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Dear
Colorado Soccer Families, Friends, Coaches, Referees, and Players,
Colorado
Soccer Association (CSA) has been the governing body of soccer in
Colorado since 1978. As a non-profit organization overseeing the 60+
non-profit member youth soccer clubs in Colorado, the CSA mission
continues to be one of education, service, honor, infrastructure,
sportsmanship, and safety.
By
now, everyone should be aware that all organized Colorado soccer
operations have been suspended until at least March 28th. In consideration of
Governor Polis’ closure of schools until April 17th, the earliest start
date for spring soccer has been moved to April 18th. This is the first
date that any teams of a CSA sanctioned organization may gather and
take the field. CSA and its member clubs will review
this date no later than April 3rd and will extend the current
spring season start date again if necessary.
Some
of you receiving this may be ‘first timers’ in the Colorado Soccer
community. We welcome you into our family. We hope you soon find out
why soccer is considered to be “The World’s Sport”, achieving more
internationally than any other sport.
You
may wonder why we don’t cancel the spring season now. We can appreciate
these sentiments, but the answer is not so simple. Locally, we’ve made
it through hard times as friends, teams, clubs, and as a community. For
many who grew up playing the sport, whether locally or nationally, we
often reflect on the immense benefits sports has had on our lives. The
physical, mental, and social well-being provided by soccer got many of
us through hard times and made us better individuals. CSA and all
Colorado Soccer clubs believe that continuing to provide these benefits
and fulfilling these needs has to be our goal. We can’t and we won’t
just give up on the opportunity to emerge from this devastation so
as to again serve our community.
Taking
into consideration the diversity of the soccer community we serve, our
decision to strive for stability and survival runs deep. Whether this
is your child’s first venture into organized sport, or your child lives
and breathes soccer, the survival of youth soccer is vital to the continuation
of:
·
Soccer as the best form
of exercise a child may get on a weekly basis.
·
Soccer as the most
welcome or possibly only non-school social time kids may have on a
weekly basis.
·
The immense benefit of
the coach-player mentorship relationship.
·
The stability in the
life of a child that comes from being part of a team.
·
Soccer is the only main
outlet in life for some kids.
While
not each of these may apply to your child, some or all of these
benefits apply to children everywhere in the greater Colorado Soccer
community.
CSA
is working to be creative with our member clubs to create a season of
soccer even with a delayed start date. Without spring soccer, the sport
as we know it, the infrastructure that has taken decades to build, the
continuity and livelihood of many coaches, and field access will be
crippled. Without a spring season, we are concerned many of our member
clubs as we know them today will not survive in their current form.
Some of our member clubs may be forced to lay off employees, coaches,
downsize field access, or even close their doors. All CSA member clubs
are non-profits, and few of them carry the extensive financial reserves
necessary for them to make it intact through the events we are
currently facing.
The
economic impact of these potential outcomes weighs heavy as well, as
the greater Colorado Soccer landscape provides hundreds of millions to
the local economy annually.
In
light of ongoing efforts, it is the recommendation of the CSA Board of
Directors to its members that Colorado soccer clubs not provide Spring
refunds, but rather be creative with future opportunities to offset the
lost services this Spring. Doing so would allow
clubs to have soccer accessible to your child immediately as soon as we
are able to return to play as well as being able to ultimately provide
the services that were postponed due to the pandemic.
We
believe now, more than ever, we need to focus on the future and pulling
through this together so that our children will have a sense of
normalcy as our community emerges from this devastation.
Many
of you will receive communication from your member clubs tomorrow. Our
wish, as you read through their individual messages, is that you
understand any decisions made are decisions not made lightly, but
rather are made in consideration of the years they’ve been working with
Colorado’s youth soccer community and the continuation of a thriving
youth soccer environment.
Nate
Shotts, CEO,
Colorado Soccer
Jeff
Ruebel, President,
Colorado Soccer
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