Soccer booms in Mansfield

WHAT a season we have had at the Mansfield District Soccer Club! We had 157 junior registrations in the winter season and more players in the year-round women’s and adult groups. Mansfield Shire forecast 145 players by 2028 (published in the Recreation Facilities Strategy Update) so the club is thrilled to have already exceeded this. Also, the number of female players continues to grow with an equal number of girls and boys participating in U11s. This year we played a Gala Day hosted by the Alpine Shire, Yackandandah and next year U12, U11, U9 can attend four of these events. With such rapid growth we will welcome the completion of a second fenced pitch and eventual lighting as outlined in the council recreation plan. This way we could host a Mansfield Gala Day and accommodate player growth. Bring on more soccer. Winter Season Report By Will Hann (youth player and junior committee representative) ON behalf of the players I would like to start this report by saying thank you all of the coaches, helpers, and committee members for all your hard work and time supporting the Mansfield Soccer Club. 2024 was a fun season with a massive amount of people joining and playing. The number of juniors increased by 60 per cent from 2023 (registrations increased from around 90 to 157). There was also a massive increase in the number of girls signing up and they can all really play. Because of the crazy numbers this season and we had to adapt to the amount of people joining each group by having different playing time on the Sunday soccer days. Younger kids started at 10am and the older group starting at 11am. Hopefully next year the Mansfield Shire will fix the adjoining pitch so we can use that as well. Each Sunday we would warm-up, do some skills and then play a very competitive game. Thanks very much to Oscar Paredes for being the youth player referee. On Wednesdays there was a focus on skills training with Club President Chris Nealon making it all work. The whole Club would also like to thank Felicity Ennis who is stepping back from her role on the committee after many years of commitment that has helped get the club to where it is today. All in all, 2024 was a great season and we can't wait for next year with even more players. U11s play at Yackandandah Gala by Louie Bolden (player) ON Saturday August 17th players from the Mansfield Soccer Club travelled to Yackandandah for a Soccer Gala Day. It was the first time for this season that we got to play against teams from other soccer clubs. It was a gloomy and wet day, but we were excited and a bit nervous. Our first game was against Myrtleford. The Myrtleford subs had not arrived at the field yet, so two girls and two boys from our team had to be subs for Myrtleford. We were a bit disappointed because we wanted to play for our own team. I was chosen to be one of them, but after Myrtleford scored a goal, their subs turned up so all four of us went back to our team – which made us very happy. Myrtleford scored two more goals before half time. After half time they scored five more goals. We lost (Myrtleford 8-0 Mansfield). In the next game we lost again, Yackandandah 3-0 Mansfield. Our last match against Bright was very exciting because we scored four goals, and they scored two goals. We won that match. It had been a fun day of soccer and sausage sizzles. We are thankful to all the parents who drove us to Yackandandah and especially our coaches on the day, Amanda Jones and Heather Hunter, who really helped us. Thanks to all the people at the Mansfield Soccer Club who organised for us to go to the Gala Day and helped us have a great season of soccer.

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