starting a youth league

[Cougars-D-33]

I searched the threads and couldnt find much on this subject. if someone could direct me to a thread i would be grateful. if not this isnt a bad place to start. i live in central tennessee and really want to start a youth league. i do not believe we have one, and honestly dont know how to go about starting one. i play in high school, and if i could get one started i have SOME ideas on how it would be, but since the only thing to get some ideas on is a youth football league we have. if anyone could help me out with how i could get one going here it would be great.
i figured a summer league with U-13 rules and regs. area middle school and high school coachs would be like admins, overwatching everything but not coaching an actual team. and high school players would be coaches. this way the high school players could have some responsibility and fun teaching younger kids, while getting tips and being watched by real coaches. the high school players would have the drive to get the kids going and the coaches would keep the HS kids in check, so they dont go overboard with their teams. this seems to be a great idea to me, but i dont know how to get fields to play on or equipment. if anyone could help it would be great.

Thank you,
Matthew Ganio

[TxLaxFan]

First thing I would do is a survey of area coaches, officials, and high school students to see who would be interested in helping to set one up and/or help run it.

In Texas most of the teams have no affiliation with the schools, so parent boards run the teams, hire coaches, etc. If that's the case where you are, talk to the parent boards about how their programs are run.

Most of the youth programs are affiliated with the middle school and high school teams and the parent boards are usually the ones who start the teams.

US Lacrosse has a packet for start up teams, which would be helpful.

Use the football league guidelines as a guide for lacrosse teams.

Here, we pay a 'field use' fee to the school district to use the fields, which comes from the player dues and sponsorships.

You might do a google search for youth lacrosse leagues and/or programs, look at their sites, see if there is any information you can request. Also check with the US Lacrosse Chapter for your area - they might be in the process of getting one started, or would be willing to help you get the resources you need.

One last thing, make sure that anyone who coaches takes the Level 1 coaching program through US Lacrosse [it can be done online].

Good luck!!

[Gordo5354]

What we did was simply get sticks into kids' hands to begin with. Nothing spreads faster than a kid with a new intrest in something new and unique to the area. We are in our third year as a team in Northern Arizona. As much as I believe there needs to be a development in the infrastructure as TxLax says, but that can be done concurrently with developing players and teams. We have played tournement style games with unsanctioned refs to bring it along slowly, our concern was too many whistles would slow the game down, penalty assesments would confuse the learning process, etc. US Lacrosse is a HUGE help, contact them reference equipemt grants, coaches seminars etc.

Check your local parks /rec people, hang flyers and bring in a 'demo' game maybe a couple of college club teams or something similar thereto to drive up intrest.

Our Team travels, let me know if we can help.

[coaches gal]

our team was recently contacted by a local sporting goods store looking for 501c3's to donate equipment too...

we've had alot of interest from the U-9 group lately and had been thinking about doing a 'clinic' on saturday mornings for about 8 weeks or so...

so now we're definately going to do it :)

we'll be presenting a new skill each week with specialized activities; then the 2nd half of the clinics we'll have 'scrimmages' between the kids after the days lesson....

we also use some of the elementary school fields for practice, there's also a neighborhood field some of the boys use for their own additinal practices... look for some of those 'free' parks or city/county parks that everyone is allowed to use.

[Gordo5354]

Good point on the 501.c.3. We were a non tax -non profit from the start, having been involved with other entities where this protection was not in place, frankly, scared me. Some folks inclined to help out with youth orgs, financially, won't even talk to you if there is no 501.c.3 in place.