AS THEY PLAY THE GAME… FOR THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE.

The Pick-Up Game Program represents the LSTS effort to bring back the children’s participation into soccer, the simple unstructured way of playing soccer in the streets. As mentioned before, lack of space or unsafe environments make it not possible, at least not in every community in the US, to have our children playing in the street.

Participants in the LSTS Pick-Up Game Program attend two sessions a week during the summer, to play for about two hours. An accessible open area at a public park facility is designated for the participant’s convenience. The games are organized in a way that age and gender are not considered a limitation and there is no restricted plan in what the participants can do. The idea is to have children and adults of multiple ages interact in a way that replicate a game in the street. The only intervention by a coach or trainer may come in the form of a program’s supervisor, whose participation should be limited to players’ safety purposes and time keeper.
The Pick-Up Game Program runs from the first week in July to the middle of August (about 8 weeks). There is no fee attached to the players’ participation, but registration and medical release and insurance forms are required to be completed by the participants’ parents or legal guardians.

A standard Pick-Up Game session will start with a program’s supervisor giving the participants some guidance and time for a warm-up and stretch. After a hydration break, the program’s supervisor will divide the number of participants into as many teams and fields necessary to secure players’ participation in games and time to rest and remind the participants of the importance of “fair play”. The rest is up to the players. No coaching, no instruction, no yelling, just players playing the game.
At the end of every day, the program’s supervisor may mention the highlights of the session and may remind the participants of the upcoming events.
The equipment, insurance, facilities and the supervision necessary for the Pick-Up Games Program, is provided by the Life Skills Through Soccer Organization in conjunction with local public park administrators. The park rules applied by local park authorities to all public facilities will be encouraged and reinforce by all LSTS Training Programs.

Life Skills Through Soccer reserves the right to deny participation in the Pick-Up games Program to those individuals who by law are not authorized by the Federal or New Jersey State authorities or Public Park Administrators to participate in public place activities in the presence of children or recognized by those authorities for having a violent or criminal behavior.