St

St. Ursula Soccer

Where fun and learning come first!

8800 Harford Road, Baltimore, MD 21234

2008 St. Ursula Soccer Evaluations

Player Evaluations

This year, St. Ursula will be holding player evaluations for the U10, U12, and U14 travel teams on four dates. Please note that these dates have changed from what was originally communicated in the registration letter. Also, there are no player evaluations for the clinic or U18 teams.

All sessions will be held at Belmont Park. Due to the need to avoid field conflicts with lacrosse and softball, we had to schedule the sessions in the afternoon. The dates and times are as follows:

Dates:      Saturday May 10th
                Saturday May 17th
                Saturday May 31th
                Sunday  June 8th

Times (same for all four dates):
                1:00 PM - 2:15 PM   Girls U10, U12, U14
                2:15 PM - 3:30 PM   Boys U10, U12, U14

Please know that the atmosphere for the player evaluation sessions will be low key and fun, mostly consisting of a warm-up, stretching, and small-sided soccer games. Due to the time of the year, we will be cognizant of the heat. If it is hot we will provide plenty of water breaks. Since the sessions will only be about 75 minutes, please be sure to be on time. If it is raining, the player evaluation sessions will not be held.

We also understand that your child may not be able to make all of the sessions. That is OK, and you do not need to let us know this in advance. We strongly encourage players to attend as many of the four sessions as possible, and particularly the last session. This will enable the coaches to obtain a good idea of what would be the best team for your child.

More on Player Evaluations
The reason for these player evaluation sessions is primarily to help determine some preliminary team groupings prior to the start of regular practices in August. Our goals is to place players in each age group on teams with other players with who have similar skill levels. It will also allow us to gauge each team's relative strength, which will in turn allow us to rate the team properly in the Parkville Tournament and for league play (so the team is playing in an appropriately competitive division).

The groupings of players into teams will be based on a number of factors, with a player's skill level being just one. Age, grade, player size, team size, and other team balancing factors are also considered. This new process will enable teams to get a faster start in August, rather than spend the first two to three weeks trying to form team rosters. This year, we plan to have teams start practicing as a team with an assigned coach from the very first practice in August. There may still need to be some minor tweaking of team rosters in August, but those changes will hopefully be minimal.

For one age group, it appears we may only have one team due to the number of children registered at this time. We still want these players to participate in the player evaluations, as these sessions will provide an opportunity for players to get back into the swing of playing soccer, and will allow the coaches the opportunity to assess the team's strength and proper rating for tournament and league play.

CMSA League Decision
At the last player evaluation session (June 8th), we plan to have the preliminary rosters formed. This will hopefully allow the coach to dialogue with parents about the interest in taking the team into a second league (CMSA), in addition to CYO (Note, each team must play in CYO). This would mean playing two games each weekend, with the second game being in the CMSA league.

This CMSA league determination process is also new. In years past, we automatically registered the strongest team in each age group in the CMSA league. However, last year we had two teams that dropped out before the season even started due to lack of interest, costing the program $660 in wasted league fees. In the prior years we have also had situations where the second team in an age group wanted to play CSMA, but couldn't because the league deadline is in July and had already passed by the time the team was formed in August. To resolve these situations, the board has decided to allow each team to determine themselves if they want to play in the CMSA league, in addition to CYO. To do this, a team decision must be made by early June. Because the per team fee for CMSA is a lot higher than CYO ($330 vs.$25 per team), we will need to collect a CSMA fee of $32 per player from the players on teams that elect to play in CMSA.