Co-Op Soccer Camps

In the spring, when Aubree was playing soccer, I had a conversation with a friend of mine whose daughter played on Aubree's team.  We both expressed interest in having our girls participate in a soccer camp in the summer.  However, when we whipped out our handy smart phones and did a cursory search of available options, we were dismayed to learn that camps for kids ranged from $105 (for little kids) to upwards of $350!  If we were raising little prodigies, who needed tutelage from masters in their fields, perhaps we could justify the expense, but with our novices (and since each of us have four children to consider) it seemed outlandish.  Just as I began to dismiss the camp idea entirely, my friend countered, "why can't we just organize our own camps?"  And thus an idea was born.

Over the course of the next couple months my friend, Annelise, and I worked together to bring this brain-child to life.  

The idea is fairly simple... have volunteer "coaches," and a group of kids who get to play soccer for a week as inexpensively as possible.  The details were obviously a bit more tricky and admittedly there were times when we hit sticking points and complications when I wanted to throw up my hands in defeat.  Even right up to the moment our first camp began, I had no way to know if our vision would work out.
Thankfully, though, it went wonderfully!  Our first camp was for boys and girls ages 6-7 (with a couple advanced 5 year-olds in the mix), and only ran Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 2 hours each day.  

We had 28 kids split up into 4 "teams," each with their own colored jerseys.  The teams rotated between the four volunteer coaches (moms with soccer background) learning different skills, and at the end of each day we had a scrimmage.  

The kids had a blast!  We had lots of kids come who had never played soccer before and weren't sure if they would like it or not, but since the cost to attend was only $16 per kid, it was a low commitment/ inexpensive way to find out! 

A couple weeks later we had our second soccer camp, this one geared towards girls ages 8-10.  In planning, I'd hoped to have 32 girls sign-up for this camp, but only ended up with 13.  That meant we only had 2 teams instead of 4, but it also meant each girl got tons of playing time.  

Another difference in this camp is that I had one adult volunteer coach, but the other coaches were teen girls who play competitive soccer.  Having these teens was fabulous!  They did a great job teaching the younger girls, the younger girls loved getting the attention from these young ladies, the teens loved the opportunity to be coaches, and the teens came away with service/volunteer hours that will hopefully help them in future efforts to secure scholarships, jobs, or college admissions.  

The format was similar to the younger kid camp, except they only had two rotations each day.  They played lots of games and learned lots of new skills, but they loved the daily scrimmage most of all.  These girls had a lot of fun!

The big girl camp ran Monday through Friday, but we had to cancel our Wednesday practice on account of a nasty thunderstorm.  The cost to attend was  $26.  Not too shabby, right?  Anyway, I had a lot of fun putting all the pieces of this puzzle together, even if I did want to pull my hair out at times.  We learned a lot, and will do a few things differently next year....but the camps went so well I'm pretty sure there will be a next year (and maybe we'll even expand to some other sports...)!