Current News - Updated 5/3 at 8:15 AM:
Saturday's Games, 5/3
Well, our weather clock seems pretty predictable - about every Saturday we can expect some rain. Today seems to be fitting that trend as well. We'll update the hotline (and web site if possible) in case things turn foul for us. On the positive side for our games, the highest chance of rain is in the early afternoon. With some prayers and luck, we might be able to get all of our games in.
Remember to arrive early to your games, full equipment and hydrated before the start of the game. That last one is important as it gets hotter outside.
Current Weather Forecast:
The current weather forecast can be viewed on-line courtesy of: The Weather Channel
Changes Associated with Practice Fields:
It's almost too much to believe, but we actually have field space that Cobb County Parks are graciously providing to us! For this season, it amounts to a combination of a few fields at a couple of parks for some of our practices. There is also, however, the potential of obtaining additional field space / time slots for future seasons - even potential for our home games! Wow!
Immediate impacts... Our Friday night practices will be at Lost Mountain Park from 7:30-9:00 for the remainder of this season. These are the 2 main football/soccer fields that are on the right shortly after entering the park from Dallas Hwy. These specific fields can be viewed within our Field Locations page. Just scroll down to the Google Map below the one for Harrison High School titled, Lost Mountain Park / Boots Ward Recreational Center.
For our Tuesday night practices, we'll be splitting our squad in half. Coach Mueller's and Coach Muzzey's teams will continue to practice at McClure at the normal times. Coach Chandler's and Coach Meeks' teams will practice at the football/soccer field at Wildhorse Creek Park (see the Field Locations page).
TheU-13 calendars have also been updated to reflect these changes.
All of this jostling around does 2 things for us: it gives our home fields some needed rest and it gets us involved in establishing a good relationship with Cobb County Parks - not to mention the relief of having additional space in light of the weather and field space issues.
Thanks again to Kim and the other good folks over at Cobb County Parks and Recreation!
McClure Field Use Policies:
1) When arriving at the school, folks need to drive around & not go the wrong way down the one-way drive.
2) Policy on garbage – take out what you arrive with. Players must do a full walk of the field and clean up each and every time they're at the field.
3) We need to keep the goal out of the backstop area of the ball field at all times.
4) We need to take the goals off the field and nest them together at the end of practice.
Volunteers:
Thanks to everyone who has helped out with drinks & snacks, to running the clocks, keeping score, being the sideline manager, etc. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks!
Equipment:
We've had a number of instances of players showing up to practice without all of their equipment. Please understand that we have to take a hard stance about this - both for their safety and for them to learn individual responsibility. If a player doesn't have all of their equipment, they won't get to play. The more it happens at practice, the more likely it will happen during a game when it really counts.
Practice, Practice, Practice:
Yes - we'll continue to emphasise this. Players need to practice when their at home and generally whenever they have any available time away from practice. Their stick skill abilities are a function of how much time they spend working with it. The more they work with it off the field, the more successful they'll be as a player and the more succussful we'll be as a team! Please encourage your players to practice at home. Also, see the note immediately below.
Skills and Drills:
Please let your players have a look at the videos available on our website. They're avaiable at the bottom or the Programs page. They cover numerous topics from basics of the game to some advanced skills, drills, and techniques.
With the addition of Kudda, we have now added many more instructional videos. These have been placed here to let the players learn more about the game, advance their skills, and improve their level of play. Any way that we can get it into them!
Game Schedules:
Hope that everyone was able to look at our U-13 Calendar page and the U-13 Team Roster page and figure out all of the whens and wheres of the games. We'll continue to update things to make it all more usable.
A note about the functionality within the calendars: You can click on an event and a window will show up which will show the event more fully. If you click on the "more details" link, another window will open which will show the complete details of the event including the event's address and a link for a map. Check it out!
Communications:
We will be utilizing this web space more frequently as a means of communicating out what we're doing as the U-13 squad, and even as individual teams. We'll also continue to send emails. It's just another way of communicating with everyone. If you need an email address added to our normal email distributions, please drop us a note at westcobblax@westcobblax.com
Let's all be the best that we can be!