The Right Soccer Equipment for Your Child

You have a place for your child to play soccer and the right mental attitude, now it’s time to get ready for the first practice. The soccer association will usually provide a jersey, shorts and socks as part of your registration fee. You are responsible for:

• Shinguards
  
• Cleats
  
• Soccer ball
  

Shinguards are the only protective gear that a soccer player wears and are extremely important. They protect the lower legs from kicks and cuts from cleats. You do not want to scrimp on the shinguards. I tried the Kmart special when my boys first started playing soccer and quickly learned that for 4-5 dollars more I could buy shinguards that provided much better protection. Read more about the types of soccer shinguards and which provide the best protection.

A soccer cleat we love.

Cleats seem pretty straight forward – or so you would think! To keep you from suffering the same embarrassment that I did I’m going to explain cleats. I had never had a child in any type of sports before where they wore cleats so I was under the mistaken assumption that a cleat, was a cleat, was a cleat. They just have little things on the bottom of the shoe to help them get traction, right? WRONG! My poor child showed up at soccer practice in some really cool looking cleats that were actually designed for baseball – not soccer. Luckily we had a really awesome coach that explained what the difference was and kept me from feeling like too much of a fool. Soccer cleats do not have any cleats right on the tip of the shoe and overall the cleats are a little shorter. The shoe itself is softer so the player can have better control of the ball. When buying a soccer cleat, make sure you look for the word soccer in the description.

Before you decide that buying a soccer ball is a no-brainer, let me tell you they come in different sizes. Soccer balls are sized differently based on age.

• Size 5 - Ages 12 and up
  
• Size 4 - Ages 8 and 12 years
  
• Size 3 - Under 8 years
  
• Size 2 and 1 - Promotional soccer balls
  

Don’t just use the age of your child to decide the ball size. The age is determined by the league you are playing in. For example, you have a son that is 7 years old but he is playing in a U9 league, then he will use a size 4 ball. Be sure to buy the right size soccer ball for your child.

We’ll discuss what type of clothing to wear to practices and games in a future article.

I've Signed My Child Up For Soccer, Now What?

Congratulations. You've accomplished the first step of finding a place to play. Now what?

Now it's time to sit back and watch your child have fun! Children ENJOY playing soccer. From an early age most kids love to play with balls. Soccer is playing with a ball with other kids. It's FUN!

As a parent, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that. Some guidelines that parents need to remember:

• Cheer
  
• Relax and let them play
  
• Have reasonable expectations
  
• Coaches are parents too
  
• Yelling = Confusion
  

Cheering - that's easy. As a parent we are a born cheerleader for our child. But don't forget that cheering also means positive encouragement. Nothing coming from you should ever be negative.

Let them play. Sometimes this is a little harder to do, especially as they progress over the years. But if you make it where soccer is no longer FUN for your child, then they won't enjoy it anymore and will end up quitting. Remind yourself that this is for them - not for you.

Reasonable expectations. As parents we tend to think our child is the best. Why is our son sitting on the bench? He's the best player on the team. Face it - the chances of our child becoming the next Pele is very slim. We can't relive our childhood dreams through our children. This is for them, not you. If you expect for you child to have FUN and not to become the next striker on the US Olympics team, then you have reasonable expectations.

Coaches are parents. The majority of soccer coaches are NOT paid. They have VOLUNTEERED their time and energy to coach a team. Typically they have a child on the team and that is the reason they are coaching it. Before you question or make any comments to the coach ask yourself this question. "Am I willing to step up and coach this team?" If the answer is no, then all your comments to the coach should be very positive. They need encouragement too.

Yelling. If you are yelling instructions to your child then you will confuse and distract them. They have a coach that is giving directions, more than that is just too much, they won't know who to listen to.

So sit back, relax, cheer and watch your child have FUN! We'll go over some equipment and rules in our next article.

Where to Play Soccer?

First things first. You've got to find an association that offers soccer. It took me about a week of multiple phone calls and being referred from one person to another for me to find a place for my sons to play soccer. There just wasn't a way to locate a local association. Later I learned there is a way to find an association, it's just buried and makes no sense to someone new to soccer.

Soccer in the US is broken down into regions. US Youth Soccer is the Nationwide organization. Then it is broken down by the state followed by region and then individual soccer organizations.

The first step in locating a place to play is to select your state from the region map and then visit the state's soccer website located. Each website is different since they are maintained by the individual state's soccer association. The best way to find a location near you is to look for "Members" or "Membership", usually these are grouped by regions or counties. The associations are all members of the overall state organization. Usually a membership or association list includes links to the individual websites along with contact names and numbers.

If you live in NC I can help you out a little bit more I've compiled a list of soccer associations in NC. This list focuses on all soccer organizations in North Carolina that offer recreation or rec soccer. If you are looking for a place to play challenge soccer in NC, this list is a good place to start for you too. If you don't know what challenge soccer is, then you are playing rec soccer. We'll discuss the different types of soccer in a future article. Typically the soccer season starts around mid August and runs through mid November. It picks up again around the first week of March through mid May. So go find a local organization to play soccer with, then check back here for what's next.

Soccer - An Introduction for Parents

We've been a soccer family since Dec. 2003 - boy, I wish I could have found a "Soccer for Dummy Parents" book way back then. It took us forever to learn all the ends and outs. We didn't even know the rules of the game other than you were supposed to get the ball into the other goal. So I'm going to try and remember all the things that we learned along the way and share them with you. I hope this will help other soccer parents.