By Carmelo Torres; Director of Communications for West Milford Youth Soccer
WEST MILFORD – The town’s youth soccer organization is starting registration for the new year and reflecting on its past year activities.
According to the organization, West Milford Youth Soccer, in its partnership with West Milford Parks and Recreation, runs soccer programs year-round beginning with indoor soccer in the winter and finally concludes each year with Soccerfest in November.
In addition to the regular winter indoor, spring and fall seasons; the volunteers of the organization have now provided two “Summer Soccer Nights” open to all kids of the township, weekly supervised summer scrimmages on Thursdays in July, free goalie clinics, and professional trainers integrated into their regular seasons practice schedules.
“Our goal is more kids, playing more soccer, more of the time – and then improving the quality of the play through professional trainers, Coach the Coaches sessions, and competitive balance initiatives. We are very proud of the recreation soccer program we have built the past three years but know every new year will bring opportunities for further improvement.” President of West Milford Youth Soccer Eli Easterbrook said.
The organization has also tried to increase its interactions and relationship with both the boys and girls West Milford High School Soccer teams.
Rec and Travel soccer coordinated a “Youth Night” in conjunction with the “Varsity Senior Night” festivities for both the boys’ and girls’ varsity soccer teams.
Seniors got to walk through a tunnel of cheering youth soccer players with their families. Many of the high school players have then volunteered their skills and time back to the youth programs.
Challenger Soccer for special needs children had 35 players from both the boys and girls high school teams volunteer on six Saturday afternoons in the fall.
“It makes you proud of your community as a whole; when high school kids who played in your rec soccer program years ago, come and give back their time and effort to special needs kids in our program,” Director of the Challenger Soccer Division Dan Trout said.
The fall soccer season which is the biggest program the Recreation Department has had to date, with 375 kids participating this year.
While some programs in town are seeing declines in participation levels, West Milford Youth Soccer is proud to be maintaining its numbers.
“We know there are more activities to choose from and kids can also simply lose interest in any sport. So we perform the playoff ceremonies, Soccerfest Contests, Kids vs Coaches games, and much more to provide as interactive fun and maintain a level of excitement as we can to keep them coming back,” Director of Competition for West Milford Youth Soccer Jason Roer said.
So that now concludes a full year of soccer activities except for one thing…Indoor Soccer Registration is now open for Winter 2019.
Registration for the organization’s soccer seasons can be found online at WestMilford.org on the Community Services and Recreation Department webpage.