"Thank
you all for this wonderful opportunity for our boys and girls. Your gift
of
time and talent is greatly appreciated. It has been a great
partnership!"
:)
Lucia Sebastian,
Principal
11-21-05
2005/06 Community Partnership Update...
After
a sleepy fall, we are gearing up for our winter and spring WSC Community
Partnership program. The big news is that the Williamsburg Community
Health Foundation http://www.wchf.com/2005grants.html
has awarded us a $10,000 grant to expand our program to a second school.
We have chosen D.J. Montague, and through cooperation with principal
Larry Walk, we have scheduled activities beginning with a winter
assembly program. We expect to not only begin this program, but also
expand and refine our original program at James River Elementary.
Between the two, we hope to serve well over 100 children this spring and
have 4 teams in the county rec program. I
will inform you soon of the dates for our assemblies at these schools.
We would love to have you come by and see what this program is all
about. Thanks
for all your support as we try to make soccer more inclusive in the
Williamsburg area.
Williamsburg
Soccer Club Community Partnership
09-14-05
2005/06 Community Partnership Update...
Hope
you have had a great summer. College, high school and club soccer are
all in full swing and we are preparing for our third year of the
Williamsburg Soccer Club Community Partnership.
Last
year we experienced tremendous growth and our program matured at James
River Elementary. This year we are also planning to introduce a new
program at Magruder Elementary, a York County school in the greater
Williamsburg area.
Unfortunately,
due to a number of factors, we will be delaying our start at Magruder
and also, the James River program will become a spring only program. We
will spend the fall planning for both of these, and also be doing our
assembly program at both schools in the winter to promote interest. It
is exciting to spread to a second location and we expect to go to other
elementary schools in the future.
I
will keep you posted as to upcoming activities. Thanks for all you do.
06-16-05.
WSC
Community Partnership expands to Magruder Elementary in York County.
Today,
at a meeting at Magruder Elementary School, we mapped out the beginning
of a second site for our Williamsburg Soccer Club Community partnership.
Magruder Elementary is a York County school in the greater Williamsburg
area and has many of the same needy children that James River Elementary
and Grove do. Many of the children in our new program will come from
neighborhoods such as York Terrace, James Terrace and those along
Penniman Road. Other than the children living in Queens Lake who attend
this school, there are not many children playing soccer. Also, the
school has a similar percentage of families receiving federal
assistance.
In
cooperation with the principal, guidance department and physical
education staff, we will identify 15-20 3rd and 4th graders and work
with them on Tuesday afternoons from 4 to 5 PM. We will be able to
utilize the York County school after school bus transportation for this
ten week program from mid-September to just before Thanksgiving.
In
the winter we plan a school wide assembly program similar to the one we
began last winter at James River and in all probability we will start a
3rd and 4th grade Rec team in the spring and expand the after school
program to other grades.
If
we get a grant we have applied for specifically for this program, we
will be able to move forward pretty rapidly. Otherwise we are prepared
to fund it ourselves and move at whatever pace we can. Bob Behncke, Jon
Kamara and I will help get this program going and we hope to involve the
W&M men's program as well in this location. Magruder is a training
site for the WSC, even though most of the school population does not
play soccer. There is a lighted field next to the school and a number of
full-size and reduced size soccer goals and nets already in place.
We
hope that within two years this program can grow to the size of the one
in existence at James River and we will have almost 200 more
kids playing soccer in the area from primarily underserved
neighborhoods.
05-02-05
Under
cloudy skies, we finished the outdoor portion of our spring 2005
Community partnership program. Saturday our three teams played their
last game of the school year at War Hill Park. This was, without
question, the best season yet, as we fielded three teams that were
consistently competitive. The fifth grade team, despite giving away a
year in the 5th and 6th grade league, did much better than expected in
terms of the score and always had plenty of subs. The 3rd and 4th
graders had solid attendance all year long, and there were so many 1st
and 2nd graders in the program that we had to alternate teams, A and B.
Most Thursday afternoons there were 35-40 out in that age group. Certainly
we need to consider two teams in the fall league for this age group.
Now
all that is left for the school year is our year end recognition
ceremony, which will be held at James River later this month. We will
take a bit of a break in the summer, but then rev up again in the fall.
Thanks for all your support.
01-06-05
Hope
everyone has had a great holiday. We are enjoying the unseasonably nice
weather here in Williamsburg.
