Im gonna play AYSO soccer for the first time this year. But I dont just wanna play AYSO, I want to play elite and when Im good enough, i wanna play club. When should I start to play elite and club soccer? like how many years after playing AYSO?

well starting with AYSO is a good start. I started playing club when I was 9 and i dont know how old you are. my entire AYSO team tryed out for club and only 5 of us made it. but if you really want to get up to play club and elite then you need to get in touch with your local club (not AYSO) and ask them about skills trainers. they can give you a skills trainer who can evaluate you and help you become the player you want to be. I must warn you though….. Club soccer and Elite soccer are pretty dang expensive so you need to start saving money.

I play high school soccer for the Bard raptors. I’m a starter on a good team, and i play my role well, but I definately wouldn’t call myself a star player. I’m also in very good shape. I want to play soccer in college but i really have no idea what division, if any, i could play for. Any suggestions?

The best division is division I. Then Division I-A, then III. The first division competition is extremely hard, universities recruit very deeply. Mostly if u got exposed, u will receive invites to participate in their camps.

Well u need to play for a club outside of school, because high school only gives u so many exposure. It’s all about which college decides to recruit you, playing for top universities is difficult. You Have to be good to be recruited, but the college game is pretty much useless to be translated to the Pro’s. The universities play in a run and gun style.

I’m sure your coach knows people that can help you get into camps and stuff.

New York City is the most populous city in the United States, and happens to be the only city, along with its metropolitan area, to have more than one team for each of the four major sport – Football, Hockey, Baseball, and Basketball. With so many sports teams – there are a total of nine teams – there is bound to be a lot of sporting activity. The New York sports teams that make the New Yorkers proud are:

New York Giants (NFL), New York Jets (NFL), New York Islanders (NHL) , New York Rangers (NHL) , New York Mets (MLB), New York Yankees (MLB), New York Knicks (NBA), Both, the New Jersey Nets (NBA) and the New Jersey Devils (NHL).

In addition, there are two Minor League Baseball teams – the Brooklyn Cyclones, the farm team of the New York Mets, and the Staten Island Yankees, the farm team of the New York Yankees.

Sports Tickets

With so many teams and so many sporting events all year round, New York sports tickets will always be in demand by its many fans. These tickets can, of course, be obtained from the many sports venues all over the city. But the question is – Is it practical to visit so many venues for procuring your New York sports tickets?

Definitely not! In addition, you need to book well in advance for your favorite events, and are still not assured of getting your New York sports tickets. What happens if you are visiting New York on a short stay, and wish to take in a game? Your best option for your New York sports tickets is the services of a reliable ticket broker.

There are many legitimate and reliable brokers all over the city. Ensure that the broker you approach for your New York sports tickets is a licensed broker, and a member of the National Association of Licensed Brokers. These brokers, who work to a certain set of standards, offer you good deals, and are certainly better than the those who offer dubious deals. For your New York sports tickets, avoid approaching re-sale forums and the anonymous sellers on eBay. Similarly, avoid scalpers you will find outside the sports venues.

Through reliable agencies, you are assured of your New York sports tickets, and you have to pay a little extra on the face value of the tickets, to cover the costs.

Al Terry
http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/how-to-obtain-your-new-york-sports-tickets-87154.html

I’m a junoir and plays soccer for my high school. I’m a very decent player and looking for a good soccer Colleges/universities in the tri state and the rest of the country.

ucla, and any school where they can play year-round… cali is your best bet.

Do you have strategies in place to help your child succeed in their sport? Do you have a plan to be the best sports parent possible? What are you doing now that helps your child reach their fullest potential?

As President of The International Mental Game Coaching Association, one of my goals is to spread the concepts of mental toughness and self-coaching throughout the world. I want children to become more self-reliant, have higher self-esteem, make better decisions, learn better judgment, manage their stress, engage the zone in performance and achieve to their full potential. As their parent, you are an integral part of this success path.

Here are some sports parenting success strategies you can use to help your child.

1. Create a supportive, organized environment the day of competitions.

2. Help them get enough practice before games to make their performance automatic and confident.

3. Manage their schedule so they have balance between sports, school and social activities.

4. Reduce their overall life stress so they can be refreshed and relaxed going into practices and games.

5. Help them create and maintain realistic expectations about their sport.

6. Be a great listener and be empathic when they need to share strong emotions, especially after a loss.

7. Get to know their coaches, and understand their coaching styles, systems and expectations, and help your child work within these.

