June 9, 2010
Dear SYSL Parents:
On behalf of the board of directors, I’d like to thank all of you for the remarkable response to our Parent Satisfaction Survey. In addition, the board would like to express its heartfelt gratitude to volunteer Steve Labkoff, who committed the many hours of work needed to both create the survey and to help analyze the results. Those results are now available on our website (www.stamfordsoccer.org) for you to examine at your leisure. We encourage you to take a look. The purpose of this letter is to discuss some of the highlights of the survey, and to begin to address those issues revealed by your responses.
By way of background, over 500 families took the time to provide us with feedback. There were 512 families who answered some part of the survey and 426 completed the survey for a response rate of 43% and a total completion rate of 35% - astounding! With this response rate, we have a very strong representation of the feelings of our families. Often, efforts of this nature see a response rate well below 10%, so the results may not be representative of real sentiment. With this level of response, you can rest assured that you have been heard, loud and clear!
One of the objectives of the survey was to gauge your feedback on the things we are doing right as well as to better understand those areas that need improvement. To that end, when we looked at the numeric analysis of our survey, we got some very powerful signals that for the most part, you are relatively happy with the league’s offerings. We had an overwhelmingly positive result in all domains measured with no question scoring below a 3.0 (3.0 = “met expectations” or “satisfied” for most questions). This was gratifying to not only the board, but to the referees, our friends at Quality Touch Soccer Academy and to our volunteers.
We also asked four open-ended, free text questions for you to provide us with feedback that was not captured in the numerically scored survey questions. Those results were very telling. They surfaced many issues that continue to be areas for improvement. I’d like to review the top items that came up from both the House Division and the Travel Division.
The top issues that were noted by parents of the House Division who chose to respond (n=158 out of 340 House respondents) were as follows:
- Clean up Cummings Park fields from goose droppings for the youngest players or move their games to a different location and general grass field conditions elsewhere
- Improve communications between the League and parents and between coaches and parents. This also includes transparency around league activities and financial transactions
- Team assignments: Why some kids seem to get put on the same teams season after season; appropriate distribution of strong players as to not stack certain teams with strong talent making them “untouchable” by other teams; why can’t my kid play with his/her friends.
- Coaching issues (need for improved, consistent coaching of house division)
For the Travel Division the top issues were:
- Comments around coaching (requests for more paid coaches and less parent coaches, changes to the coaching structure, or coaching curriculum)
- Feedback about Quality Touch Soccer Academy (both positive and negative)
- Transparency around Fees
- Communications issues between SYSL and parents
- Team Make up (which kids are selected for which teams, how the decisions are made around who is selected to play for the Travel team)
The board wants to assure you that all of the comments were reviewed (not just those outlined above). Please remember that SYSL is predominately a volunteer organization. Just because we know about a given issue does not mean that we can fix the issue overnight, or even over a year. We rely on our volunteers to help us identify and solve problems. There is a limited amount of time and energy that can be brought to bear on these and other issues if we don’t have enough volunteers. The more of you who volunteer the more issues that can be addressed.
The board will act on these issues where possible. As a start, I am pleased to report that the board is already making progress on several of the issues noted above.
Cummings Park: The board heard definitively that the goose dropping problem at Cummings Park is of critical concern. We have already moved the youngest players to different venues for the spring season (Roxbury Elementary and Scofieldtown MS). At the same time, we will engage the Parks Dept. in collaborating on finding a humane solution to the goose infestation. Neither we nor the city as a whole can afford to surrender precious playing fields to the geese. Suffice it to say that we have heard your disgust and frustration with the conditions there, and this is thus being put to the top of our priority list.
Clear, transparent communications: This season, SYSL launched a new, revised League Website. This new site provides a much simplified user interface, a search feature as well as links to additional resources, and other capabilities that our previous site did not allow. It is our hope that this will go a long way to helping to inform parents about what’s going on in the league in every division. The new site has been in development for most of the past year and will become the primary gateway to the workings of the League.
