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Soccer Club of Guildford

Year Founded: 1973
Where located: Guilford, Connecticut (population 23,000)
Teams: 14-16 select teams (U11-U19), recreational teams, microsoccer
Members: 1200 youth players
Distance from Needham, MA: 130 miles: 2 hours driving time
Website: http://www.guilfordsoccer.org

Soccer Club of Guilford has attended the Annual Needham Invitational Memorial Day Tournament every year for at least 27 years, the first team attending in 1978. But they do know that the Needham Invitational is the only event that the Soccer Club of Guilford attends at which all of their boys’ and girls’ youth teams that fit within age and skill level categories will participate together. And everyone recalls that the Guilford teams have come every year since their first tournament.

In the early days of coming to the Needham Invitational, teams were proud to reach semifinals or finals. But these days, it’s not uncommon for the Guilford teams to walk away with championships. In the 2004 Tournament, for example, boys’ U15 Division 1 and girls’ U12 D2 teams both went home as tournament champions. In 2005, Guilford will be represented by its usual strong contingent of 14 teams. Watch for the sea green and white colors of Guilford teams throughout the weekend!

Mike Schwartz, a past president of the club who has also served in various positions on its Board of Directors and as a recreation league volunteer for the past 14 years, was kind enough to agree to be interviewed for this feature. Mike’s son Chris honed his soccer skills through the Soccer Club of Guilford, and is a freshman varsity starter this year at Needham’s own Babson College. In fact, according to father Mike, Chris’ annual attendance at the Needham Invitational, and the opportunity it provided to visit many nearby college campuses and meet college coaches, played a significant role in his choice of schools when his time came to find the right fit for academic and collegiate athletic goals.

Mike says that the Memorial Day Invitational hosted by Needham Soccer Club is a nice fit for Soccer Club of Guilford because both clubs encourage playing opportunities for all skill levels, and for both boys and girls. This allows all the Guilford teams to attend, which helps to create a spirit of club identity and pride at the tournament. All Guilford teams and coaches stay together in the same hotel and support each other by attending many of each others games over the weekend. It is also quite common for large groups of club parents, coaches, players and sibling to get together for meals and social events during the weekend.

According to Mike, the Needham Invitational is always one of the best-run tournaments his club attends. Tournament communications have always been excellent, and tournament managers always seem to “go the extra mile” to make sure that teams get in all of their games, even when unpredictable New England weather doesn’t cooperate. Mike was particularly complementary of long-time Tournament Director David Harris, who he described as one of those rare individuals who always “remains amazingly calm under pressure.”

Some History on Soccer Club of Guilford

The Soccer Club of Guilford owes its formation to Fred Owsiany and his wife, owners of Guilford Sporting Goods, who provided the initiative to form the first town club soccer teams in 1973. Guilford teams have won the State Cup several times, played in the Cup Regionals and in the early days of Premier in CT were one of the only town based clubs playing in the Premier league. The club operates by sanction of the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association (CSJA). In the early days of the club, there were few venues, other than the Needham Invitational Tournament, where girls’ soccer teams could compete, so Guilford began hosting an annual All-Girls Tournament called the Guilford Soccerfest, usually right around the July 4 weekend each summer. This year’s edition, its 26th, welcomes girls’ teams from U-10 to U-19.

Guilford is located on the Connecticut coastline of Long Island Sound, about midway between Providence, RI and New York City and 20 miles east of New Haven, CT (home of Yale University). Most youth players in the club still come from the Guilford area proper. When asked how a town of 23,000 manages to keep 1,200 young people actively involved in a club soccer program, Mike laughed and said “I guess you could say that Guilford is a definitely a soccer town.” In fact, until very recently even the club’s premier teams consisted entirely of kids from the same town of Guilford, unlike most Connecticut premier level teams, which draw players from a much larger geographic region.

Soccer Club of Guilford’s simple philosophy is to keep every kid who is interested in soccer playing the game. Their training programs begin with Microsoccer camps for 6-8 year olds. Youth players begin to branch into skill-based levels around age 11, when the first formal tryouts are held. The club’s year-round programs and access to indoor facilities have greatly improved skills and conditioning of scholastic soccer programs, as well. Indeed, the 13 State Soccer Championships held by the Guilford boy’s high school varsity teams is the highest number held by any team in the state.

Like all successful youth soccer programs, adult volunteers are the secret to long-term success. Mike credits a large group of adult volunteers who given generously of their time over many years in support of travel and recreational teams, clinics, and training activities. Fairly recently, the club has begun to use paid coaches for the premier level travel teams, with volunteer support for team administrative functions. This has freed up the time of the professional coaches so that they can concentrate on skill training and game management.

Soccer Club of Guilford is also very proud of the many program alumni who have gone on to play in college. A complete listing is available at: http://eteamz.active.com/guilfordsoccer/news/index.cfm?cat=213684, but the list includes several players in Ivy League schools including Brown, Harvard, Yale, as well as other Division I schools such as Syracuse, UConn, and Boston College. And the list goes on and on with New England institutions like Bowdoin, Babson, Colby, Bentley, UNH, as well as more distant campuses like Bucknell, Michigan, and Denver.

Guilford teams look forward to a special rivalry at the Needham Invitational with the Galway Rovers Soccer Club from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. One of the founders of the Rovers club is the brother of a former Soccer Club of Guilford Travel Director. And, as we all know, brothers will be brothers!

But the longest friendly rivalry, over a quarter century to date, has pitted the teams from the Soccer Club of Guilford against those from the Needham Soccer Club. Like Guilford, Needham teams recruit primarily from within the town. The populations and demographics of Guilford and Needham are remarkably similar and both towns have long-standing and successful non-profit youth soccer clubs. Guilford parents probably played against Needham parents in the 1970s. And hopefully, Guilford will keep coming back to the Boston area every Memorial Day, so that the children of the current players will be battling it out on the turf 25 years from now.