B. Musetti
ONE CHANCE TO
LEAVE MY MARK
American Youth Soccer Organization
AYSO is a non-profit soccer organization that provides an opportunity for experienced and nonexperienced young soccer players to have fun being part of a team while developing there individual skills and growing with there teammates. AYSO is ran by only volunteers varying from division directors to coaches.
In spring of 2014, I became a volunteer coach for a U10 team (Age 10 and under) . It was my first year apart from playing travel soccer due to multiple ankle injuries and a surgey. After realizing that I would not be able to continue to play, a better opportunity landed in front of me. Coaching. This is when I spent twice the amount of time I used to spend on the field, coaching soccer for AYSO. Although in the beginning I could say I was focused on the service hours I was recieving for serving my community, I found myself falling in love with the girls on my team. I continued to coach the U10 team for the next 3 seasons until my reputation grew within the organization and my work was appreciated. I, then, was asked if I would be able to coach the U14 team (Age 14 and under) the following season and was offered the position of being one of AYSO's division director. Although this was such a rewarding moment, I had school to think of. Balancing these 2 new jobs with school and other extracurriculars seemed to be a challenge that I intended to face.
Now, It is 2016 and I have successfully coached soccer 4 seasons as a volunteer of AYSO and have also served as a division director, creating and managing teams for the U6 divison.
"The Field is my second home and nothing could ever have the ability to change that." I always tell my girls.
I, too, thought it would stop there. But it didn't. The relationships I was making with the girls and there parents only gave me more of a passion to help them grow individually. Therefore, I came up with the idea of giving private practices within the girls I already coached on my team, apart from regular AYSO practices. Of course, knowing this would be a time consuming task I decided to make this a side business. By my second season of coaching the U10's, I already had about 6 to 7 clients who I would work with one on one about twice a week. Unfortunately but fortunately, each season I received a new team to coach with few players of the previous season. This caused clients to come and go. There are now girls I have been coaching for years and girls I have been coaching only for a few months which allowed me to leave my mark on there lives in my own way.
"The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking." - Mia Hamm
It gets better. Other parents around Regional Park started to realize that I was coaching one on one's and that I was creating a fun environment for kids to fall in love with this sport just like I did. I was even approached by one parent who bluntly asked me if I would be able to give a one on one soccer lesson to her 12 year old daughter and 5 year old son. I was filled with excitment yet hesitated on responding, knowing I had never really had experience coaching a boy. Yet, when have challenges ever stopped me? I agreed and added them into my schedule. This was after the second season of coaching and I can now say this is when I started coaching boys too! Although coaching these two lovely kids came to end, It opened many other doors. It is now a year I have been coaching another 5 year old boy who happens to be the brother of one of the girls I have been giving private lessons to as well.
Well, that was last summer...
Man..By now I should run my own summer camp!
Right before the summer of 2015, a lot of parents from my previous teams were mentioning how cool it would be if my partner at the time, Melanie Chapilliquen, and I would create our own summer camp. I knew this was my next goal I would want to achieve. After organizing and calclating all the numbers, the feasibilty of a one week, summer soccer camp seemed possible. I knew that Melanie was the perfect person to do this camp with me because I owed a lot of my success to her. I received a phone call from her in the beginning of 2014 when she asked me if I was interested in being a coach for AYSO. Without that phone call, I would most likely not be where I am today. I knew that this summer camp would be twice as fun for the kids if she worked with me on this project as a coach. She was estactic of the proposal! I, then, bought all the equipment we needed, found a field we could use, and handled all the forms, dates,waivers, and payments that were necessary to manage. I took on the role of being a project manager at the age of 15. I learned about all the different aspects of organizing something so big, big in my eyes. Organization of this camp included choosing what time to what time the camp would be from and dates, making a reasonablethe price, making waiver forms for parents, finding a field to host the camp on, and handling all equipment and promotion. This was definitely a learning experience for me that I had the priveldge in benefiting from.
