreation is to make things fun and enjoyable and keep the kids interested in soccer,” he said. “Obviously this includes helping to develop their soccer skills, but this would be useless if they did not enjoy it.

The trainers like to name their games after current television shows, movie themes or characters and the players have responded to it. Because of that and because of the relationship that is growing with MLS, the Soccer Club hopes to draw as many as 400 kids for the two MLS summer soccer camps.

The Club boasts about 1,500 players. It started up a U4 program this year without any expectations at all and in three days had 51 kids sign up. When the program kicked off, there were 72 youngsters prepared to play.

Soccer activity will be at a fever pitch this weekend as some 90 teams compete in the annual Memorial Day Kick-Off Tournament (played on fields all over town). During the tournament, MLS will host a Dribble, Pass and Shoot contest where the winners become eligible to compete on the national level.

As part of the agreement with MLS, the entire soccer organization has access to an online MLS curriculum where parent-coaches have access to game tactics, practice ideas, warm up drills, rules of the game and all sorts of other information any volunteer would need to be prepared to coach.

 “You can’t help but notice the popularity of soccer amongst the young people of America, which holds promising signs for the future,” said French. “Soccer will go from strength to strength as more people play and the ability of players improves.”