Lovell and Cowley recreation districts run soccer program for local kids

During the last part of the summer, the Lovell Recreation District teamed up with the Rocky Recreation District to run a soccer program for incoming pre-K through eighth-grade students. 

Divisions for this program were split up into Pre-K-1st, 2nd-3rd, 4th-5th and 6th-8th.

The season for rec soccer was short, only lasting three weeks from finding out teams to the last games.

“We had a fantastic time coaching middle school soccer this summer,” coach Janet Prosser said about her and her co-coach/son JR Prosser.

Though there were some learning curves for the Prossers through coaching the middle school division, they were able to work through them to have a great season with the middle schoolers. 

The first was not knowing what drills would best benefit the team. JR played soccer for Powell during his high school years and had many ideas for drills, but he was worried they were too geared toward a higher level of soccer than what the youth on his team were ready for. JR was able to modify these drills to be beneficial to his athletes, wherever they fell within the wide variety of soccer experience.

“Each of the youth were so interested in learning and improving,” JR said. “They worked so hard and were successful with each challenge we threw at them.”

 The next problem they encountered was the small number of athletes that signed up. 

“Because we only had 13 youth in the middle school age bracket in Lovell, and Cowley did not have a middle school age team this year, we had to split out 13 youth into two teams so that they could play competitive games against each other during the season,” Janet explained. “All the games were exciting for the youth and well attended by parents and relatives as fans.”

The season went out with a bang with the middle school division playing a parents versus kids game, where older siblings, parents or other adults that came to support were welcomed to participate in a game against the athletes.

“Ever since mentioning the possibility of a youth versus parent game at practice, the youth talked nonstop about when it would be,” Janet said. “By the end of that game, each team had 15 or more players on the field, and the game lasted well past the planned time frame of one hour.”