About Us

Soccer tends to be very popular among youth in Madison’s low-income neighborhoods, but organized soccer programs have often been inaccessible to them because of affordability and transportation barriers. In an effort to address these issues, the Millennium Soccer Club (MSC) was founded in 2001 with the explicit mission to provide high-quality, low-cost recreational soccer programs within low-income, ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

Since then, MSC has successfully served more than 600 youth in its soccer programs for 2nd-8th graders in the Falk School, Leopold School, Lincoln School, and Meadowood Park neighborhoods.

Through its elementary school age programs, Millennium Soccer Club (MSC) provides instruction in fundamental soccer skills and offers its participants an opportunity to play in a variety of small-sided soccer games.
View videos about MSC »

Elementary School Program

The elementary school age program enables 2nd-5th graders to play soccer with other kids from their neighborhood on six Saturday mornings during both the fall and spring. Millennium provides each participant a uniform (jersey, shorts, socks) and shin guards. Each week, 2nd and 3rd graders work for about 45 minutes in small teams with their coaches to develop their soccer skills. Their coaches are primarily high school students from Edgewood, Memorial, Verona or West (many of whom play for their high school soccer teams), UW students, and community supporters.

Following their practice session, they then have an opportunity to utilize their skills playing in a small-sided game (4v4 or 5v5) against one of the other teams. After the games have concluded, the players and coaches meet with the program coordinator for their neighborhood site 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 1½ hour session for the 2nd and 3rd graders is followed by a similar session for 4th and 5th graders.

Each neighborhood site has a coordinator who solicits help from school staff and parents to coordinate player registration at the beginning of the fall and spring seasons and to assist with administering the Saturday morning programs at each site.

In 2008, Millennium began offering a summer program at one of our sites one evening each week for 7 weeks. The program format is similar to that used in the fall and spring programs.

History

The idea for a soccer program to serve low-income children came from many months of discussion with parents, community leaders, school district personnel and soccer supporters in the Allied Drive neighborhood. Through the discussions, it became clear that the typical model for soccer programming made it difficult for low-income children to participate because of the twin barriers of cost and transportation.

To address these issues, the parents and community leaders embraced a plan to offer a soccer program structured 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, Millennium has expanded to provide soccer programs for low-income elementary school age youth at four sites on Madison’s south side.

Board of Directors

President:
Tom Grogg tgrogg@charter.net (608) 233-0554

Vice President:
Jen Vena jenvena@charter.net (608) 256-0047

Secretary:
Jack Connelly cronkelly@gmail.com (608) 255-6626

Treasurer:
Dan Wood dwood@madison.k12.wi.us (608) 845-8399

Fundraising Coordinator:
Rob Summers isthmusdigs@yahoo.com (608) 695-5201