AYSO Helps Kids Turn Into Happy Soccer Players
There are million of kids playing soccer in America — a great outdoor game and fun for the whole family, youth soccer is a great athletic sport — one on with more individual participation than many other team sports. AYSO is one of the founding organizations in the youth soccer world and today helps awaken passion for the beautiful game in over 500,000 players. With 50,000 youth soccer teams around the country, AYSO has a rich history — filled with fun facts.
Youth Soccer News: As the very first AYSO youth soccer program, AYSO’s Core is the foundation for all of AYSO’s other programs, including the new AYSO United program.
Core is also AYSO’s most popular program — the majority of all AYSO players playing in Core.
Based in Southern California, AYSO has helped many professional players — even Landon Donovan — get their start in soccer. AYSO’s player count has grown exponentially and has expanded across the United States.
Everyone knows AYSO’s important Six Philosophies — this is the core of the program:
- Everyone Plays®,
- Balanced Teams,
- Open Registration,
- Positive Coaching,
- Good Sportsmanship
- and, Player Development.
What else is this well-loved program about? Read some fun facts below!
- AYSO’s Core program was founded in 1964 in Torrance, California.
- AYSO was actually co-founded by Hans Stierle and Bill Hughes with the support of Ted McClean, Ralph Acosta and Steve Erdos in 1964 — just so kids could play soccer.
- The program started out with only 125 players.
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- Stierle organized youth soccer games for what was then called the Los Angeles Soccer Club, a boys youth soccer club in the North Hollywood area of LA and the teams played against other local clubs.
- Eric Wynalda,Paul Caligiuiri and Sigi Schmid are members of the AYSO Hall of Fame.
- Landon Donovan started playing AYSO when he was just 5 years old.
- In 1971, AYSO’s launched it’s first girls program. Now, 40 % of AYSO’s players are girls.
- FIFA Women’s World Cup Champions Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett and Julie Foudy are members of the AYSO Hall of Fame.
- AYSO on Playing Time: Everyone Plays® means that every player plays at least half of the game and no one is stuck on the bench forever.
- The Core program teaches kids the fundamentals of soccer, but it also aims to teach kids important life skills, like being a team player and respecting others.
- Core is an AYSO program that is offered all across the country and is open to children starting at the age of 6. Players can play until they’re 18 years old!
- AYSO is built on volunteers — 125,000 volunteers!
- All coaches, referees, coach and referee instructors, as well as team parents are all volunteers!
- AYSO trains parents to be well educated coaches and has a state of the art, online learning center.
Photo Credit: AYSO
