This is the 3rd league brand I've experienced. In the last 8 years I've spent time as both a coach and a spectator. It's been very impressive to see how i9's Freshmen level is truly developmental. Of the 3, this is the first to have practice right before tipoff, no timeouts, and the coaches are allowed on the court to provide direction in real time. I wasn't quite sure about those changes at first. Not against them, but it was significantly different from my prior experiences. After 4 games I've seen vast improvement from several players in terms of confidence, passing, and overall understanding of the game. I can already say without a doubt that the best league for introducing children to the fundamentals and giving them the best chance to process and learn the game, is i9.
Allowing children, at even beginner level, to be in sports so they could learn the sport and try it out for the season or a few seasons. Or also be in a sport just for fun. Main idea is to have fun! I love that the coaches are volunteers. So far, I haven’t had a bad experience yet but the coaches who volunteer seem to have a passion to teach the children. The emails help me, as a first time parent who have their child be in sports, learn how to cheer my child on. We often get super excited and the emails remind us how that could come off to our children.
The coaches and environment is a warm welcome to other organizations. Good to see the fun on the game being emphasized rather than winning at all costs
First time i9-ers this spring and we have loved the intro it gave our 3 year old into soccer/team sports. The time commitment is absolutely doable and even though our daughter was brand new to soccer, she did well listening to the coach and following along with the other kids. Looking forward to summer already!
I appreciate they are short so the commitment time is short. I also appreciate the coaches we’ve had have hearts of teachers and are willing to teach the kids
We love this league. We wish it went past the age of 13. We have loved our coach and the dedication he has to teaching the fundamentals of the sport. And we have an amazing referees that makes sure the game is about having fun.
Everything! We are so glad that we came across this soccer program and we really hope to find more like it or even possibly a team for our daughter to play on once this is over. Because of the amazing and involved coaches she has really fallen in love with the sport and has been practicing diligently because she finds passion in it due to them making it so fun.
We did the y last year and when I signed up for I9, I didn’t realize how unorganized the y was. The snack sign up is amazing. The coaches have been at every game! Practice is actually practice! We will be using i9 again.