State of CYS - June 2026

Hello and happy summer to all soccer families,

We are coming off another fantastic year of soccer in Cambridge, and I am so happy that you have joined us. The numbers, the enthusiasm, and the quality of play provide continued support for fun, competitive and local programming in a world where this type of programming is increasingly rare. Some highlights from the year of soccer in Cambridge:

• Approximately 2400 total registered players - compared to 1200 in 2019, 1000 in 2016.
• Approximately $120,000 of financial aid for Cambridge families to play - compared to approximately $20,000 in 2019.
• Twelve teams of Cambridge City Football Club competed, with considerable success, against local clubs in the New England Club Soccer League  - at 1/10 the cost and less than 1/10th the logistical burden to families.  
• The Kickstart (Kindergarten) and Premier (1st/2nd grade) programming is as robust, as fun, and bigger than ever.   
• This is subjective, but it represents not just my opinion but also those of our professionals (some of whom spend much of their time with professional players):  the quality of the soccer is excellent. And it is good because our coaches are doing a great job AND it is good because the kids are having fun. Thank you to our excellent coaches!

I apologize if I sound like a broken record, but I believe what we have built - and “we” includes so many volunteers as well as the CYS parent group that has been willing to help in any way that is needed - is very special to our kids. Our kids are playing among friends and hanging around at the fields rather than being alone on their phones (at least for part of the day a few days of the week). They are putting effort into a skill and they are working on being good teammates and friends.  

This may come as a surprising thing for me to say, but I think we can mostly all agree that being good at soccer is not an important life skill. But I hope we can also agree that caring about something and making an effort to improve at that something is important. That's one of the most important values youth sports provides to our kids - the value of caring and working at something to improve and contribute to a team - and it's equally accessible to our strongest and our weakest players. 

And, equally important is having a fun, healthy outdoor activity that our kids can look forward to every week. The world is more than a little scary (even for us adults!), and we hope our program makes things a little less scary and a little more joyous and welcoming for our children and our families. Thanks to such an incredibly engaged and supportive community, we have created that experience together.

It makes me so happy to see so many families on the fields every week. Thank you for being such an important part of our program.

Now onto the mundane:

Please consider coaching this Fall
I cannot say enough about the support we provide our coaches* and how much our coaches enjoy their time on the field. We need coaches at all levels (you really can do it!)!  And with our professional coaching support, we will help you learn how to be a very effective soccer coach.   Please let us know if you have any interest in coaching here.  

Finally, please register for fall soccer early
Please register for fall soccer. We plan to start team formation in late August and announce teams and schedules by August 31. In order to do this, we need people to register and fill in their forms early. Please register now! And please pencil in September 12 for the first day of games (we know that day coincides with the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. Our policy is to play on religious holidays, understanding that we are creating an unfortunate difficult decision for some families. I for one will have something new to atone for the following week… 

Wishing you a terrific summer,

Best wishes,

Jason

 *Prior to every season, we have been running coach training sessions where coaches participate in a “play-practice-play” session run by our Director of Coaching Alvaro Amaral and Technical Director Mario Prata. Play-practice-play is a format of practice recommended by US Youth Soccer and Mass Youth Soccer so players are challenged to develop their skills in game-like environments as opposed to drills. The idea is that development and fun work best together, not in opposition to each other).  We can see the effect during weekday practices and weekend games, our coaches are doing a great job.  Details to be finalized, but we will be running sessions for every age group before the season starts.