8. Make sports participation fun and stress learning and life lessons.

9. Allow your child to make as many of their own sports decisions as possible, and to learn from those decisions. Don’t shield them from the reality of their behaviors. Allow natural consequences to teach them about the world.

10. View sports as a life-long learning process, one that you and your child can share.

So there you have it, the top 10 success strategies sports parents can use to make their kids experiences in sport excellent.

To read our companion article, The Fears Kids Have In Sport: How Parents Can Help Their Child Succeed In Sports
By Identifying And Processing Their Child’s Mental
And Emotional Concerns, go here:

http://www.mentalgamecoaching.com/IMGCAArticles/ParentsAndSports/KidsFearsInSport.html

For a comprehensive overview of your child’s mental abilities you need an assessment instrument that identifies their complete mental strengths and weaknesses. For a free, easy-to-take sports psychology assessment tool, visit:
http://www.mentalgamecoach.com/Assessments/MentalGameOfSports.html



We also offer extensive resources with which to improve your child’s entire mental game.

Bill Cole, MS, MA
http://www.articlesbase.com/sports-and-fitness-articles/top-ten-sports-parenting-success-strategies-to-help-maximize-your-childs-sports-experience-87530.html

I’m a junior in highschool. We don’t have a highschool soccer team but only have the junior high soccer team. My friends and I want to form the highschool soccer team but we don’t know where to start. Please!! tell me what i need to do.

It can be difficult to ask a school to add a sport. However, i think you would have a good shot since your school already has a feeder program, with the junior high team. First you will need to be able to show that there is interest in the team. You could start a petition with interested players signing. You will also need to present the idea to your school board. You should be as prepared as possible. You may want to come up with an example budget for the soccer program. You should also look at other high school soccer programs in your area, are there other soccer programs within your school’s athletic conference. You should also consider what teams you would play against. Does your school already have soccer facilities, or would these have to be build.

It is a lot of work to get a high school to add a sport. You may want to considered starting up an independant club team, which you could enter into a local league. You could also approach a local club, and see if you could form a team within their organization.

For sports enthusiasts, there’s nothing more exciting than sports people playing their favourite game. The sight of the field, rink or golf course initiates the thrill and anticipation. This, combined with digital photography, can provide some amazing photographic opportunities. However it’s not a matter of point the camera at the person diving for the ball or puck and snapping away. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

In digital photography sports can be quite challenging. The sports people do not present an easy task of being photographed because of the amount of high movement. However, you can indeed achieve great sports digital photography. Most excellent sports digital photography requires good planning and execution.

Here are some exclusive tips for gaining fantastic sports shots in your digital photography.

First things first; know your digital camera. I recommend taking note and practicing first all the settings that sports photography needed. You may find yourself going for the faster shutter speed, increased ISO and burst mode. Let’s take a look at all these things on your digital camera and see how they can be applied to give you sensational sports photos.

High shutter speeds:

As with all moving objects, in order to capture the “frozen in time” look in digital photography a fast shutter speed is required. The faster the movement the fast the shutter speed will need to be. In digital photography the general consensus is that the shutter speed needs to be faster than that of the subject. For example if you have a sliding puck across ice and there is a someone about to take a dive for it then its necessary to quickly mentally assess how fast that person might be traveling at. If they are traveling at approximately 50 kilometers (approx 32 miles) per hour then you may find a very fast shutter speed is needed for this digital photo.

A very fast shutter speed in digital photography may be anything from 500th of a second or higher. For high speed movement you may want to consider an even faster shutter speed of 1000th of a second or something in that range.

Keep in mind that in digital photography a fast shutter speed works to reduce some of the light which is why a higher ISO is often necessary. (I’ll talk about that in a minute.) Usually a if a ball, such as a baseball going at around 145 kilometers an hour (90.09 miles per hour) a shutter speed of around 1/4000 will get you that “suspended ball in mid air” type of photo. For physical movement, such as someone leaping to catch a football, a shutter speed of 1/500 or over is a good place to start.

