To: Cleveland Community Track Project
Portland Youth Soccer Association (PYSA)
is a league comprised of 26 community clubs. Of the
26 clubs, 10 clubs are on the east side of town comprising
some 3000+ youth players from kindergarten through
8th grade. In addition to these members, there is
a component of High School recreational players who
are not on school teams.
Because land and fields are in short
supply, PYSA opens their Spring League up to clubs
located in suburbs like Wilsonville, Woodbum, Hood
River, and outlying areas. These clubs can only participate
in PYSA if they come with an available field to offer
to the program. More and more, Portland youth are
traveling to these areas to experience a Spring season
because of lack of facilities in our own community.
Soccer, as a sport, has increased in
numbers beyond anyone's expectations. With the women's
world cup hosted here and the visibility of the sport,
it has become the sport of choice. We have not been
productive in convincing the community that soccer
needs the same priority as other sports year round.
Portland Youth Soccer administers a program to approximately
6,000 youth city wide and Oregon Youth Soccer Association,
our parent association, services approximately 60,000
youth state wide.
Oregon Youth Soccer Association applied
to host the 2005 regionals here in the State. The
site to host this event was Tualatin Hills - because
there, as well as most west side facilities, they
could affectively facilitate an event of this size.
This is unfortunate for our community - along with
Tualatin Hills being chosen as a prime facility, their
local merchants, hotels, etc. benefited from the revenue
generated from this event. Events, even local tournaments
involving our youth must seek the use of facilities
in the suburbs in order to enjoy the sport of soccer.
I do know that the teams that travel here to compete,
will still need practice facilities. Hopefully, we
can have a venue for this with the Cleveland Community
Track proposal.
There is a large contingency of volunteers,
city-wide and state-wide, committed to supporting
efforts such as this to assure the youth in our respective
communities are afforded all opportunities to become
our future.
Respectfully,
Cheri Berry
President -- Portland Youth Soccer Association
Secretary -- Oregon Youth Soccer Association
www.pysa.net
