Dear MVSC Competitive Families,

I hope that all of you enjoyed a safe and relaxing holiday vacation. As we’re beginning a new year, perhaps some of you might be interested in a brief overview of some of the changes and highlights that occurred in our competitive program in recent times. Those of you who have children that have played competitively for several years have surely noticed that the landscape of competitive soccer has evolved considerably in the past five years. With more and more children playing soccer, competitive soccer players now have more playing opportunities than ever before. New clubs have sprung up throughout northern California, new tournaments and playing leagues have been formed (e.g., Norcal Premier), and US Soccer has continuously modified its training recommendations and curricula for young players. MVSC has done its best to stay in tune with this changing landscape, while remaining true to our overarching goal of providing our club’s competitive players with a top-level, highly enjoyable, developmental soccer experience.

In a nutshell, here is a list of some of the improvements MVSC has endeavored to bring about in the past several years: a) recruiting, hiring and developing a “deeper” and stronger core of Coaches for our teams; b) implementing outreach efforts to attract Mill Valley’s strongest young players to the competitive program; c) improving player placement by unifying our Class 1 and Class 3 team formation process (joint tryouts, coach collaboration, etc.); d) increasing the volume of training/playing opportunities for our players (e.g., fall goalkeeper/striker program, winter skills program, weekday spring training opportunities, Spring World Cup Saturdays) – MVSC used to offer playing opportunities to our competitive players only during the fall season; e) improving curriculum and use of small-sided games for all of our players [we do not have a rigid curriculum for our teams due to challenges with implementation, but we have done much to improve the training regimens for our younger players, by hiring technically savvy coaches for our youngsters and educating all of our coaches on the importance of strong technical (as opposed to tactical or fitness) training]. Finally, this past year was the first year MVSC implemented a grass roots player development program (MVSC’s U9 Academy), which allowed many of Mill Valley’s highly motivated U8 and U9 players to receive professional coaching and a spring and fall technical development program.


Although the long-term benefits of these changes are yet to be seen, evidence of improvement is already apparent in our competitive program. For example, the overall success of our competitive teams this past season was unprecedented in our club. On the whole, the anonymous, end-of-season, player and parent program evaluations were outstanding (i.e., most parents and players in our competitive program reported a very high level of satisfaction with their participation, the quality of coaching, and the quality of our programs). Our Coaching Staff did an excellent job developing our players and teams and sustaining players’ interest and motivation to play soccer. With the recent reconstruction of Hauke South and Bayfront Fields, our teams were able to benefit from several of the best playing facilities in the district. In addition, Mill Valley’s competitive teams demonstrated quite a few impressive results: 15 of our 18 Competitive teams that played this fall won or placed in at least one tournament; four of our teams earned 1st place in league, two additional teams earned 2nd place, and two more teams earned 3rd place. Considering that MVSC is a relatively small club, and that our teams compete with teams from clubs whose player pools double or triple our own, these results were impressive to say the least.

In closing, I would like to thank all of the Coaches, Parents, Managers, and Players, without whose hard work, sacrifices, commitment and support, the club could not progress or evolve. On behalf of the club, I would also like to thank the MVSC Board, whose support, guidance and concern for the welfare of all of our players have been exemplary. I’d also like to thank Coaches Kim Klindinst and Dylan Dupre, both of whom have done an exceptional job coaching competitive teams in our club, and who will be taking a break from coaching due to increased career demands. And finally, I would like to offer a special thanks to Scott Halsted, MVSC’s Director of Competitive, who has volunteered countless hours to overseeing and improving the soccer experience of MVSC’s competitive players.

As the structure and landscape of competitive soccer continues to rapidly evolve, MVSC hopes to continue improving our service to Mill Valley’s constituency and to learn, not only from our successes, but also from the areas in which our teams and our club have struggled. To these ends, we welcome your thoughts and input on how we can create a competitive program that optimally facilitates the growth, motivation and enjoyment of all of our participants.

I look forward to sharing an even more exciting and rewarding journey with all of you in 2007!

Yours in soccer,

Rick Fullerton
MVSC’s Director of Player and Coach Development