Coaches & Managers,
SPRING SEASON UPPER HOUSE REGISTRATION TIMELINE
December 9th: All teams have already stated their “intent to play” or not.
February 1: $200 due to “San Francisco Vikings League” to hold your spot.
Feb 6th: Annual General Meeting for all Vikings-registered teams.
February 24: roster change/paperwork deadline. If no changes, do nothing. If you have roster changes, email the office. To drop a player, you only need to forward an email from the parent – you don’t have to fill out the drop form.
March 7th: Mandatory Coach meeting and additional fees due to cover the cost of referees – $300 for U10/U11, $360 for U12 and above.
March 17th: Season begins
May 20th: Last day of season
THE UPPER HOUSE MERGER WITH CCSL
We had an open meeting on December 14th to discuss the planned merger with CCSL. Attending coaches and managers were welcoming of the planned merger and the feedback from others has been mostly positive.
Just a few years ago, there was a very large gap between Upper House and the select soccer “travel” leagues on the peninsula, Redwood League and Abronzino League.
Since then, the peninsula leagues merged into CCSL. Last year, Bronze divisions became numerous in CCSL Coast, and this year, there are both Bronze North and Copper North divisions in every age group, with teams from South San Francisco, San Bruno, Burlingame, and San Carlos.
Meanwhile, Upper House teams have gained strength and number, and many of them have significant tournament experience around Northern California, including against CCSL Coast teams. Upper House teams have also learned to play away games in South San Francisco and in Marin, and they have not found it inconvenient.
Upper House thrived partly because, over the last several years, SF Rec & Park allowed very few teams to play outside the city. SF Rec & Park is now lifting its restriction on teams traveling. At this point, we believe, it makes sense to give up our independence and merge Upper House into CCSL as well. What we gain is the assurance that teams will always have good competition. Starting for next fall’s season, the plan is for San Francisco competitive teams to be seeded and placed into CCSL’s brackets, usually a North bracket in Bronze or Copper.
Historically, “travel” meant driving down the peninsula, sometimes quite far. We don’t expect this to be the case for most teams. A prototypical CCSL bracket has six teams, which would play the five other opponents both home and away. So you already have half your games at home. If you are in a North bracket with two other SF teams, then that would be two more “away” games in SF as well. Your remaining three away games would be with North opponents on the upper peninsula.
Stronger teams that advance to more elite brackets would still face long-distance travel for away games, if they are the only SF team in that bracket.
In short, for the vast majority of teams, playing in CCSL won’t be much different for you than it is now, as long as there are other SF teams in the bracket with you.
At the end of a season, teams can be promoted or relegated.
We will be testing scheduling/field assignments with CCSL in the spring because our goal is for San Francisco fields to be used at maximum capacity.
TRYOUTS
Please do not solely rely on Vikings-hosted tryouts to get a look at players this winter. Invite players out to winter practices to evaluate them. We will host information about all the clubs and teams on our website very soon. We will provide a small amount of information on each team and a web link to your team site. We will also be emailing all Vikings families about travel soccer tryouts.
SF Rec & Park has allocated two fields at Crocker to be used for tryouts on March 10th. These fields were not allocated to the teams – they were allocated to the city’s kids, to the player pool. Rec & Park has asked us to run tryouts very differently this year.
Rather than each team having its own field and time, each age grouping will get 90 minutes each. All the kids in that age group who are looking for a team will try out, collectively, at the same time. All the player contact information will be shared by all Upper House coaches who volunteer to participate. Players and their families will be given information about all the Upper House teams. After the tryout, you can contact families to ask them to come to your practices for further evaluation.
Do not send your current players who you are keeping to the tryouts – the tryouts are for players who do not have a team, or who want to look for a new team.
I know this is a bit confusing, so we’ll let that news settle in and we’ll email you again with more details in a couple days. We’ll be asking first for the basic information to feature your team on our web site.
Sincerely,
Po Bronson
VP, Upper House