Now this is all very well if your scene if well lit. But what if you are taking your digital photography shots indoors at night and the light is not quite enough to provide enough light? In most instances, an indoor stadium at night time will be well lit, but that doesn’t always ensure good digital photos. In sports photography we need to understand that we can only control the artistic value and input of our digital photo and the control of the camera. We can’t control the lighting on the scene being such a public event. In digital photography sports photos we must realize that it’s going to be a challenge to begin with. So here are something’s you can in your digital sports photography to increase the amount of light.

If you have a light tool on your digital camera such as a histogram you can get a good idea of what the light levels are like on your sensor. With this handy tool you can adjust the ISO at the time of your pictures taking.

Increase your ISO: A high ISO in digital photography simply means the sensitivity to light that your digital camera has. In a nutshell the more ISO you have increased the image to, the less light the sensor needs. In sports photography an ISO of 400 or higher can work really well. The downside to this is that it does increase noise. To combat this you can use noise reduction software in the post editing process such as Noise Ninja or increase the LAB mode in the post editing process. Don’t be afraid to try a few shots at 400, 800 and even as high as 1600.

Burst mode:

In most sports digital photography this will be one of the settings you will turn to. Burst mode is also known as ‘continuous shooting’. This ‘continuous’ shooting mode allows you to get a sequence of shoots in succession. You can increase your chances of getting that ideal “split second perfect shot” that you might not be able to get by pre-emption or in normal shooting. This also works so beautifully if your digital camera has a painfully long lag time. I’ve used this so many times to get around the high lag my Sony Cyber shot has got. Some cameras have 3 frames per second and some go up to 12 frames per second. You simply select this mode and hold your finger on the shutter button and it will fire off as many shots in 1 second as it can.

Okay so I’ve been talking about your digital camera and the setting’s used for ideal sports digital photography, so what about any external equipment? If you have been thinking about this you’re spot on. You can take as much time with your settings but there’s not much point if you can’t get close to the action. There’s no point having a picture with perfect lighting and perfect action if the players are like dots on a sheet of paper. You need a good telephoto lens if you can’t get close up. A telephoto lens brings you closer because of its long distance capability. It will get you closer to the action but will need a faster shutter speed.

Many fantastic sports digital photos are taken with an emphasis on a very fast shutter speed, an f stop of around the 2.8 mark to blur the background and focus in on the subject. You may find that if your sportsperson is visually separated from the background and you take the digital photograph with a telephoto lens you’ll have a more shallow depth of field which can give you a more powerful feeling in your digital photo. You can get away with a good optical zoom lens, but you’ll get far better digital sports shots with a proper telephoto.

So what about the artistic side of sports photography with your digital camera? Plenty!

Pre-emption and Emotion is the key to good art.

When taking sports photography you probably won’t find a more public display of human emotion. The emotions of a sports person range from intense anticipation to extreme disappointment or extreme exhilaration. Pre-empting when these emotions take place is they key to getting artistic and impressive sports photos. This comes with practicing your digital photography.

SO much pressure is placed on our athletes, expecting them to perform so we can enjoy the show and the investors can enjoy their returns. This is another reason why I say to get a telephoto lens so you can capture the emotions on their faces and their body language. It makes for superb photography. For ideas on ice hockey, have a look at some ice hockey images that are great study tools.

Don’t just look at these digital photos, you must study them. Take on the attitude that studying sports photography will improve your digital sports photos ten fold. You will have a style to emulate and copy to start with then eventually, when you become confident, you’ll start to adopt your own style.

Happy shooting,

Amy Renfrey

To study digital sports photography check these sites out: http://www.espn.com/ and http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ and http://cbs.sportsline.com/

Amy
http://www.articlesbase.com/art-articles/mastering-the-art-of-sports-photography-with-your-digital-camera-127980.html

I was just wondering I’ve never played before, except about 3 years ago i played netball lol. I want to start getting active again but im so self conscious im not going to be good and people will laugh at me. Some people say 15 is to late to start soccer. Also, if you try out for a soccer club outside of school, what happens if your not good enough? I have been running to get ready for soccer, any other tips? Thanks.

yeah your never to old to start playing..

any other tips, just practice dribbling the ball between objects in your back yard, juggle the soccer ball, try and beat your record each time..

congrats on geting out there and tryin to have ago!