IMPORTANT DATES FOR THE SEASON

Saturday September 7th, 2024 - Opening Day/Volunteer Workday (Skills Clinic for Age Groups U5 - U10): This day is for players to get started on the learning and fun process. In addition, we will give parents the opportunity to start earning their volunteer hours by helping to prepare the field and the Grimes Complex. While players participate in the skills clinics or games, parents will attend a brief informational meeting with details about your child’s specific age group. We don’t schedule activities for the Rugrats on Opening Day, but if you are new to NRSA and want to see what Opening Day and our program are all about, please feel free to come and attend one of the Parent Meetings and help get the Grimes Complex ready for the season. Yes, Rugrat Parents get to volunteer, too! 

Saturday September 14th, 2024 - First scheduled weekend of Rec games

Saturday October 19th, 2024 - We will not schedule Rec games for the last weekend of the HCDE Fall Break 

Saturday November 16th, 2024- Play Day/ End of Season Fun Day 

NOTE: We schedule doubleheaders throughout the season to avoid having to make up rainouts. 

COACH AND TEAMMATE REQUESTS

We make an effort to balance teams to improve your Player’s experience. Meeting new people and playing with friends and classmates are both important life experiences. Here are some guidelines we use to try to achieve balance between these life experiences: 

1.  NRSA will try to honor coach and teammate requests; however, these requests may be limited to maintain balance in player experience.

2.  As many teammate requests will be honored as possible but honoring them may not allow for coach requests as well.

3.  Any coach and teammate requests made after the end of the REGULAR online registration period (after LATE Registration starts) will likely not be honored.

4.  NRSA reserves the right to assign players to teams at its sole discretion based on the needs of NRSA, the registrations received for a season and the volunteer coaches available at the time - and does not guarantee any specific requests will be honored. Further, NRSA reserves the right to create a coed team from a mix of male and female registered players in the same Age Group in the event that registrations do not allow for creation of gender-specific teams in an Age Group.

5. We understand that your players' may have other activities that create conflicts during the week, however, we allow our volunteer coaches to choose the night of their practice and cannot swap players to new teams to accommodate conflicts or preferences for practice nights.    

Age Group Notes:

All players will register to play in the Age Group designated by their birth year (as shown above). We allow requests for players to play up an Age Group, if it is right for the Player. If you would like to request that your player to “play up”, you can do this during registration in the section where teammate and coach requests are made. Please be sure to list the reason(s) why you are making the request. This information will help us look for the right spot for your player.

Rugrats, U5 and U6 teams are typically co-ed, while U8, U10, and U12 teams are generally not. Age U14 and High School teams are likely to be co-ed, depending on the mix of registered players and the gender of the teams from the other associations. In some seasons we have been able to create gender-specific teams at the U14 and High School levels. Even in those instances, many of the teams they play from other associations in the area may be co-ed as well. 

Rugrats practice/play on Saturdays, typically. Their practices are a progressive style lesson plan. Each practice lasts from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the weather and the mood of the team.

The remaining Age Groups will practice one to two nights per week. Each team practices on a night of the volunteer Coach’s choosing and subject to space availability.

U12, U14 and High School teams will play against rec teams of other associations in the area. Not all games will be at the Cleveland T. Grimes Soccer Complex (NRSA’s fields). 

Note: U16 and U18 are combined into one single Age Group, referred to as “High School” - The associations in our district agreed a couple of summers ago to try combining the U16 and U18 players into one age group, the “High School” age group. We found that only a few of the associations could register enough players for both age groups, so U16 teams were required to play U18 teams. By combining them, our players will be playing on a team with an age group that will match their opponent’s team (and what they would experience if playing with their high school’s team).

High School games will be played as either 11 v 11 or 6 v 6 (depending on the number of players registered in the age group at NRSA and at the other local associations).