April 18, 2020

To all Methacton United/FC Montco families,

With everything we are facing during these difficult times, soccer has appropriately taken a backseat. As we pen this club wide letter, we know many families are facing challenges on multiple fronts and it is our hope that you are able to stay safe and healthy through all of this.

At the club level, we are diligently working to understand and adapt to the daily flow of new information. This includes interpreting the guidance from our regulatory body, Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association (EPYSA), as well as state and federal guidelines. To draw a soccer analogy, it currently feels like trying to score on a moving goal. We greatly appreciate your patience to date and ask that you continue to bear with us as the situation evolves over the coming days and weeks. If you have a specific question, please contact me directly at president@fcmontco.org and I will connect you with the appropriate club contact for your question.

While there are still many uncertainties, we wanted to comment on our various programs to help address some of the questions you may have.

Spring Recreational / Intramural Season

As was communicated with the last two update emails, we are still hoping to conduct some type of intramural season over May and June. Should the state or EPYSA extend the current timeline into May, we are prepared to conduct a shortened intramural season over the month of June. This would likely dictate the need for games on Saturdays and Sundays (i.e. teams would play a game on each day). While we recognize this is different from the usual intramural season, our goal would be to complete the season before the 4th of July holiday to allow for minimal interference with family summer vacation plans as well as to offer a break before the start of the fall intramural season later in the summer. Many of the children and families in our intramural program look forward to the spring season so it is our hope that even a shortened version could be beneficial in returning to a sense of normalcy. As with all of our programs, the situation is very fluid but we want to ensure that there is something in place for the kids once we are able to be together again.

Conclusion of 19-20 Travel Season / Opening of the 20-21 Travel Season

As was mentioned in an email earlier this week, we have adjusted the tryout schedule to reflect the most recent timetable provided by EPYSA. Additionally, we continue to monitor the status of spring leagues and tournaments our travel teams had previously registered to participate in. Like our club, these leagues and tournaments are adjusting to the evolving guidance of EPYSA and more broadly US Soccer.

Our current request of travel families, whether returning or new to travel this year, is to please register for travel tryouts so that we can start to gauge numbers for each of our travel teams. It is possible that we may not host tryouts, but even in that situation we would still need our travel players to be registered through the club system so that we can send out formal team invitations to each player. We won’t be able to send those invitations if players are not registered through the system. If there are no tryouts and teams have low numbers (because of lack of registration), we will start to look at combining teams (or other options) to ensure that those players who have signed up will definitely have a place to play next season. We cannot make an accurate estimate of team sizes without players being registered so please register as soon as possible.

Summer Camp

Recognizing the closure of school for the balance of the school year has created child care challenges for many families, we wanted to briefly mention that we are still planning on hosting the club’s two weekly summer camps in mid-July. As a reminder, summer camp is included in the cost of the 2020-2021 travel season and is also available to non-travel players for an additional camp fee.

Finally, we wanted to comment on what could potentially be forthcoming coming from EPYSA. Presently, all soccer activities are formally suspended until April 30th but I think it is reasonable to assume that we will see an extension of the no-activity period. Nothing has officially been decided yet (despite the rumors that exist to the contrary) but many are speculating that June 1st is likely going to be the new extension date. That new date would obviously impact the items discussed above but until it has been officially confirmed we will continue to keep planning for all possible contingencies.
 
We know that there are many aspects of life up in the air right now and soccer is just another one on the list. However, we also know that the areas of life that brought us all joy before this pandemic will also be the first ones we look to in finding a returned sense of normalcy. And soccer will most certainly be on that list as well. We look forward to future days and nights spent enjoying the beautiful game together in the heart of Montgomery County.  

It takes all of us to make this club and community great - please stay safe and healthy.

John Larcinese
President
FC Montco
president@fcmontco.org