February 15 is the day after Valentine’s Day, which is just another ordinary day for most, but for the Boundary Youth Soccer Association, it’s the deadline for registration.
The league is in its inaugural campaign and if there aren’t enough kids signed up, the association won’t be able to go ahead for the spring, as the association needs the funds and time to train coaches amongst other things.
Having your child signed up in youth sport has many benefits, which in turn, leads to other benefits.
Playing a sport such as soccer will afford children the opportunity to be active and thus will allow them to build stamina and improve physical fitness.
The more children practice and work at something, the better they become and with increased skills and adeptness in a sport comes confidence.
Winning and losing shouldn’t be the emphasis of any youth sport but with competition someone does have to get the W and someone the L and even this has benefits.
Losing a game will probably be hard for some children but learning to take a loss will be beneficial in the long run.
Two clichés come to mind in terms of losing; “You can’t win ’em all,” and “You have to learn to lose before you win.”
The same translate to life, as children will have the opportunity to deal with adversity, with losses and the sooner they can deal with them, the better.
By far the most important aspect of youth soccer, and all youth sport for that matter, is the social aspect.
Some children are shy and seem uncomfortable with social interaction. Some children will hide behind a parent when you talk to them.
Having children enrolled in sport will, essentially, force them to interact with teammates and coaches and eventually, along with the aforementioned confidence, they should be able to interact with others comfortably.
Signing your kids up for soccer and athletics has a number of other benefits besides enabling them to get some exercise.
It will help them in many other aspects of life, including the social and the mental.