As a Jay Councilman, I work closely on things pertaining to Jay’s recreation and parks and am also the President of the Jay Youth Soccer Association.
On Saturday October 26th the first ever Soccer Championship took place in Jay, a process that began many months earlier.
This past spring, the Jay Town council discussed ways to improve and bring in new families to utilize the park facilities and possibly help local businesses in the process. I thought the council should ask the community what they would like, hoping that would generate some excitement as well. They polled several thousand people locally in the Jay area and saw that there was a want for several new sports but it was determined that soccer was the main sport requested to be developed in Jay.
The more the council talked to Jay residents, the more information we found out, determining that several families drive long distances for their kids to play soccer, which prompted the need for somewhere to play.
The Town of Jay graciously allowed the organizers to utilize unused space in the city park for practices and games.
The town also donated some goals and equipment. Local business donated various other items to help get started and spread the word about our program, mainly through social media.
The Pace Soccer program as well as the Brewton’s YMCA soccer program helped them sget started with rules, advise, dates for the fall league and a general idea of how to run the upstart league.
The YMCA in Brewton helped greatly by inter-leaguing with them and allowing there to be a place to take kids for an away game.
Several volunteers stepped up from the community and helped with coaching and refereeing. This league has been made as affordable as possible so that more kids could play and has provided and will continue to provide a different kind of opportunity for young people in our community.
They experience competition, exercise, a team atmosphere, the rules and ways a sport is played while having a lot of fun, and life skills, including a life long love of the game.
Since our seasons ended, there have been several parents asking to have spring, winter and summer leagues so their kids can play all year long, as well as many requests to add age groups so older kids could play.
The goal is to add a 10U and possibly a 12u division next fall, with the goal to eventually help this area so that one day the Jay High School will be able to have a soccer program.
Most of the folks in Jay have never played or watched soccer but after this season many in our little farm town have grown to love this sport. We had a wonderful group of about 50 children to participate this year., in eight teams and two different age groups (ages 4-8).
Teams were formed according to age. Those eightteams started playing in Septemberand played through the end of October. On Oct. 26th, the two teams (in each age group) with the best two records played in our championship games. Fittingly, the Jay Royals won in both age groups.
We are so proud of all of our little guys and girls who played so hard this year!
