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Goal Safety Booklet
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SECTION
14 Launches WHY AYSO? website
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AYSO in IRAQ
* Congratulations to Bertha Bostrum
* Lolly Keys College Scholarships Award
* Man pleads guilty to embezzlement
* AYSO thrives and builds in birthplace
Hyundai, an AYSO National Sponsor, has announced its ten, 2004 Lolly Keys
College Scholarships recipients. Each $1,500 scholarship is awarded to an AYSO
player/volunteer based on individual community involvement and scholarly
achievement. Two Section Fourteen players were amoung the ten selected.
Congragulations to Melissa Aresenault Region 345,
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Man pleads guilty to embezzlement
Anthony Leon Anish, a former American Youth Soccer Organization regional
commissioner and coach, was sentenced to three years formal probation and
ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device for 90 days, in lieu of jail
time, said Mark Macaulay, spokesman for the Orange County district attorney's
office.
Anish also settled a civil lawsuit, filed against him in 2003, with the AYSO
three weeks ago and agreed to pay $70,000 to the league. He cited his desire to
avoid further attorney fees as his reason for agreeing to the settlement.
Outside the courtroom, parents and AYSO board members said they were glad that
he pleaded guilty to the charges. They characterized Anish as a man who charmed
his way into their and their children's hearts, stole from them and then lied
about it.
It will take a long time for the community to get over the incident, AYSO
regional commissioner Chris Sarris said. He also said he's glad the whole
sordid affair is over.
"This doesn't heal the community or the children who played on his
team," Sarris said.
Prosecutor Steve Bickel and Anish's attorney, Jerry Workman, refused to comment
on the case.
Friday's plea brought some closure, but it also brought some disappointment
that Anish didn't get a harsher sentence, parent and board member Gail Hedrich
said.
Anish took over the league in 2001 and was in charge of collecting and
maintaining its funds. Audits of the books after he took over showed the
thousands of dollars missing, board member Pam Garrett said.
The allegations divided the community, she said, with people who staunchly
supported him and people who saw him as a con man. What's most hurtful, Garrett
said, is that someone she and others trusted stole from them.
"We considered him a friend and spent time with him," Garrett said.
"I feel guilty that I allowed this to happen."
Anish has so far paid $50,000 in restitution, according to the district
attorney's office, and has six months to pay the remaining $20,000. If he does
not, he will be responsible for a $130,000 claim by the AYSO.
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AYSO
thrives and builds in birthplace
AYSO
thrives and builds in birthplace
Sports:
Bill Mason and Frances Stronks have watched program's growth almost from its
South Bay beginnings.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/news/3534225.html
By Nick Green Daily Breeze
Rancho Palos Verdes resident Bill Mason remembers kicking a soccer ball around
with his two sons and some friends in the fall of 1970 at Silver Spur
Elementary School.
It was the year after Mason had begun volunteering with the fledgling American
Youth Soccer Organization, which had formed in the fall of 1964 in a Torrance
garage. Its mantra then, as now: "Everyone plays."
The Peninsula school's playing fields swarmed with boys trying out for Pop
Warner Football.
"Boys, you've made the team," Mason recalled overhearing the coach
tell the players at the end of practice. "You can go home and tell your
parents you've made the team. But you can also tell them you may not play a
minute this season."
"Within two or three years they did not have enough players and were not
turning anyone away," Mason said. "Then they started a (less
competitive) recreational program and anyone could play. So I think AYSO has
had an impact on sports across the country."
Forty years after its formation, that remains true.
AYSO's success has been blamed in part for the decline of other participatory
sports such as Pop Warner, with its relatively expensive equipment, and even
Little League, which requires children to await their
turn at bat or stand around in the outfield.
In contrast, soccer has few breaks in the action, requires inexpensive
equipment and is played by girls just as well as boys.
AYSO has thrived.
AYSO began play in February 1965 at Jefferson Middle School -- where teams play
to this day -- with about 125 players and nine teams.
The season that will start over the next few weeks will see an estimated
244,000 players in Southern California alone and 677,000 in the entire
organization.
And despite the word "American" appearing in its name, the nonprofit
group boasts players not only in 47 U.S. states, but Jamaica, Paraguay,
Trinidad and Tobago, and the U.S. Virgin Islands as well, spokesman David
Frickman said.
But the South Bay remains ground zero for an organization that was born here.
About 50 people work at its National Support and Training Center in Hawthorne.
These days AYSO is part of the fabric of life in the South Bay for many parents
and their children. Midweek practices and the Saturday game day ritual can
snare even unsuspecting parents who end up, voluntarily or not, as coaches,
match officials or impromptu taxi drivers.
That's been true for the past three decades for Frances Stronks of Westchester,
a 63-year-old grandmother.
She began as a soccer mom in 1974 cheering on her sons from the sidelines and
these days does the same for four of her six grandchildren (the other two are
too young to play).
In between, her numerous unpaid duties have included region commissioner,
referee and coach instructor, national instructor for administrators and now
national board member.
When Stronks began, about 10 percent of AYSO enrollment in her area consisted
of girls; today it stands at 50 percent.
"When I started out it was something to do until Little League season
started," she said. "At some point I realized the sport of soccer is
so awesome for girls. ... It provides a good environment for children
regardless of their skill level -- I feel every child has an opportunity to
belong."
Mason, 70, who has volunteered for AYSO for 35 years, wrote a basic referee and
coach instruction book called Soccer Rules in 1977 that is still in use today,
and is the senior member of the AYSO Referee Commission, agrees with Stronks.
In baseball, for example, players can come under pressure if they strike out or
fail to field the ball but in recreational soccer there's less time to dwell on
mistakes.
"Once a child has missed the ball there's no time to be critical of that
child by the parents because the game keeps going on," he said. "I
think it's just a healthier atmosphere for children."
When AYSO began, handmade goal posts were sometimes used because no soccer
equipment suppliers existed. Forty years later, soccer has become a
mini-industry and Mason credits AYSO with, for instance, developing the United
States into a women's world soccer power.
AYSO graduates can be found throughout the professional game.
Former Los Angeles Galaxy coach Sigi Schmid, a Manhattan Beach resident, was on
one of those first teams -- the Firefighters -- that played at Jefferson. He is
in the AYSO Hall of Fame.
Current Galaxy player Cobi Jones also got his start in AYSO.
But AYSO is so successful that some observers believe it has actually hindered
the development of professional soccer, because kids are far more interested in
playing the game than they are in watching it.
Still, AYSO has succeeded not because it is the ideal environment to groom
elite athletes, Stronks said. It has succeeded because it helps create healthy,
well-rounded people.
"I can't believe everybody doesn't see that's an ideal place for their
children to socialize and have opportunities to create good character,"
she said. "If we can expose the same number of children or double the
number of children that have had the opportunity to touch a soccer ball in the
AYSO environment for another 40 years, we'll be doing our part to produce some
real fine citizens."
