Council Bluffs Futbol Club

Camp registration is now open! Click here to go to the registration page. 

The Juniors Camp is a free introduction to the CBFC Juniors Program. The Juniors Program is designed for U7, U8, U9, and U10 players who are interested in developing competitive level soccer skills. CBFC’s professional staff of coaches work to ensure that every player has the tools and confidence to express their passion for soccer.

CBFC U7, U8, U9, and U10 Juniors Program teams participate in a minimum of one game per week and train once per week in a technical environment. The days and times of training will be determined by the coach and the CBFC Director of Coaching.

If interested in the Juniors Program for the 2013-2014 soccer season, registration will be taken during the Juniors Camp or may be done online at www.cbsoccer.org.

Juniors Camp Technical Skill Training

• Dribbling
• Passing and Receiving
• Shooting
• Defending

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Rainout Date: Saturday, June 29, 2013

Free Event

U7 & U8 Ages: 9:00 - 10:30 am

U9 & U10 Ages: 10:30 - 12:00 pm

 

CBFC Fields, 2502 23rd Ave

 

Contact person: Jordan Carver CBFC Director of Coaching jcarver@cbsoccer.org

Camp registration is now open! Click here to go to the registration page. 

Displayed with permission of the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil. Original Article on nonpareilonine.com

 

Posted: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:01 am | Updated: 9:27 am, Fri May 3, 2013.

Evan Bland, evan.bland@nonpareilonline.com

Paige Flores didn’t notice anything at the time.

Soccer has been part of her life since she can remember. She played in Council Bluffs youth leagues. She starred as a midfielder at Lewis Central. She’s coming off a season starting for Iowa Western.

Flores spent her childhood learning the game and honing her skills. But somewhere along the way the thought hit Flores – she didn’t see any boys doing the same things.

"Guys would just play Little League or go randomly play outside," Flores said. "They didn’t really care."

When she was at Lewis Central, most of her teammates had played club ball together for years. But her friends on the boys side? Some went out for soccer for the first time. Others were happy to have something to do in the spring.

Few, if any, grew up with soccer.

The soccer split in Council Bluffs is ongoing. A glance at the four city girls teams reveals three ranked squads and varsity rosters loaded with talented players trained by C.B. club organizations. For the boys, no more than a handful of players from a given school have club experience. Those who do compete in Omaha.

Even Class 1-A No. 8 St. Albert – the only ranked boys team in town – has one club-savvy member.

Concrete reasons for this gender disparity remain elusive. But for anyone involved in city soccer at any level, the gap is abundantly clear.

"It was just all girls, pretty much, except a couple younger teams when I was a kid," Flores said. "Boys don’t stay with it very much."

 

 

Boys Allowed

The Council Bluffs Futbol Club is not a girls-only organization.

But Brad Silvey sure didn’t see many boys showing up when the club began in 2005. Now the women’s soccer coach at Iowa Western, he recalled thinking he should have been better at getting the word out.

Had such an opportunity come up in his native Utah, he believed, interest would have certainly spiked. Not so much in a southwest Iowa community of about 60,000.

"I didn’t have any answers for why that was at the time," Silvey said. "We said, ‘OK, we’ll give a little bit more attention to the guys going forward.’ But they never really came."

CBFC had no boys teams last year. Of 16 squads this year, four are for boys – and all for ages under 10 years old. Thirty-five boys participate in the competitive soccer body compared to 126 girls, with the oldest group for under-15s.

The other major youth option in town, the Council Bluffs Youth Soccer Association, is more balanced. This spring, it boasts 214 teams (109 girls and 105 boys) and 1,893 total kids (1,012 girls and 881 boys). Ages range from U6 to U14 and bump to U19 in the fall.

Many city coaches agree CBYSA is an ideal way to get kids involved in soccer. As a recreational league, there’s little pressure to win and lots of emphasis on fun. Players sign up for only a few months at a time.

But the next step is the tricky one, said Chris Von Mende, who coaches the Lewis Central girls high school team and with CBFC. CBYSA, for all its merits, is entirely run by volunteers – many with little soccer expertise. He’s seen plenty of youth lose interest and leave the league and the sport after a few years. Others stay too long and never develop their fundamentals or understanding of the game.

CBFC, conversely, is a select program with more qualified coaches and requires a year-long commitment. Von Mende said the pieces are in place for city soccer to improve.

"To me, the way to solidify things and hopefully help the boys side is those two organizations working together better," Von Mende said. "If they can do that, soccer will even get better here.

"The hardest thing for me as a club coach or even a high school coach is getting players coming in that their actual technique is broken. Without that skill set and foundation, you’re going to lose kids."

So why are so many more girls showing up?

According to a study by U.S. Youth Soccer, 52 percent of its more than three million registered players were boys in 2008. In many pockets around the country – and, of course, the world – soccer stands as the dominant pastime.

Abraham Lincoln girls coach Andy Ruff grew up in New Jersey, where those who didn’t make the soccer team went out for football and girls played soccer or field hockey. He’s been a part of A.L.’s program since it began in the mid-1980s.

Ruff opined one reason girls soccer is more developed in C.B. is simply pure luck. Many of the town’s influential soccer individuals of the last quarter century have predominantly had daughters – and thus concentrated their efforts toward them.

His current Lynx roster, for instance, boasts an impact sophomore group that includes Kelsey Cheney, Alexa Murphy, Paige Wohlers and Leu O’Brien. All grew up in CBFC together since they were under 10 years old and were coached throughout by Cheney’s father, Mike.

