Puget Sound Slammers

Puget Sound Slammers Winter Academy Parents:

We hope you and your children have enjoyed our Winter Academy and that your child’s soccer skills have improved, no matter what skill level they started with. I know our coaches, board members and club volunteers have enjoyed putting the Academy on and working with you and your kids and we appreciate you giving us that opportunity.

Many of you have asked us “What’s next?” In order to have that conversation with you, for parents that are new to our Club, we would like to have a parents meeting Monday night about 5:30 – 5:45, right after we get the kids on the field and working on their soccer skills. Our Director of Player Development Jeff Lenherr will visit with you on our upcoming Spring Academy and some team playing opportunities that may be available this spring, depending upon your child’s age. (If you can’t make the 5:30 meeting, don’t worry, come a little early to pick your child up and we will be available to share the information with you then.)

You will also have the opportunity of watching Ziad Khoury, the Puget Sound Slammers Director of Curriculum, co-founder of Slammers FC in Southern California, and one of the premier youth soccer coaches in the nation, having won multiple National Championships as a coach and being named the Nike National Youth Soccer Coach of the Year multiple times. Ziad is absolutely amazing to watch, and we are fortunate to have him advising and training our coaches on his curriculum and coaching techniques.

We look forward to seeing you!

Dave Warren

President

Puget Sound Slammers

Hello PSS families,

We are very excited to announce that Ziad Khoury from the Slammers FC program will be here next week to provide training for our coaches and players. Ziad has been named the Nike National Coach of the year, has coached several National Championship teams and is one of the top youth coaches in the nation – as well as being the Puget Sound Slammers Director of Curriculum.

In order to all the teams the chance to train with Ziad, we have put together a team training schedule for next week, which may vary from your normal training nights. Here is the schedule we have set up for Ziad.

Monday:

5:30 to 6:30 pm Winter Academy

6:30 to 7:45 pm Girls U-12 and U-13

Tuesday:

5:30 to 7:00 pm Girls U-11 and U-12

7:00 to 8:30 pm Girls U-15 and Boys U-15

Wednesday:

5:30 to 7:00 pm Girls U-13

7:00 to 8:30 pm Boys U-15

Thursday:

5:30 to 7:00 pm Girls U-11 and U-12

7:00 to 8:30 pm Girls U-15

We encourage parents to come and watch the training sessions as Ziad does a magnificent job of training and you can see the curriculum is all about.

Club Update:

We have been very busy over the last month working on many of the items we announced in our last newsletter and also items that were communicated to us through recent feedback from club members.

Coaches Manuals:

The coaches manuals have been completed and handed out to most of the coaches. This is something the club and coaches have been asking for and now it is a reality. It has all the information needed for our coaches to continue to improve their coaching abilities and manage their teams in a more productive manner. They will be updated monthly as new information becomes available.

Winter Academy:

The winter academy has been an incredible success with approximately 140 participants. The turnout was far more than we anticipated, so it was learning experience for our club and coaches to manage this many players. Next year we will make adjustments, so that we will have a higher coach per player ratio, which will allow us to provide more individual attention to participants..

Teams:

Most teams are just beginning their Spring season and we hope to have all the schedules available on the website this season. It seems the training has been going well for the teams with the conversations we have had with the other coaches in the club.

Looking forward, we are working on the following items:

We are working on finalizing a system in which we are using the curriculum that Walid Khoury, the Puget Sound Slammers Director of Coaching and Ziad can provide us and being able to pass it on to our coaches and players. Getting the coaching manuals was a big first step. In addition, the arrival of Ziad for 4 days will be great training for our coaches and we will be working on videotaping his Slammers FC sessions, so that our coaches will be able to watch training sessions first hand.

We plan on videotaping many of our games this Spring season, so we can review our teams’ progress with PSS, Walid and Ziad and get input from them as to what should be the focus on the individual players and teams.

We will be looking to have parent meetings again with the individual teams to get your feedback on how we can continue to provide a great soccer experience for our players.

We are hoping to begin goalkeeper training in the next week. Our keeper trainer had surgery and is hoping to be back ready to go in the next week. We will be sending out emails to the coaches when the goalkeeper training will be available as soon as we hear.

Last, we will be working on a tryout schedule, which is anticipated to be towards the end of April, except for boys high school, which will be at the end of February. We also hope to announce fees for next year, which are anticipated to go DOWN. We are working really hard to provide a quality premier soccer experience for a reasonable price.

As always we love to hear feedback whether it is positive or negative so please

Do not hesitate to express your concerns or comments to Jeff Lenherr jeff@lenherrsurveying.com or Walker John walker@seabrookwa.com

Thank you for all your support during this time of transition.