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Project Kick Start

Project Kick Start, ABYSA’s expanded outreach program, will be celebrating their one year anniversary this May. Over the course of the year, Kick Start coaches were able to see over 500 children in Asheville who may not have had the opportunity to be involved in soccer or other team sports. We hope that soccer will provide the health and social benefits of youth team sports to low income at risk children who are vastly underserved by youth sports organizations. These benefits include physical exercise, healthy snack opportunities, team building, skill acquisition and mastery, life skills development, team participation, self confidence, and confliction resolution skills.

This summer, we will start our second year partnering up with Asheville Parks and Recreation’s Summer Playground Program to deliver 8 weeks of soccer to 450 children at 10 recreation centers throughout Buncombe County. The increased number of sessions will allow the coaches to better implement activities that will challenge the children physically, encourage creativity, and foster cooperation.

This last Spring and Fall, we partnered with Project March to implement eight weeks of soccer programming for 60 children living in at Pisgah View, Deaverview, and Woodrige. We meet with the children once a week helping them with their homework followed by leading an hour of enriching soccer activities.

ABYSA has received only positive feedback with all of these new programs and will continue to work to fulfill their mission “to provide an unqualified positive soccer environment instilling a life-long love, enthusiasm, and passion for any child desiring to play the game of soccer”.

This successful after school athletic and life skills program for underserved girls in Asheville is in its 13th season of play. Go To Goal! reaches out to girls, aged 8 to 11, through the sport of soccer and provides both mental and physical challenges to complement a girl’s academic and social development within the school setting. The life skills and athletics program is provided at no cost to participants, their families, or the school. The girls are given healthy food during practice, all soccer gear and equipment, and transportation home after each session.

This spring, fourteen girls are participating in Go To Goal! Their hard work at practice has been on display in ABYSA’s U10 recreation program. Not only are they putting the ball in the back of the net during Saturday games, but they have been doing it as a cohesive team that demonstrates an exemplary level of sportsmanship. It has been exciting to see them grow over the last year as a team and develop as individuals.

DONATIONS:

This year, ABYSA has been fortunate to get grants from the Rudnick Foundation and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina’s Summertime Kids fund to help support Project Kick Start, but continued financial and volunteer support is always needed to sustain these programs. If you would like more information on ABYSA’s outreach, please contact Aaron Malenke, the outreach coordinator, at (828) 299-7277 ext. 315. To donate to ABYSA’s outreach programming, please send checks to:

ABYSA Outreach
PO Box 895 
Asheville, NC 28802

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