Soccer Fun Day scheduled for Saturday
during the WNCC men’s soccer match with Garden City
Western Nebraska Community College and the American Youth Soccer Association (AYSO) are teaming up this Saturday for the Soccer Fun Day during the Cougar men’s soccer match with Garden City Community College at the Allan C. Landers Soccer Complex. The contest kicks off at 12 noon, but there will be plenty of festivities as the two entities will contact raffles to help raise funds to place trees around the soccer complex.
WNCC coach Todd Rasnic said AYSO players that wear their jerseys will be admitted free into the men’s contest on Saturday. He said Saturday should be a fun day for the families.
“AYSO and RECCOS Futball club are selling raffle tickets and other things to raise money for a tree project at the Allan C. Landers Soccer Complex,” Rasnic said. “All the proceeds go to putting trees in. And, if you have been out at the field in a wind storm, you realize why they are going to put in trees.”
Rasnic said it is important for the college to back the community.
“What we at WNCC want to do is to make sure we are being part of our local community, supporting our local students in their efforts to making the soccer complex a better place to be. The goal for us at WNCC is to put on a good face with our participation. We feel it is important for the youth of our community to see the level of play that goes on at the college division and we think this is a good way to encourage them to attend and watch one of our soccer matches.”
The Cougar men’s and women’s team have 15 former AYSO players. The men’s players are Aaron and Drew Oesterle, Geoff Critzer, Adam Rivera, Martin Linz-Soto, David Thurow, Cade and Coote Mulloy, Brad Nielsen, Brad Soske and Tim Iodence. The women’s players include Jenny Dittbenner, Kristen Heath, Nickole Mueller and Anna Rivera.
Rasnic said that his goal is to incorporate more and more of the AYSO players into the team. Rasnic said so far his is finding success mixing the different levels together.
“I believe looking at the players on my men’s and women’s team, there are some players that come out of our local program that play with an extremely high level of play,” he said. “That makes me happy because somewhere along the line, someone with our youth program has trained these kids to be decent technical players, giving them the proper training instead of putting the focus on win-at-no-cost mentality. I really believe that is why some of these kids are being successful at the college level.
“Hopefully, we will get to a point where we can incorporate more and more of our local players onto the team. This season along, we had 12 players on the men’s and women’s team from the area. That is something we will continue to strive for. But we are going to put the best players we can find out on the field , no question about that. And when we look for those players, we will find them right here in our community.
AYSO has been around the area since the early 1990s. Rasnic said he has continually seen the numbers rise from about 150 kids when they started to as high as 1,000 participants a few years ago.
“AYSO is a great program,” he said. “It has really grown to around 800 kids this year.”
After Saturday’s contest, the Cougar men and women will be back in action Monday when they host Cloud County Community College at noon, and then Wednesday when the two teams host Laramie County Community beginning at 3 p.m.
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