Attention NCYSA Club Directors:
We are excited to invite you to learn about one of the most significant grassroots youth development efforts in recent North Carolina history!
Soccer Starts at Home®, created by world-renowned youth soccer expert and author Tom Byer, is expanding its reach by introducing its program to thousands of North Carolina families. This initiative is being made possible for North Carolina Youth Soccer Association members through the support of an Innovate to Grow grant from the United States Soccer Federation. Soccer Starts at Home® uses a fun and engaging program to teach children age-appropriate “Ball Mastery” exercises and games, with the ultimate goal of enhancing both physical and cognitive development in young children.
“It is very exciting to be able to partner with our North Carolina based youth soccer clubs to bring such a powerful youth development program to the thousands of families of young children in our great state,” North Carolina Youth Soccer Association Executive Director Kathy Robinson said. “We have developed a program that is fun and challenging for the kids and is very insightful for the parents. The home is a great place to create what we call a ‘culture of development’ and this program will look to inspire positive engagement between the parent and child, which is key. We are introducing the concepts of ball mastery, one child and one ball, which has many benefits for the young child.” North Carolina will be the first United States Youth Soccer State Association to embrace this program for their clubs and families and to provide the complete program free of charge.
The program will launch on October 2nd through the North Carolina Youth Soccer Association’s website and will allow families access to the complete program online. Families will be able to watch tutorials of skills and exercises, learn about the benefits of the program from various industry leading experts, view videos of children as they progress through various levels of the program, and document the progress of their own children. Tom Byer will be personally conducting both virtual and in-person events over the scope of the project.
Backed by research that has shown that physical development in young children has positive impacts on the development of cognitive skills, along with lifelong physical skills such as coordination, balance, and agility, this program looks to help improve early childhood development through the education and engagement of parents and caretakers.
“We are excited for this opportunity to present our Soccer Starts at Home® program to the families and children in North Carolina,” Tom Byer said. “This program not only gets young children off to a wonderful head start playing soccer, but it also develops a child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional skills as well. This is a long-term project- a marathon, not a sprint- but this is a big step forward. We are genuinely excited to introduce these inspiring concepts and be a positive resource for the North Carolina families and youth soccer clubs for years to come. On August 29th at 10:00 am and September 6th at 7:00 pm, I am inviting NCYSA Club Staff to my webinar about Soccer Starts at Home® and about this program…the first such program in the U.S.!”
See below for many of the leading clubs and associations around the world that Tom has presented to, along with his bio.
To Join the Zoom Meeting on Aug. 29th at 10:00am:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87933849017?pwd=OXRaUmNYWU1lZTllT3lvYTJkOXdHdz09
Meeting ID: 879 3384 9017
Passcode: 549043
To Join the Zoom Meeting on Sept. 6th at 7:00pm:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81053746362?pwd=MEQ0NUlmblZmdTNSNmhOT2NJN2ljZz09
Meeting ID: 810 5374 6362
Passcode: 886115