Q: How is SAYSO soccer different from recreational soccer?

A: (Despite similarly abbreviated names, SAYSO is not affiliated with AYSO.) Both AYSO and CYSA class-4 are recreational soccer programs. SAYSO's Crickets Soccer Academy for 5-, 6-, and young 7-year olds is a recreational program: Everyone who applies is accepted. The Gryphons Soccer Academy for players ages 7 years and older is specifically targeted at elite-track youth players whose goals include participating in US Club Soccer events, high school varsity soccer, local and state Olympic Development Programs, CYSA State Premier League, and college soccer. For this program, tryouts are used to select participants. 

Q: How is SAYSO soccer different from local CYSA club soccer?

A: Gryphons Soccer Academy teams play in CYSA leagues. CYSA clubs are generally limited in their targeted audiences by city boundaries. In addition, club rivalries result in the formation of teams in the same age groups in each city. Both of these facts result in a thinly-spread pool of talented players. SAYSO, without geographical limitations (see next question), is able to combine players from neighboring cities. Progress and development of players' abilities, knowledge, and enjoyment are accelerated in such an environment.

Q: Why are there no geographical limitations placed on SAYSO's recruitment?

A: US Club Soccer places no restrictions on residency. The restrictions, requirements, and limitations that city-based soccer clubs place on players for various reasons do not apply to SAYSO.

Q: What makes SAYSO soccer fun?

A: By their intrinsic natures, SAYSO players are competitive from the earliest ages. The SAYSO environment permits players to realize improvements and achievements that otherwise would not be achieved. SAYSO players are motivated by the challenge of the game and perfecting new skills and strategies that cannot be presented in recreational programs. As they mature, such players find it difficult to have fun in programs that provide less.

Q: Just what IS the "SAYSO environment?"

A: The SAYSO environment is based on the following 5 key elements:

  * Objective, credentialed coaches and certified referees
  * Targeted,  progressive training curriculum appropriate for each age group
  * Early introduction to skills and strategies that take many years of consistent exposure to fully develop
  * Cross-pollenization from playing with other elite-track players
  * Experienced staff and program administration
 

Q: What is a Gryphon?

A: The gryphon ('griffin' or 'griffon') is a mythical creature - a mixture of the head, wings, and talons of an eagle, and the body, legs, and tail of a lion. This dichotomy aptly describe youth players as they make the transition to adulthood, from recreational to competitive soccer, and from cricket to torch bearer. (See SAYSO's Coat of Arms.) Gryphons represent valor and death-defying bravery. Seated, a gryphon also represents vigilance. Standing, a gryphon represents steadfast defiance.

Q: Who is eligible to participate in SAYSO's Gryphons Soccer Academy?

A: All girls and boys residing within traveling distance and time of SAYSO practice fields are invited to participate. SAYSO does not discriminate on on any basis of gender, creed, national or ethnic origin, or economic status.

Q: How are SAYSO's players chosen?

A: At the youngest ages (5, 6, and 7), SAYSO players are "self-selecting". Everyone who enrolls is accepted. These programs are limited in enrollment only by the availability of coaches and field time. Annual tryouts, camps, and field clinics are used to select players in older Gryphons Soccer Academy age groups.

Q: When is the SAYSO playing season?

A: SAYSO games are played during the same Fall season as CYSA and AYSO games - generally September through November. Teams also participate in a Spring program. Most players participate in a winter indoor soccer league, but that participation is voluntary and optional.

Q: What does it cost to participate in a SAYSO academy?

A: The cost depends on the age group, team, level of play, who the trainer is, and how many tournaments the team will attend during the season. Approximately $300 per season (fall and spring) is a bare minimum. New players participating for their first season also must purchase uniforms and equipment, $100-$150.

Q: How much traveling is involved in SAYSO?

A: The amount of travel depends on the league, but at the youngest ages (5, 6, and 7), there is essentially no travel. These games are played at fields located between San Mateo and Redwood City. Depending on the league and level of player, games for older players can be anywhere between Burlingame and Palo Alto, between San Francisco and San Jose/Santa Cruz, or anywhere in northern California.

Q: How do I sign my child up for an academy?

A: Give SAYSO a call, and we'll handle the rest.

Q: How did the 'Crickets' Soccer Academy get its name?

A: There are three competing theories for this. The first is that the league was named after a loyal and faithful horse named 'Cricket', well-known to residents of Stanislaus County, and whose story is heard by every group of SAYSO players that participate in Soccer in the Woods as they pass by Cricket's home field. Another theory is that the academy was so named because the young players have so much energy that they jump around the field like crickets. The final theory is that the league was named after the crickets that SAYSO's printer accidentally used in place of the SAYSO soccer graphic when printing SAYSO's first order of stationery. We may never know the truth.