Today
we met at James River Elementary to plan the first half of 2005 for our
partnership. It was decided that we would change our approach of doing 6
Thursday afterschool sessions indoors this winter, to having a full day of
assemblies, reaching every child in the school with a 45 minute
program.
The
topic will be soccer, but also academics, sportsmanship, nutrition,
04-17-04
Today
was a beautiful day in Williamsburg and at the War Hill Recreation Center.
Both of our teams finally had some success and won their respective games,
and it was a nice reward for the kids. Winning has obviously never been
our priority but the kids did enjoy tasting victory for the first time and
had the opportunity to practice being good winners for a change!
We
now have one practice and one game left as we bring our first year to a
close. Practice will be Thursday as usual after school and the games are
at 11 next Saturday. The following Thursday, instead of practice, we will
have an end of the year party for the kids in the school cafeteria. At
that time we will have some refreshments, give out some certificates and
maybe some kind of participation gift and put a close on Year One. We also
plan a happy hour after school for the adults involved without the kids
somewhere other than the school or field!
I
don't see next year being that much different although we have learned a
lot in the course of this initial effort. We will be sponsoring the kids
for various camps and trying to set up some formal mechanisms and funding
for kids to move into travel soccer if they show the inclination and
ability. More about that at another time.
Thanks
again to everyone out there and please join us next Thursday, April 29th
at the James River Elementary School Cafeteria.
03-14-04
We
had our second weekend of rec games and it looks like the spring turnout
will be much more consistent than in the fall. I handled the 3rd and 4th
grade team and there were 15 kids, all with shoes, shinguards and t-shirt.
The k-2 grade team looked full as well. The kids seem just as excited as I
heard they were the first day and we don't expect that to really diminish.
The
fifth graders will be having their league as an intramural 5-a-side
competition at the school at the same time the other kids are practicing
on Thursdays. It will require a third coach on Thursdays, but only having
2 teams to worry about on Saturday will help. We are hoping that some of
the adults who seem to be coming to the Saturday games will volunteer to
help with practices on Thursday and train to be assistant coaches.
It
seems like we are in a rhythm now for Thursday and Saturday. Please come
out and check out the activity either day.
02-27-04
We
finished our indoor/winter program yesterday at James River Elementary
School and it was a smashing success! We always had between 65 and 90 kids
show up for the afterschool program and between Richard Butler, Jon
Kamara, Bob Behncke and myself and numerous helpers we were always able to
give the kids a good session. The program could not have come off without
the organization of school officials Lucia Sebastian, Betsy Dunivin and
Howard Wallace and there were many teachers, Key Club kids and volunteers
who helped out.
We
now will turn our focus to fielding 2 teams in the Williamsburg recreation
league beginning next Saturday at War Hill Park. All games will begin at
11 AM and we will provide transportation for the kids and volunteers at 10
AM each Saturday from the James River Elementary School parking lot. The
kids will continue to practice afterschool on Thursdays at the school. We
expect to have 30 + kids continue throughout the spring and hopefully this
number will stay pretty constant until next winter's indoor clinic.
Thanks
to everyone who keeps this program going. We are approaching the end of
our first year and we will be looking to refine parts of it and make it
even better for the next year.
01-25-04
We had a great two weeks with our program as over 90 kids
showed up each day at the James River Gymnasium for our after school
community partnership program.
As
you can imagine, the place is pretty tight for those numbers but once the
weather improves and we can go outdoors, we can do a lot more instruction
and give the kids a chance to stretch their legs a bit. Betsy
Dunivin and Howard Wallace in the school have done a great job of
promoting this program and organizing the kids. The teachers bring the
students at 345 PM to the cafeteria where we have 6 tables set aside based
on their year in school. They get a snack and we take roll. We then walk
them next door into the gymnasium and have an hour or so to teach them
some soccer and have some fun. At 5 PM, they are walked to the busses and
sent home. This setup is much better for attendance than the one we had in
the fall with the kids going home first and riding their bikes or being
dropped off at the community center. I don't think we will have much
drop-off in attendance as the semester continues.
In
a few weeks we will put together our Grove rec teams that we had in the
fall. Kids will be vanned from the Grove Community Center if necessary to
the games on Saturday morning at War Hill Park. We won't have to have a
separate practice for those kids as they should all be part of the after
school program on Thursday.
I
am very excited about the model we have now created, because I believe it
can be duplicated, not only in this area, but also nationwide. Any well
organized soccer club could do what we are doing, and we hope to do a
presentation on this program next year at the national coaches convention.