In addition to the website, SYSL has also launched a new newsletter called “The Juggler”. We hope that this newsletter will compliment the website and provide you with timely news and information about SYSL activities at every level.
Finally, after learning from the survey how big an issue our league communications is to our members, Steve Labkoff stepped up again and volunteered to serve as our webmaster and editor of “The Juggler”. Steve will be our first-ever, and is answering a call that we have been making for years. Thanks again, Steve!
Transparency in financial dealings: The board will make a concerted effort to provide clear information about the various workings of the League. For example, we will provide a breakdown of where fees are being spent. We will shortly post how registration fees are spent. We also have data on the comparable costs of other towns around southwestern Connecticut. We will make that research available as well for comparison sake. But remember, with this as with all issues of transparent communication, it requires two active participants. We will publish as much information as we can, but you have to read it! Once you do, we will be open to feedback.
Team Makeup: Here, it is important that everyone learn and understand our policies. Basically, they can be summed up as follows:
House Division
Every time your child moves up a division, the majority of his or her team will be deliberately broken up. This is done for many reasons, but a few examples here will help.
Because the League is a citywide league, we have found it enormously beneficial to expose kids from every corner of Stamford to each other. It has also proven important to let kids play for different coaches over time, to expose them to different personalities and styles and to allow more kids to get a turn playing for the best or most popular coaches.
Unfortunately, this policy was also necessary to avoid “dynasty building” by grownups, where teams are gradually strengthened and become unbeatable. That just places the wrong emphasis on the children’s game, and leads to all kinds of unfairness.
Travel Division
This division places more emphasis on competition after the developmental levels, and requires greater commitment. Because the idea is to build a winning team, players may remain on the same teams for years. Tryouts are held regularly, and no one is ever guaranteed a spot on any given team, no matter how long he or she may have played on it. Again, the majority of travel players remain together year after year, but there are always some kids who lose a spot or who may see a reduction in playing time from season to season. And, where there are A and B teams involved, the emphasis is always on maximizing the strength of the A team, meaning they can virtually draft players from the B teams as the need arises. (Remember, this is a brief summary; please read the full policy on the web site to understand it completely.)
For the Travel Division, we are sharing our results with Jason Segovia, president of Quality Touch Soccer Academy. QTSA is our long time partner in managing the Travel Division. There were several comments that were relevant to Jason and his organization. Jason has made a commitment to review these findings and to dig deeper into the issues identified. It is noteworthy that several of the parents’ comments suggested that Quality Touch objectively evaluate each player. Jason’s group actually initiated that process last season, and every player was assessed.
Issues raised concerning parent coaches will be reviewed. In some cases our hands are tied as once again, this is a volunteer organization. If teams want to hire a professional coach, it is within the purview of the team and its manager – however that does incur additional expense in what is already an expensive undertaking. We have, and will continue to, increase the training available to parent coaches, and we do reimburse pre-approved parent coaches the expense of licensing courses, But it’s important to always bear in mind two things: your volunteer parent coach is doing the best he or she can; they need as much support as you can offer. And there are many people who cannot afford the higher expenses of paid coaches. If an individual team wants that level of coaching, it is the responsibility of that team to find a way to cover the costs of those who cannot afford it. For this reason, many teams do their own fundraising.
We will also make an effort to provide more clear feedback about Travel Team tryout processes and post announcements in a more open and timely fashion on the SYSL website as well as in local newspapers.
This is your league. We need your help to make it the best possible experience for your children. If you have a concern or a new idea, please know that it will carry much more weight if it comes with a solution and with a volunteer to implement it. The board of directors is currently only 10 members, so it would be unrealistic to expect that such a small group can do more and more. We have communicated one thing very clearly over the past several years: we need more volunteers. With more of us working for the same end, the sky’s the limit as to where we can take this league.
Remember, you can review all the results from the survey by downloading a PDF copy from the SYSL website.
Thank you for your participation and understanding.
Regards,
Mike Crocco and the SYSL Board