"You look at every team and you can find examples of dads that have raised these club teams of a bunch of girls who have gone on to play at any of the four (Council Bluffs) high schools," Ruff said. "For boys, I can’t think of the same thing."

 

 

Changing Times

There was a time when city boys soccer flourished on an annual basis. Warren Lee has scrapbooks to prove it.

Lee was perhaps C.B.’s strongest advocate in soccer becoming a sanctioned varsity sport in the 1980s. Starting in the late 1970s, coed club teams began popping up. In 1976, for example, Daily Nonpareil records show that 65 players – all ages about 12 or 13 – formed the first four competitive squads. A few years later, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson fielded so-called "coed" high school teams, though few girls ever were able to beat out their male counterparts for a roster spot.

In 1984, Lee helped convince the school board to unanimously approve the addition of soccer for boys at A.L. and T.J. By then, 1,300 kids were playing the sport – including about 150 in high school – in the newly formed CBYSA.

The Lynx and Jackets squared off for the first city boys soccer game in May 1985 on the football field at C.B. Stadium. A sign-up sheet made its way through the crowd trying to get more girls involved.

The debut was followed by a junior-varsity girls game between the rival schools. Lee’s Lynx won.

Both girls programs joined the boys as varsity teams in 1986, though all were still self-funded and not state-sanctioned. St. Albert and Lewis Central added teams shortly thereafter.

The boys side was certainly more successful in the early going. A.L. edged T.J. 1-0 in the Nebraska High School Soccer Association B Division championship game at C.B. Stadium in 1986. The next spring, the Lynx beat No. 2 Omaha Westside 2-1 and the Jackets upset No. 1 Creighton Prep 4-1 on the same day.

Lee, who coached the A.L. girls until 1996, said it initially took years to get girls caught up to the boys’ level.

"Quite often I’d have to start with the very basics," Lee said. "We’d get kids that would show up who had never played and wanted to give it a try. I never turned anybody away because they haven’t played soccer. Even those that had, it was obvious that many weren’t at a high school level."

Like most coaches then, Lee didn’t have much firsthand knowledge of soccer. The 1964 A.L. graduate got many of his drills and practice tips from books.

"Maybe I was able to bluff them a bit," he said with a grin.

 

 

Conflict of Interests

At its root, the issue is not a lack of good male athletes in Council Bluffs. It’s where they’re going.

Jordan Carver has seen this play out even since becoming CBFC’s director of coaching earlier this spring.

In a word: football.

"A lot of the attention has been on the girls side because a lot of females play soccer at a young age," said Carver, who is also Iowa Western’s men’s coach. "For them, there is no football. What other full-contact sports are out there for females?"

In a world where more kids are choosing to specialize in one or two sports, competing activities like football and baseball frequently win the day. They largely remain more popular in the Midwest – much of that because of parental influences – and also require year-round commitments.

CBYSA is evidence that boys are still interested in soccer at a young age. And one doesn’t have to go far to see successful college teams at Creighton and Iowa Western.

Perhaps the solution, Carver said, is to find better ways for C.B. boys to explore their potential on the pitch. There are no indoor fields in town. And no soccer-specific playing surfaces with lights.

Compare that with the number of available baseball diamonds, football fields or basketball courts.

"(Soccer) is competing against huge sports that have been around forever and that we claim as our own," Silvey said. "I think there’s marginal growth, but there’s a long way to go on both sides. The youth numbers are awesome; it’s just (about) keeping them in. It’s a community issue, but it’s also a national one."

The Omaha factor also looms. Though some girls travel west, the Nebraska side of the river has proven more appealing for boys frustrated with few options in C.B.

And it’s tough to blame them. Omaha leagues can offer college showcases and have better overall talent to qualify for State Cup competition in Iowa or Nebraska. Its clubs also have the ability to travel farther as part of larger organizations like the Midwest Regional League.

"That’s where we’re losing potentially 10-15 boys that are really good," Carver said. "That’s because we haven’t established a good enough club yet for the boys (in C.B.)"

 

Varsity Divide

However it got here, the divide filtered to the high school level years ago.

Consider that only St. Albert has been to the boys state tournament since 2000, while every city girls team has gone since then.

Yet despite the Falcons’ success, the boys squad annually has had to cobble together athletes from other successful programs. Only junior Francisco Barajas focuses on soccer in the offseason.

Each current C.B. girls team has at least one returning all-state player in its lineup and the schools hold a combined record of 26-12 entering Thursday. The boys versions have gone 20-19 so far.

The girls have even put together an all-city showcase of sorts. Lewis Central and Abraham Lincoln play Friday at 5 p.m. at Creighton’s Morrison Stadium, followed by St. Albert and Thomas Jefferson at 7.

Von Mende, the L.C. girls coach, said he’s still encouraged by the progress he’s seen from boys and girls since he arrived from Minnesota in the 1990s.

But the unshakeable impression of a gender imbalance remains.

"When I first got here, the soccer was not good," Von Mende said. "It’s gotten better and is trending the right way, but the golden time to develop kids and start their love of the game is at a young age."

 

 

Roll Call

Girls are taking to club soccer in Council Bluffs more than their male counterparts. Here’s a look at participation numbers at the Council Bluffs Youth Soccer Association and Council Bluffs Futbol Club this year:

	CBFC	CBYSA
Total Boys:	35	881
Total Girls:	126	1,012
Boys Teams:	4	105