If you get a chance, check out the sessions at James River Elementary any
Thursday from 330 to 5 PM. Otherwise, in the spring we should be at the
War Hill Park every Saturday at 11 AM.
01-13-04
With
our first session of 2004 less than 48 hours away, we had a final meeting
at James River Elementary to go over details.
The
good news is that by moving our weekly practices to the school from the
Grove Community Center we have improved our registration and interest. The
bad news, if it can be viewed as bad, is that almost 100 kids have
submitted the paperwork to attend Thursday's session!
We
are now furiously working to prepare for 345 PM that day, so as to get off on the right
foot. I would ask that you or anyone you know show up at 330 PM this
Thursday at James River Elementary in the main lobby. John Kamara, Bob
O'Brien and Matt Behncke will be heading up the instructional part of the
program but we need plenty of bodies to help with supervision of the kids.
At 5 PM the after-school busses will take the kids home. We have a good
program planned but the biggest challenge will be logistical at this
point.
This
whole concept continues to evolve and it is great to have all these kids
involved in soccer. Thanks for everything you have done to help make this
program possible.
12-22-03
Thanks
for all your help in 2003. I thought you'd want some idea of what we have
planned for 2004.
Beginning
January 15th and every Thursday thereafter, we will have an after school
session on indoor soccer at James River Elementary School. When the
weather improves, we will take the kids outside to the soccer fields. Our
feeling is that by moving the practices to the school, we can get more
kids involved. We are going to be able to provide transportation through
the school system identical to the school's regular after school activity
program.
We
plan to have the same number of teams as last fall. However, if the
numbers go up due to this switch we are prepared to increase the number of
teams. We have switched the practices to Thursday to accommodate certain
staff, namely Jon Kamara, who will now be able to come to most sessions.
The sessions will be approximately from 345 to 445. The kids will get a
snack right after school and come down to the gym for about an hour of
soccer. We also hope to start getting certain kids involved in our
traveling team program and other programs in the soccer club. We have
already gotten one 11-year-old girl into some practices and indoor
tournament play. Hopefully as we progress there will be more of this
inclusion into the regular club programming.
Stop
by James River one afternoon and check out the program. Thanks again for
all your help.
12-08-03
The Xmas parade was a big success for our group as we picked
up a group of 15-20 kids and adults at the Grove Community Center and met
some other children and adults down on Duke of Gloucester Street to march
in the annual parade. The Grove contingent brought a banner and we had
about 30 people walking with the Oleta bus. Fortunately we had ordered hot
chocolate as the weather was really cold. I think we made another positive
impression on the children and hopefully, our numbers would grow even more
this spring. Thanks to Howard Smith and Oleta for making the event
memorable by picking up everyone with his fantastic executive coach.
We
are meeting December 16th with some officials from the James River
Elementary School and the school division to talk about getting some
practice time and space this winter and spring at the school. Hopefully we
will begin to have some sessions again right after the holidays and this
will make it even easier for more kids to get involved.
Have
a great holiday season and we will keep you posted about the schedule for
2004.
12-01-03
The
community partnership will be joining the rest of the soccer club in
marching in the holiday parade in Williamsburg. The Oleta Coach Company,
for the past two years, has driven their executive coach in the parade and
we have joined our WSC partner Oleta in this event.
This
year Oleta has agreed to pick up our Grove contingent and transport them
to the parade site. The executive coach can transport about 15-20 people,
which will include many of the kids who played in the rec league this fall
and their chaperones. The bus will arrive at the Grove Community Center at
745 AM and must leave no later than 8 AM. The check-in time at the parade
is by 830 AM. The rest of the marchers and their chaperones will meet the
bus on Duke of Gloucester Street around 845 AM and the parade will begin
at 9 AM. At 10 AM those marchers who are been picked up can be picked up
at William and Mary Hall by the Intercollegiate Athletics sign. Oleta will
transport the rest back to the Grove Community center.
We
will have hot chocolate for the marchers after the parade. Everyone should
dress warmly and be prepared for a chilly morning. We would like the kids
to wear their jerseys from the rec league overtop of their warm jackets
etc. The Grove contingent is making their own sign and we also have signs
from the previous parades that we will use.
