The mission of WAYS is to promote the enjoyment of soccer, the development of age appropriate individual and team skills, and good sportsmanship. Success at accomplishing this mission at all age and skill levels depends on the joint collaboration of coaches, players, and parents.
Dear Parents,
Welcome back to another season of travel soccer! Coaches are just now receiving their team rosters and should be contacting you shortly.
Please understand that it is our policy to not change rosters. If you are concerned with your child’s placement for the fall season you can contact the appropriate commissioner (Boys -Josh Bekenstein, jbekenstein@baincap.com Girls - Alvaro Pascual-Leone apleone@caregroup.harvard.edu) They will take note of your concerns for the spring placement process and share them with the coordinators for your child’s age group. Parents should know that WAYS has established guidelines for team formation. They are posted on our website http://waylandsoccer.org/ and I encourage becoming familiar with them.
The season begins on Saturday, September 10 and runs for 10 consecutive
Saturdays. You can expect practices to begin after Labor Day. Some coaches may organize informal practices before then.
To clarify some earlier mixed messages some may have received, all kids will continue to wear the uniform they wore in the spring. Should your child need new socks, Brines in Sudbury has our sock in stock. Any uniform issues should be directed to our uniform managers, Sue Busch sbusch1045@comcast.net and Kelly Peirce kelly.peirce@comcast.net.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to share a few thoughts with you. Our priority is for your child’s soccer experience to be fun. The challenge for our coaches is for the kids to have fun while also learning how to play soccer and be part of a team. This can be a challenging endeavor particularly as practices typically occur after a tiring day of school for the children.
We therefore ask that you support our volunteer coaches and your kids in a few important ways:
· Please make every effort to get your child to practice on time and also pick them up on time! Coaches want to get home too!
· At games, please let the coaches do the coaching. It is critical that as parents you limit game time support to cheering on the team, not coaching or telling your child what to do! In short, in Wayland our motto is “Coaches coach and parents cheer”.
· A former superintendent of the Sudbury Schools wrote a very good article in the Crier a few years back titled “How to be a Good Spectator” .We post it on our website http://waylandsoccer.org/ under the sportsmanship section – I encourage you to print it out, read it and share it with your spouse!
· BAYS has a “zero-tolerance” policy. This means that no one is to direct any comments to the referee at any time before, during or after a game. The details of this policy is also posted on our website. Violations of this policy can and have resulted in a request by the referee for any violator to leave the game and action by the WAYS Board and/or league.
· If you ever have a concern or a suggestion, we encourage you to get in touch with your child’s coaches or with a board member (all listed on our website). You will find a feedback button on our website as well.
Sincerely,
Gray Holmes,
President, WAYS