Happy New Year from the Berkeley Heights Youth Soccer Club's Pre-Travel Development Academy!

PTDA returns Friday, April 16, 2010. Sessions will be from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM on Friday afternoons at Passaic River Park, Berkeley Heights, NJ. There will be 8 sessions in the spring season.

Check back for more news in February.

PTDA News - December, 2009

Hello everyone,

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Thank you to everyone who completed the PTDA survey, which is now closed. We had 36 responses; based on these, we are making plans for the spring season of the Pre-Travel Development Academy.

A reminder: your fee covered both the spring and fall seasons, so no additional fees will be required.

Based on your responses, here are the plans for the fall:

- Over 75% of you wanted to keep the sessions the same: 45 minutes of UK Elite training followed by games supervised by UK Elite. So the sessions will be run the same way this spring.

- Over 90% of you thought Friday afternoons were either the best time or an acceptable choice. Both Saturday mornings and Saturday afternoons were bad times for significant numbers of people. We will, therefore, keep PTDA on Friday afternoons.

- Many of you are interested in having a choice between in-town PTDA and travel teams in Third Grade. The club is going to consider ways to accommodate both options starting in the fall of 2010; however, players who want to travel will absolutely have that option starting in Third Grade.

- Because we will stay with Friday afternoons for PTDA, we know we will have problems getting parent coaches. We're looking at other ways to start recruiting for the coaches we'll need for third grade travel soccer.

- Many of your players plan on playing baseball this spring. We are committed to working with both the Berkeley Heights PAL and the Mountainside PAL to minimize conflicts.

- Our tentative start date for this spring is Friday, April 16.

Look for more newsl before the holiday break with an updated schedule. Happy Holidays!

About the PTDA:

- Equipment: Shin Guards are REQUIRED!!! Your player MUST wear shin guards at every PTDA session, or they will be asked to sit out - no exceptions. Soccer cleats are preferred, but sneakers are OK. No baseball cleats! For the first session, wear shorts and a t-shirt; we'll have t-shirts for the kids later this season.

- Bring something to drink. A BHYSC rule is that we do not tolerate litter on any of the fields.

- Directions to Passaic River Park: http://bhysc.home.att.net/directions/passaicriver.html

- Cancelations and make-ups: Cancelations will be determined by the BHYSC. If the Recreation Department closes the fields, PTDA will also be canceled. Please call the Recreation Department Hotline at (908) 464-0625 for updates. Make-up sessions will be held later in the season; times and dates will be posted at the PTDA website (see above).

Questions and Answers:

- What about Saturday morning soccer? Are the programs run by the same group? The Berkeley Heights Youth Soccer Club runs the PTDA; the Berkeley Heights PAL runs Saturday morning soccer. These are separate programs, but we encourage PTDA players to participate in Saturday morning soccer if they are able.

- Is this "travel" soccer? Will we have Saturday travel games like last year? There is still some confusion about this: this is a new program that is replacing travel soccer for U7 & U8 players. Many clubs in New Jersey have discontinued travel soccer at the U8 level, and have instead developed a "pre-travel" program to get players ready for travel soccer starting at U9 (3rd Grade). We have developed the PTDA in response to this change, and as a way to help boys and girls become more successful travel players. The games in the PTDA are 4v4 and 5v5, small-field games, with lots of opportunities for touches on the ball. All games and practices are supervised by professional coaches from UK Elite.

Tryouts for U9 travel soccer will be in the spring. If your child is interested in playing travel soccer in 3rd Grade, the PTDA is for him or her!

Visit regularly for more information.