Over the weekend, the Demosphere team was in Schaumburg, IL for the Illinois Youth Soccer Expo. Demosphere has attended the Expo for the past five years and unlike some other workshops, the Expo in Schaumburg has grown since we first attended. Through promotions with the Chicago Fire and other local names, approximately 2,000 coaches, parents, and players took part in a jam packed day of clinics and administrative sessions.

During the day, quite a few familiar faces dropped by including Schwaben Soccer, Green White Youth Soccer Club, and more. Demosphere also spent time with the Illinois Youth Soccer Assn. (IYSA) staff preparing for the launch of their updated state association website in the next month. We're quite excited about working on this great project.

Each year, U.S. Soccer holds its annual Annual General Meeting (AGM) to discuss all aspects of the game - youth, adult, professional, and more. As part of this year's event which recently concluded in Miami, the AGM Book is distributed and contained material for discussion at meetings as well as budget information.

Deep inside the 201-page book are budgets for everything from National Team Games to Individual Committees. One very interesting component of the budget are the registration numbers from various constituencies that report to U.S. Soccer.

In a recent New York Times blog entitled "In Youth Sports, Losing is for Champions", author KJ Dell'Antonia raises some interesting points about whether winning all the time is beneficial for youth athletes.

Her overall conclusionis that losing is good preparation for the future - both in athletics and otherwise. The vast majority of kids won't play professionally, and Dell'Antonia argues that losing is good preparation for the real world. She also mentions the case of skier Edie Thys Morgan, who explains that losing will show whether or not the child has the drive to do what it takes to win again.

When Youth Soccer Travel Leagues schedule games, often times member clubs provide available field information for home games. This is organized by grouping field "permits" together and giving the group a name. This is a Permit Group, and its main purpose is to guide Demosphere's League Scheduling System in scheduling all the home games for a club. Normally, there is a one-to-one relationship between clubs and permit groups, i.e., each club has one permit group, and each permit group belongs to one club.

Sometimes there are variations, however. This could be anything from one club sharing another club's fields (two clubs using the same permit group), or a few teams in a club using permits separate from the main club, or simply a club changing its name or changing which permit group it is using. Until now, the system did not include a way for an administrator to make these updates directly in the system.

The 2012 Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Assn. (EPYSA) Workshop took place over the weekend in Downingtown, PA. The Workshop started early and was jam packed with coaching as well as classroom seminars.

During time between sessions, Demosphere had a chance to meet with many current and potentially new customers. Our friends at Quakertown Soccer stopped by and were beaming after the launch of their new website earlier in the week.