We
are planning some indoor sessions for the Grove area at James River
Elementary after the holidays and we will be shifting our practices to
Thursday afternoons at James River this spring. We plan to have both 1st
and 2nd grade and 3rd and 4th grade teams again this spring and the JCC
rec department has agreed to schedule one older team for 11 AM every
weekend so that our older kids can have a team to play for at the same
time each Saturday. Thanks to everyone who made the fall season
successful. We have about 20 kids playing soccer now, who would not have
been participating, and we hope the program will continue to evolve and
spread. Look for us at the parade or march with us if you choose!
10-26-03
We finished week 4 of the 8-week rec soccer season
successfully as both the 1st and 2nd grade and 3rd and 4th grade teams
lost by one goal. We also had 4 older kids playing with teams in the 7th
grade and up league. It looks like we will try a third team next spring,
as there is definitely interest among the older group. There were a total
of 21 kids playing yesterday. We are also planning a season ending party
on Saturday morning December 6th, as we will march as a group with the
Williamsburg Soccer Club in the Christmas Parade in Williamsburg. Oleta
Coach Lines, who are partners with the WSC, and roll a bus in the parade
have agreed to pick up everyone in Grove and transport them to and from
the parade site. We will have refreshments for everyone who participates
and it should be a great time for the kids. Hopefully we will also have
some winter clinics and activities to keep everyone connected until the
spring rec season. Thanks again for all you do. This Saturday we will have
the third weekend of games for our two little rec teams from Grove. We
have been holding practices every Wednesday for over a month at the
community center at Grove and gradually our numbers have been increasing.
Last week we had over 20 kids of all ages show up for the session, which
was manned by Brannon Thomas and Alex Spirn. Scott Kelsey and Brannon, two
of my players have been coaching the teams on Saturday at District Park. I
have attached a couple of pictures that were taken from the first weekend.
The kids are so excited when they get to the fields that they sprint from
the vans to the area the games are held. For just about everyone, it is
their first organized soccer game and for many, their first games of any
kind with referees etc. Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to
be there myself and between the two teams and some older kids that we were
able to get spots in the 5th grade and up game, we had over 20 kids out
there playing.
A
few parents drove out there, plus Betsy Dunivin and Howard Wallace, but we
have contracted with Dan Smith and the James City County Recreation
department to have a van and driver pick up the kids at the Community
Center and take them back there after the games.
Even
without any experience, our teams have been very competitive. The younger
team has split their two games and the 3rd and 4th graders have won both.
There may be a child or two in the younger group that we will try to get
involved in the developmental training that the club offers on Wednesdays
after our practice in Grove and subsequently move him into a higher level
than rec soccer. We are also trying to teach some of the lessons of
sportsmanship that the kids need to learn from athletics. With
the problems caused by the hurricane, I think this is a great start and I
have no doubt that we can continue to improve this program and use it as a
model for other communities. Thanks for all you folks have done to get the
ball rolling.
08/23/03
We
met in the James River Community Center instead of the Grove Center due to
the heat and humidity. In attendance were Al Albert, Dan Smith, Betsy
Dunivin and Howard Wallace.
We
will begin next Wednesday at 430 PM at the Grove Community Center with
practices. Practices for the three rec teams - 1st and 2nd grade, 3rd and
4th grade and 5th and 6th grade- will be held every Wednesday from 430 to
6. If kids are late getting there from the school bus drop-off, we will
still plan on starting at 430 and perhaps will go to 630 if necessary.
When it begins to get dark, we can turn on the backlights and still play
on the asphalt basketball area towards the end of practices.
Betsy
and Howard have a few applications already and expect that with the
beginning of school, signups will begin to roll in. We need at least 10
for the younger two teams and 15 for the older team - a total of 35 kids
the first season.
Dan
Smith will be donating 20 rubber balls from the rec department and we will
need to coordinate donations of shin guards and cleats from the WSC or buy
some before games begin in October. We also will need 35 water bottles and
if someone has an idea on donation there please let us know. The teams will all play 8 games beginning Saturday October 4th and ending
the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The vans will leave the Community Center
every Saturday at 10 AM to go to District Park, games are at 11, and they
will be on their way back to the Center by 1215. Betsy and Howard are
coordinating the volunteers’ drivers and making sure they are certified
by Dan to drive the JCC vans by late September.
We
will have a end of season party at the Center on the last day of
play-November 22nd. Details will be finalized at a later date. We also
will need 3 volunteer coaches to work with our people at practices and
games. This will begin this week at practice at Grove. Betsy and Howard
are working on this too.
Looks
like we are on the way. Please come to the community center anytime to
help with practices 430-6 on Wednesdays. If the weather is bad, we will do
something with the kids inside the building.