Q: Are children small adults?

A: Children are not small adults - they are children who remain children long after we send them off to college. However, it is easy to forget this fact, particularly when the youth looks like an adult, as do some youths when they are 14-16. Despite appearances, however, most youths do not have the emotional stability, strength of character, and sense of well-being to withstand an adult's thoughtless criticism, judgment, and intimidation.

Children also different physically from small adults. Their bodies are still growing; their actions are  uncoordinated; their young muscles don't tone or bulk-up; and, parts of their skeletal system are susceptible to injury. Their nutritional needs differ from adult needs.

Q: Do children care about winning?

A: Young players don't even KNOW about winning. They come off the field after running for 20-30 minutes, and they ask, "Did we win?"

Q: What is "Rec-to-Comp?"

A: "Rec-to-Comp" is an instructional attitude that guides players towards a high-level game without eliminating the fun. Rec-to-Comp replaces drills, repetition, and drudgery with games, experimentation, and accomplishment. Rec-to-Comp requires a formal, long-term coaching curriculum that looks towards the future, recognizing that all players don't make the transition to "elite" status at the same time, but keeps the "fun" in the program, nevertheless. Recreational programs are easy to design, as are competitive programs. Rec-to-Comp programs require a lot of knowledge, experience, and wisdom to implement. 

Q: How did soccer develop?

A: (Adapted from the De Anza Sharks website; used with permission from webmaster Don Riccomini) The first recorded soccer game probably took place on a Shrove Tuesday in Derby, England, as part of a festival to celebrate the victory of English soldiers over a contingent of Roman troops (A.D. 217). By 1175 the annual Shrove Tuesday soccer game was a regular event. It is important to remember, however, that during the Roman occupation of Britain, as part of their campaign to retain control of the Anglo-Saxons, Roman soldiers often played a game similar to soccer using the skulls of their enemies as balls.

In the early game, "hacking" (deliberate kicking of the opponent's leg) was permitted, in addition to the use of the hands. The game was originally played without field boundaries, often in the streets of towns, with any number of players. The play grew so rough that various attempts were made to outlaw the game, including a royal ban in the 15th century, but none succeeded.

The kicking of inflated bladders on public greens developed as a popular diversion for youths of the lower classes in Great Britain as early as the 16th century. It was generally unpopular among mature persons of whatever class because of the shouting and excitement that came with it. Despite this disapproval, the sport persisted wherever specific ordinances were not enacted prohibiting it. Many such ordinances were passed, but the sport always reappeared after the laws against it had been forgotten or allowed to lapse.

Up to the beginning of the 19th century, middle- and upper-class youths generally disdained the kicking sport and kept to their rods, guns,  horses, and swords. With the development of the British public schools, conditions changed. By the turn of the 19th century, youths who would have been permitted two or three centuries earlier to roam and hunt on their ancestral fields, growing up virtually unlettered, found themselves cooped up together in public schools. Their youthful energy was not diminished by their changed estate, and outlets became a vital need. The boys found it themselves--in the "rowdy" game which had been played on British greens for centuries. University scholars outside the public school system continued to look on the kicking sport as boisterous, undignified, and totally unsuited to the upper class.

In 1863, Matthew Arnold, famed for reforming and humanizing the often brutal English public school system, organized the street game into two distinct categories, each to be played on a field--rugby, which continued to allow use of the hands by all players; and association football or soccer, which limited players to use of the feet, except for the goalkeeper. Arnold also outlawed hacking in soccer--which is why tackles in modern soccer must involve contact with the ball. These changes were first introduced by Arnold at Eaton, and through the London Football Association, all participating schools eventually adopted these rules when playing "football" (soccer) and "rugby" (introduced at the Rugby public school).

The rugby/soccer split was not actually accomplished that easily. There were two distinctly differences of thought on how the game - a single game - should be played. After the the rules for the kicking game were published, the Blackheath club (that had led the fight for running with the held ball) promptly withdrew from the Association and published its own set of rugby rules. The two great divisions of British football were thus delineated. The "kicking" group published the first uniform set of rules, entitled "Rules of the London Football Association." And from that grew the modern sport of association football or soccer. The kicking game came to be known as "association football," and the "association" game, soon shortened to "soccer," and sometimes spelled "socker."

Q: How did the system of yellow- and red-cards develop?

A: October 25, 2001: Obituary - Ken Aston. Referee of the infamous Battle of Santiago in the 1962 World Cup finals who went on to dream up red and yellow cards. Introducing highlights of the World Cup game of 1962 between Chile and Italy on BBC1, David Coleman said: "Good evening. The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of  football possibly in the history of the game." The referee of the match,  known as the "Battle of Santiago", was Ken Aston. He went on to become chairman of the FIFA referees' committee and introduced red and yellow cards to the game. But discipline was not his only priority. "The game should be a two-act play with 22 players on stage and the referee as the director," he once said. "There is no script, no plot, you don't know the ending, but the idea is to provide enjoyment."

