Good news:  The back field at Murphy Field has recovered sufficiently that we can move our Sunday pickup game there for the rest of the summer.  Hooray!  We’ve had really good numbers this spring, and we’ve seen even more players over the past few weeks, so moving to the larger field at Murphy will give us more room to accommodate the increased turnout.  The Murphy front field is reserved for the high school teams during the week, so we will need to stay off that field to keep it in good shape, but the back field will give us much more room and it worked out very well last summer.

Unfortunately we also need to make another change to our Sunday pickup soccer game.  As you may know, the Chelmsford Youth Soccer Association (CYSA) allows us to play on their fields without charge, and they cut the grass and line the fields for us at their expense because they know that many current and former CYSA coaches and players are involved in the Sunday pickup game.  However, their insurance only covers active players and coaches, and now that a number of our kids have moved on to high school and even college, and a number of dads have retired from active CYSA coaching, there are players each week who are not covered by the CYSA insurance policy.  It has long been CYSA’s policy to require liability insurance for outside groups that use their soccer fields, and we  must now also fall under that policy.

As a longtime former CYSA coach, it’s painful for me to have to make a change to a simple pickup game that has become an institution of sorts for many of us on Sunday mornings.  When it came down to it, we really only had two choices:  limit the game to only current CYSA players and coaches, or pursue a separate liability insurance policy so that everyone who wanted to participate could remain involved in the game.  The Sunday pickup game is very important to many of us, so I’ve chosen to go the latter route and I have purchased a separate liability insurance policy to cover our Sunday pickup games (at a cost of $546 for the next 12 months) so that everyone can continue to play on Sunday mornings.

I am hoping to recoup that cost and hopefully help contribute to the upkeep of the CYSA fields with your help.  For players and coaches who are not currently active with CYSA, I would like to ask for a donation of $5 per game from you to help defray this expense.  To make this more cost effective for frequent players and also make it easier to manage this, I’d like to offer an annual membership in the “Chelmsford Sunday Soccer” club for $50, which will cover all games for the next 12 months (last year there were over 30 games, so that reduces the cost to well under $1 per hour of playing time–still a bargain by any measure).  There will be a cap of $100 for families.  Current players and coaches (those who are registered to play/coach this fall and will therefore be covered under CYSA’s policy) will not have to pay, but donations will of course be accepted.  Any money collected beyond the cost of the insurance policy will be donated to CYSA, and I am hoping there will be extra money because I think it’s important for us to help support CYSA’s work, especially by contributing to the upkeep of the fields that we all use.

I know that this is unwelcome news, and that it speaks volumes about the  litigious nature of our society when a longstanding group of soccer players can’t just get together and play a simple game on a Sunday morning any more.  But it’s a fact of life, we’ve been fortunate to not have to go this route before now, and we’ve got a solution that allows us to keep playing in the same fashion without major inconvenience.  Now that this is out of the way, let’s get on with the game.

I look forward to seeing you next Sunday morning at Murphy!

-Mark