Beyond soccers operates, runs and promotes long term, quality soccer experiences for low-income youth and creates a positive environment that builds self confidence, develops leadership and life skills and promotes healthy living for youth

Soccer , Sports

Travel soccer teams:our travel program, where participants benefit from our year-round, on and off the field sport and health priorities, supported 8 teams for league competition in the essex county youth soccer league. These 186 middle and high school students, ages 8-18, benefited from a minimum of 26-weeks of programs, including 6. 5 hours of weekly trainings, games and fitness activities in fall 2016 and spring 2017, as well as twice weekly futsal & fitness programs between january and march 2017. A highlight was tournament participation in the lynn, north andover and danvers memorial day and columbus day tournaments, where kids gain important exposure experiences in a fun and competitive environment outside the city limits. We were also thrilled to have new balance sponsor 100% of our travel uniforms in september 2016, which helped defray equipment and apparel costs. summer programs:our programs reached more than 2,000 kids during the 2016/2017 fiscal year. In summer 2016, 312 kids benefited from challenging and enriching camps and activities, made possible through 22 community partnerships. Further, most of these kids received 3 weeks of program access at a small fraction of the cost of similar opportunities. As part of our leadership focus we hired 12 beyond soccer high school and college students as summer coach-mentors. These high school and college beneficiaries, chosen for demonstrated leadership attributes, coordinated and led almost 500 hours of summer activities, including programs at the merrimack courts housing projects with nonprofit partner, si se puede, our 6th consecutive soccer & wellness camp at our new youth dedicated soccer field, a 6-week cooking course for beyond soccer parents and kids in partnership with cooking matters, and our inaugural travel soccer academy for middle school travel players in early july lawrence public school program:our school-day soccer & wellness program in the lawrence public schools represented the majority of our 2016/2017 program reach, at 71%, or 1,324 students attending the guilmette, wetherbee, bruce, arlington, lahey, parthum and hennessy elementary and middle schools. Community partners, boys & girls club, ymca and community group, facilitated staff contracts, program space and student transportation during the school-year to ensure our mission to introduce elementary kids to quality sport, nutrition education and team building programs was met. We also focused staffing and curriculum resources on the same public-school populations as prior years, except for the arlington elementary school, which was a new school setting for us in september 2016. This focus guaranteed more consistent and regular influence (i. E. Programs reach the same students in multiple years) and further, it guaranteed our influence in school populations with greatest need and growing soccer interest (i. E. Schools located in lower income north lawrence as part of our focus on academics, we ran our first after-school tutoring program during the 2016/2017 school year. This program assisted a cohort of middle and high school students on our travel soccer teams with academic need on tuesday and wednesday afternoons. It was led and organized by two retired teachers, with more than 60 years of combined, public school teaching experience. We also partnered with merrimack college community service department for additional tutoring resources. In addition, we launched the city's first collaborative lawrence sports leadership academy (lsla) for 124 middle and high school youth with lawrence high school and everyone's a player. This camp was developed because of the tremendous need for quality and affordable camps that can improve sports participation rates and keep kids busy and engaged over the often-sedentary summer months. After one year of planning, this 2-week camp provided campers with access to 4 different sports, speed & agility training, nutrition education, leadership development and t