Kenneth George Aston was born in Colchester and educated at Ilford County High School and St Luke's College, Exeter, where he studied French and religious instruction. Immediately after leaving he qualified as a teacher and joined Newbury Park County Primary School in Essex, where he remained for the rest of his career, apart from his war service and a year at another school as deputy headmaster in 1949.

Aston had been asked to take charge of a football match at his school in 1935, and he qualified as a referee in the following year. He began in local leagues and progressed to the Football Combination, where he remained until he joined the list of league linesmen in the 1949-50 season.

He was used to refereeing relatively calm games in England until the1962 World Cup in Chile. The trouble there began when the local media claimed that Italian journalists had written articles which questioned the beauty and morals of Chilean women. Aston, who had taken charge of the opening game, was regarded as having a safe pair of hands, and as a result was asked to replace the designated official for Chile's game against Italy. "I was> less than happy," he said later.

"I asked for my own linesmen, but I had to stick with a Mexican and a little American from New York. They weren't very good, so it became almost me against the 22 players."

Before the match began, a gift of carnations from the Italian players was rejected by the Chileans. After 12 seconds, the first player was booked.

After 12 minutes, Giorgio Ferrini of Italy was sent off for a cynical foul. Then the Chilean left back Leonel Sanchez broke the nose of the Italian captain, Huberto Maschio, with a left hook. "I had my back to the incident at the time," said Aston. "I'm sure the linesman saw it, but he refused to tell me." When Mario David later aimed a kung-fu kick at Sanchez, he was also sent off. Armed police came on to the field three times to help Aston, who did not add on any stoppage time. Chile won 2-0.

"I wasn't reffing a football match," he later recalled. "I was acting as an umpire in military maneuvers." Although he later advised referees  never to lay a hand on a player, he admitted that on this occasion he had been "manhandling players left, right and centre".

Aston never refereed another World Cup match, but in 1964 he became chairman of the FIFA Referees' Committee, a position which he held until Sir Stanley Rous was succeeded as President of FIFA by João Havelange. Aston remained FIFA's chief refereeing instructor.

He retired from domestic football in 1963 after taking charge of the FA Cup Final. But at the 1966 World Cup, in his role for FIFA he became embroiled in another of the most controversial incidents of the history of the tournament, when England played Argentina in the quarter-final at Wembley. For an hour of a rough game England were unable to penetrate the Argentine defense. Then, with the Argentine players surrounding the German referee, Rudolf Kreitlein, to dispute another decision, their captain, Antonio Rattín, was sent off.

For several minutes Rattín refused to leave the pitch, and then, when he did withdraw, he continued the argument in front of the royal box. "The gesturing went on for three minutes or so, and it became plain to me that, if no solution could be found soon, the match would have to be abandoned," said Aston, who had overall responsibility for refereeing at the tournament. "I decided to go on and see what I could do." He managed to persuade Rattín that to persist would not be good for the Argentine football authorities. England won 1-0.

The match became significant for a further reason. Newspapers had reported that both Jack and Bobby Charlton had been booked, but there was no public indication of this from the referee, and the England manager Alf Ramsey had asked FIFA for clarification. Aston pondered how to make the position clearer. "As I drove down Kensington High Street, the traffic light turned red. I thought, 'Yellow, take it easy; red, stop, you're off'." Red and yellow cards were introduced to the game at the World Cup finals in 1970.

Aston's confident opinions made him a respected authority on the laws of the game. As a result, he represented the footballers John O'Neill and Paul Elliott at the High Court, after their respective careers were ended by> heavy challenges. Aston described one of the damaging tackles, by John Fashanu, as "the clearest case I have ever seen of a player jumping at an opponent".

"I know I'm a bloody old fool," he once said, "but I think about the game." He started up refereeing courses in America, and was able to say: "I  have - and I know I have - made an enormous difference to the game in the  USA." A tournament in California was named after him - in which the winners were the best-performing referees and linesmen. In 1997 Aston was appointed MBE for "services to US soccer".

He was also the author of what he called the "Tehran Memo", a ruling on the tackle from behind, which was subsequently outlawed by FIFA, to Aston's disgust. "If it's serious foul play, the player can be sent off, but not  every time," he said. "In my day, you were allowed to use your discretion. That's the same whether it's Wembley or Hackney Marshes."

Ken Aston is survived by his wife, Hilda, and by their son. Ken Aston, MBE, football referee, was born on September 1, 1915. He died on October 23, 2001, aged 86.