Men's Soccer | 5/7/2012 11:57:00 AM
It’s important for small colleges to give something back to the community. One way McPherson College does that is through the McPherson Youth Soccer Academy.
Hosted by both Doug Quint, head men’s soccer coach, and Rob Talley, head women’s soccer coach, nearly 200 McPherson youth ages 3 through
12 participated in this year’s program that concluded April 26.
Quint has put on the Academy since he started at McPherson College in 2003. It was something he did as head soccer coach at Hutchinson High School prior to coming here.
“I look at it as a way of tying the youth into the college a little bit more and tying our college in with the youth, from a community standpoint,” he said.
Quint has taken the McPherson Recreation Commission’s spring soccer program and put it in an academy-type setting. With between 175 and
200 kids each year, the Academy runs two days a week, an hour each day, for five weeks at Grant Complex.
Participants are put on teams by age and gender, and play three-on-three on small fields. A McPherson College soccer player is assigned to every six kids — usually a men’s player with boys and a women’s player with girls — for the entire academy. This was the first time Quint had ever had the same player with the same group of kids for the entire academy.
“It got to where there were some pretty strong relationships between the kids and the players,” he said. “As the kids got to know the players better they listened and behaved better, and had a lot more fun because they got to know their coach.”
One of Quint’s primary goals each year is for the Bulldogs to give back to the game that has given them so much.
“It puts them in a situation where they get to work with kids of different ages and really get to know some kids and parents in the community,” he said.
His other goal is to teach the kids what he calls “super skills” to further their individual development through soccer at a smaller scale.
“You never know if they’re going to want to play some day in a club,” he said. “But really, all the skills we teach them are for any sport they play.”
But the bottom line is to have fun.
“I think this is the one thing we can do in a short span of time where we touch a lot of lives and touch a lot of people,” Quint said. “To be able to sit back and watch them enjoy it puts a smile on my face.”
