Mission Statement
The Millennium Soccer Club (MSC) was founded in 2001 specifically for the purpose of providing low-cost and accessible soccer programs for youth living in lower-income, ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Madison.
History
Soccer tends to be a very popular sport among youth in Madison’s lower-income neighborhoods, but organized soccer programs have often been unavailable to them because of their cost and the lack of transportation.The idea for creating a soccer program to address these issues came from many months of discussion with parents, community leaders, school district personnel and soccer supporters in the Allied Drive neighborhood in south Madison. The parents and community leaders embraced a plan to offer a low-cost neighborhood soccer program so that the children could walk to nearby Belmar Park to participate. In the spring of 2001, more than 60 neighborhood youth in grades K-6 showed up each Saturday morning for six weeks to work on developing basic soccer skills and to have an opportunity to play in small-sided games in the Millennium Soccer Club’s first program.Since then, MSC has sponsored soccer programs in six lower-income neighborhoods in south Madison that have served over 1,500 elementary school age children, many of whom would not otherwise have had an opportunity to play.
Our Elementary School Program
Millennium’s neighborhood-based programs focus primarily on providing basic instruction in the fundamentals of soccer along with giving our participants an opportunity to have fun playing in a wide variety of soccer games.MSC currently sponsors programs at three elementary schools (Huegel, Leopold, and Lincoln) and one city park (Marlborough) that serve over 300 boys and girls in grades 1-5.The programs at all of MSC’s sites provide six-week seasons each fall and spring. The sessions (which take place on Saturday mornings) consist of a combination practice and game, lasting approximately 1½ hours. For the first half of each session, all of the teams (each consisting of 6-8 players) practice with their coaches, focusing primarily on the development of good individual skills, as well as a number of basic team-related skills. In the second half, they play games against other teams at their site. The games are played 4v4 without goalies.After the games have concluded, the players and coaches meet with the program coordinator for their age group to briefly review how things went with their practices/games and to emphasize the importance of having fun each week as they try to become better soccer players.The volunteer coaches are local high school soccer players, students from the UW-Madison and Madison College, and adults from the community.
In 2008, Millennium began offering summer camps for its players to complement the fall and spring programs. See Our Program, Summer Camps for more details.
Board of Directors
President
Haley Brisky
Secretary
Jack Connelly
Treasurer
Janelle Sandene
At Large Directors
Anné Knezevic
Tiz Goff
Quintella Cruz
Jesus Torres
Narisha Reddy
Alyssa Bruce
Conor Caloia
Steve Ticknor