North york cosmos soccer club house league convenor's manual

NORTH YORK COSMOS SOCCER CLUB
HOUSE LEAGUE CONVENOR'S MANUAL

 

Thank you for becoming a convenor for the North York Cosmos Soccer Club. You are now a member of the executive and responsible for organizing the coaches and teams for hundreds of youngsters, as well as distributing schedules uniforms and equipment to the coaches and smoothing out any problems that come along during the season. In the house league, everybody plays, and the focus is to have fun, make new friends and to learn some soccer skills along the way.

The convenor responsibilities are spelled out in the House League Rules:

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  Make up the teams.
  
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  Recruit the coaches.
  
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  Arrange a meeting with coaches to hand out schedules and equipment and explain coaches' responsibilities.
  
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  Monitor that games are conducted as per house league rules.
  
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  Provide the team roster including names and phone numbers of coaches to the VP House League.
  
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  Obtain player ratings from the coaches and forward to VP House League at the end of season.
  
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  forward weekly scores and standings to the Web Master for inclusion on the club's House League web page.
  

To start off, you will need the following:

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  List of executive members and phone numbers, so you know from whom to obtain other information you will need.
  
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  Copy of this years House League rules (please check the date).
  
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  List of players registered in your division, as well as phone numbers, and addresses and any special requests, from the registrar.
  
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  List of sponsors, and if they have a child and/or coach to be on the sponsored team, from the executive in charge of sponsors.
  
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  List of people volunteering to coach at your level, from registrar.
  
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  The names of last year's coaches in your division, and in the division next younger, from the VP, House League, as well as specific strengths and weaknesses of the individual, where this information is available.
  
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  Find out the date of any coaches workshop from the V.P. House League.
  
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  Ratings of the players from last year, from the VP-House League.
  
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  Game schedules, from the V.P. House League.
  
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  Previous years:
  
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  coaches meeting information
  
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  copies of any newsletters or handouts, from the VP House League.
  
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  Convenor jersey or golf shirt, from the equipment manger.
  

SET SCHEDULES

Team schedules are provided by the V.P. House League. Please check through these to ensure there are no errors. Example: ensure that every team plays every week, and the fields and opponents are rotated evenly. Forward any changes to the schedule to the VP House League for approval, and ensure the executive in charge of officials has received a copy of the schedule at least two weeks in advance of the first game so the referees can be booked.

Try to start to line up your coaches about six weeks before your first game. Set the coaches meeting one to two weeks before the first game, and try to arrange a coaches workshop prior to the first week of games. Contact the VP House League, or President, about arranging a coaches workshop prior to the first week of games.

Tell the equipment manger you need the uniforms and soccer balls for the date of the coaches meeting.

RECRUIT COACHES

Start by contacting the people who generously volunteered to coach in your division this year, and confirm they are still interested. Ask if they know anyone else who may be interested in coaching. Let them know the date and time of the coaches meeting and the workshop, if any.

From the list of last year's coaches, check the current registration for the names of their children, and call those people. If people are not interested in being head coach, but only in helping out, they can be co-coach coach with someone else. Keep note of strengths and weaknesses of the volunteers such as those who have experience coaching other sports but not soccer, no experience coaching, but have played soccer, have experience, but are out of town a lot, etc. and match your co-coaches accordingly.

If you still need more coaches, start at the top of the player list and call parents, asking for help. This is a sample opening. "Hello, my name is ________ and I am calling about soccer for (player) for this summer. (This should bring a relevant adult to the phone). The first game will be on the week of _______, but the reason I am calling you now is that we still need a coach for (player's) team. Would you or anyone else in your household be interested in helping out this summer? Do you know of anyone else who would be able to?"

If you find you are short a coach, you can coach yourself. However this can lead to some conflict of interest, if, for example, you have to correct another coach. In this case, another member of the executive may be able to step in and help out.

MAKE UP THE TEAMS

One of the goals of the House League is for the children to meet new people and to make new friends. Towards this end, we discourage the same teams being remade year after year. If teams stick together year after year, not only will the children not meet others, but the team tends to become unfairly 'stacked' with a core of better players, and other children joining an existing team can feel left out when most of the other players know each other. If a coach requests his or her old team back, tell them you can try, but you may not be able to get more than two or three players together due to balancing reasons. Ask which players they want if only 2 or 3 can be together.

