I don't often write reviews, but I felt that fellow parents may benefit from our experience:
Just as in any other type of program, the experience at FYSC is highly dependent on your "teacher". In the case of FYSC, the coaches are all high school kids. My understanding is that they are volunteers. But whether they are paid or not, our experience with them has been that they are poorly trained and ill-equipped for the task. They are friendly and well-meaning, but their inability to guide and teach the children.. This is our 2nd program with them, and we are withdrawing our son 3 weeks into the program.
Our first program with them was the FYSC U6, which was quite fun for my son. Hence, we signed up for the second program. Where the first time, there were a lot of kids around my son's size, age, and skill level, the second program we signed up for was U8. We were concerned about our 6-year old joining the U8 program, but they said that's the youngest program they had. (Where did everyone from the previous U6 program go?)
Playing with bigger kids would be fine, I think, if the coaches would guide, encourage, and teach the kids. However, after a brief period of drills learning 1 or 2 skills, most of each session consists of scrimmages, which is essentially letting little kids run around "playing" soccer. In the matches I watched my son play, there were 1 or 2 very dominant kids who were bigger, athletic, and skilled, and getting a lot of action. Then there are maybe 4 kids who are your average kids playing soccer. And then there are about 2 kids who are smaller, less aggressive, and less skilled. My son is one of these, and where he used to joyfully get into the fray in the U6 program, in U8 he always hangs back and only kicks the ball when it comes to him. He can't properly articulate it to me, but I'm sure he is intimidated. The coaches either don't notice, don't care, or don't know how to handle this situation. Because of this, my son has gone from loving soccer to dreading it. Perhaps my son is just not meant to be a soccer player. But with the lack of proper guidance and teaching at FYSC, we probably won't be finding out here.
We'll be looking for other programs to keep our son active and engaged. read more