Dear SSA Members,

With yesterday’s announcement by the President of a set of phased guidelines to allow for a gradual reopening of the country, I wanted to update you all on the process as it relates to the youth soccer community’s ability to get all our players back out onto the soccer fields and active again. From a general perspective, the process involves input from a variety of entities, so I wanted to look to give you all a sense of what the route map looks like for us and all the other youth soccer organizations in the state in terms of how we eventually get to what could be close to something resembling the normality that we are all hoping for.

1. First and foremost, our season restart will very much be dependent on instructions from the Office of the Governor given that the guidelines indicate that state governors will play a large role in determining when a state moves from one phase to the next. In this respect, we (and every other youth sports organization in the state) will be waiting on word from the Office of the Governor regarding which phase our state is in at any particular moment in time, and how that impacts our ability to return to play and what form that play will take as a means to ensure everyone’s safety and well-being. 

2. Tied into this of course is the fact that we will also rely on concurrent approval to restart our currently-suspended programs from our various national, regional, and state governing and administrative bodies, especially for our Recreational and Select programs that have inter-league play with other youth soccer clubs in the state and beyond. Given that many of the governing and administrative bodies that we register our players through had an early-May restart date in mind, we are anticipating more communication from them in the coming days with respect to a revision of their plans and to what degree the soccer season will be extended into the summer months to accommodate a hypothetical restart to some form of league play.  

3. Additionally, we will also be communicating with our City and County Parks and Rec partners where applicable to outline a plan for when we will be able to access their fields again given that our current understanding is that the decision to reopen these facilities rests with each individual county or city entity, not with the governor’s office. As of this moment, APS is not allowing use of their fields by renters until May 31st. If this changes and the virus starts to clear up, could potentially get onto the fields earlier but for now, that is the expectation.

In summary, the restart process will have a lot of moving parts, and all these parts have to be working in concert with each other for our players to get back out onto the fields and playing again. We will continue to share updates with our members as and when we receive official word from the various entities involved regarding a restart, and we sincerely hope that we will soon see more ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ that will be of encouragement to our players as they navigate these unprecedented times.

Sincerely,

Sean Chamberlain

SSA Operations Manager

[email protected]