Balance the teams by distributing the children through the teams with respect to age (year of birth), gender, and the ratings which are available.

Start building the teams with the coaches and their children and any requests of the coaches that you feel that you can honour. Some coaches also are team sponsors, so record this.

Some children are associated with sponsors and should be assigned accordingly.

Assign the remainder of the players to teams to balance, keeping siblings together and honouring reasonable requests for similar team assignments. Most of these will be for carpooling reasons. We try to be as fair as possible to all people in the club.

COACHES MEETING

At the coaches meeting, have the team rosters, schedules and coaches information ready to hand out to the coaches. Be sure sponsors names appear on all schedules where appropriate. Samples of each are attached to this manual. Distribute equipment at this time. If you have a large division, you may wish to have only one coach from each team at the meeting.

When distributing soccer balls to the coaches, emphasize that the balls are the property of the club, and must be returned at the end of the season. It is recommended that the coaches mark the soccer balls clearly with the team name, as they can be easily confused and lost.

When you receive the uniforms, confirm from the equipment manager out if they include coaches jerseys. Count the player uniforms and give to the coaches only one per registered player on the team. If there are more uniforms than children registered, retain them in case other children are registered to that team. If the coaches have the extra uniforms, they tend to give them out to other children on the block, and we don't have uniforms for new players registered to the teams.

GAMES

Attend some of the first games to familiarize yourself with the coaches, and let the parents get to know you. Ask the spectators and players to stay five feet back from the edge of the field, stay off the field and ensure that no one stands behind the end zones.

Watch that the coaches are following the rules, especially with regard to substitutions. They may need a parent to assist them in keeping the players in one place while they are substituted off. The 'Coaches Assistant' sheets, included with this manual may also be distributed to help keep track of how often each player has been off.

As a member of the executive, you are the friend of the referee on the field. Many are younger and lack the confidence to stand up to the adult coaches and parents. Everyone, players and adults included, must listen to and respect the referee. If the referee is challenged on the field, it is the job of any executive present to step in and support the referee. This provides a good example to the players. Any problems should be reported directly to the head referee, and he or she will give directions to the referees. If during the game it is apparent that the referee is not making the best calls, at least they are making calls equal to both teams.

If any parent persists in unsportsmanlike behaviour, such as hassling the referees, players or coaches, they should be asked to leave the field, and possibly not show up for future games. In extreme cases, it may be necessary to refund their money to remove their children from the club if the parent's behaviour continues. This is unfortunate for the children involved, but may be necessary in order to be fair to the rest of the children.

BALANCING THE TEAMS

After the first three games, it may be necessary to transfer players between teams to provide additional balancing. We emphasize fun, and it is not fun to consistently be on a losing team. Call the coaches of all of the bottom teams and ask if they need this. Balancing based on three games is difficult. Less experienced conveners can call on other executive members for advise.

TOURNAMENT

The tournament is two days long with a round robin played on the Saturday and the playoffs on Sunday around the middle of the regular season. The regular season standings of the teams up to that point are used to determine the tournament schedule, but the tournament results have no effect on the regular season standings.

Some teams will not have all their players due to vacations. If a team does not have 11 players for the tournament, teams can be complimented with younger players from within the North York Cosmos Club. Players from outside of the club may play if they are registered with the Ontario Soccer Association through another club as a recreational player. This membership is required for insurance reasons. The important thing is that everybody plays. Even if a team defaults, they can still play a game with the people who attend by sharing players.

INFORMATION ON THE WEB PAGE

House League information can be found at http://www.northyorkcosmos.com. The web site contains schedules, team standings, sponsor information, and this document, among other things. If your have any information you would like included on the web page please forward it to your VP. Please send the scores to your VP on a weekly basis so they always are current.

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR MINI DIVISION

The Mini Division is non competitive, and plays smaller fields and fewer players. They do not take part in the tournament, and do not have playoff games. However, they do have a pizza and trophy day close to the end of the season.

HARASSMENT AND ABUSE POLICY

One of the ways we try to protect our children is by having anyone who works with the children in the club sign the Harassment and Abuse Policy document. This gives people an indication of the type of behaviour that we expect of the coaches and executive. The coaches are asked that all parents on a team review this as well and be prepared to sign if they find themselves coaching on an emergency basis.

Last Updated: April  29, 2000