By Joe Ulm

Wow do I ever love the first weekend of the season. From our Juniors teams to our High School teams, we’ll play over 50 soccer games this weekend! How fun is that?  PSC and Armory Park will be full of close calls, near misses, great victories, lessons learned, and maybe even a few memories that will last for years to come. This is what it’s all about; watching our kids play, cheering them on, watching them grow, and doing it all with friends and family. 

Like many of you, I’ll be running from one game to the next both Saturday and Sunday, but I’ll make as many games as I can.  If I’m at one of your games, please don’t hesitate to say “hi” because as many of you know, I really enjoy the sideline conversations with all of you.  To me, they’re a big part of the fun.

And to every parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, and neighbor…thank you so much all for all you do.  From the time spent driving to and from practices, to getting uniforms ready and everything in between, you are what makes all this possible. Thank you.

Good luck to all our teams this weekend. 

Go get ‘em PSU!  Together. United.

By Joe Ulm

I had an interesting conversation with a friend over lunch this week. It went something like this:

Friend: “When my daughter knows she’s one of the best in her group at a game, task, sport, etc. she shines. She acts with confidence, doesn’t worry about making mistakes, and just has fun. But when she perceives others in the group are better than her, she acts small – worrying about mistakes, what other people in the group will think of her, etc. If she just did her thing and didn’t worry about mistakes or what others with think of her, then she would get better quickly – and maybe even be one of the best in the group in time.”

Me: “Is the group judgmental? Does she get teased or picked on if she makes a mistake?”

Friend: “No, not at all. It’s a great group of girls – supportive, encouraging – all that. I think she just worries about what they’ll think, mostly.”

The conversation got me thinking about how this applies to our players. As parents, we know how powerful friends and social influences can be on our kids – after all, we were kids once, too. The difference here is that we have the opportunity to use what we learned to create an environment where social pressure means players are encouraged to work hard to achieve their goals, and where failure is both expected and supported. Because failure is how we learn and grow; it’s how we become successful.

Creating this type of environment isn’t easy. It will take more than club leaders and coaches – it’ll take all of us encouraging and supporting our kids. At home. On the field. Together. United.

Resources: 
https://everfi.com/blog/k-12/how-friends-influence-behavior-friendships-and-school-performance/
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/57082/how-friends-influence-one-another-for-better-or-worse-in-high-school
https://gdc.unicef.org/resource/how-does-social-and-emotional-development-affect-learning

By Joe Ulm

Here’s the problem: there aren’t enough referees. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that it’s not for lack of organization or effort. People are working hard, providing opportunities, spreading the word, and encouraging kids to become referees. Oh, and the pay is good, too. Yet, here we are. Again.  Without enough referees.   How can that be?

As it turns out, there is a simple answer to that question – because it’s not worth it.

It’s not worth it to have coaches tell you all the calls you missed; or to have parents berate you at maximum volume in front of 20, 30, or 50 people.  More. It’s not worth having your knowledge questioned publicly – or your abilities, or your general intelligence, and so on. Worse yet, sometimes they’re correct; parents and coaches, with their loud, sideline voices. For all to hear. You made 25 correct calls before that, but yeah, you missed that one and that’s not allowed.  Perfection or failure, nothing else. That’s how everyone’s judged at their jobs, right? 

Being a referee isn’t worth it to many players because this is the culture we’ve accepted. Somehow, we’ve all decided it’s okay to act like this. As if standing on the sideline watching our son or daughter play soccer gives us a divine right to publicly judge someone else’s son or daughter. After all, we’re the adults – we’re the ones who teach our kids the important things…like respect and how to treat others.

If you want referees at your son or daughter’s game then we need to create a different culture.  One in which we encourage and support instead of criticizing – even when the bad call happens.  Even when it happens again.  Because we don’t get both the right to judge AND plenty of great referees.  We get one or the other.  Which is most important to you? 

Stay United, everyone.

By Joe Ulm

For many of our Select and Academy players, the spring season starts next week.  I love the start of the both fall and spring seasons, however the start of a new season also means schedules, rosters, coaches, equipment and, of course, our fields, need to be ready to go.  Last week I wrote about how Eli Rades, Soli Kothari, and Sam Deibert had done an amazing job preparing the fields for the season.  However, there are two other groups who do work on the fields; work that’s essential for us to play soccer:  The Village of Sussex and City of Pewaukee Parks Maintenance teams. 

The effort these people put into the fields goes mostly unseen, yet the work required to maintain the fields is extensive.  Mowing, weed control, fertilization, aeration, and watering, are just the start. With over 700 players in the club, each spending an average of 80 hours of time on the fields each year, our players put the fields through about 56,000 hours of cleat-pounding wear and tear every year! And that means the fields require constant maintenance. Yet, Armory Park is always in great shape and the condition of the fields at PSC continues to improve by huge leaps each season. That’s pretty amazing if you ask me. 

So if you run across Thom Berres at Armory Park – or if you run across Dan Neubauer at PSC (or any of their team members), consider thanking them for all the work they do.  Because it’s their effort that makes what we do, possible. And, of course, it’s another great way for all of us to stay United.

Stay United, everyone.