I became involved in AYSO in 1996 when my daughter decided she wanted to play U6. I spent that first year as a coach. I choose AYSO over the other soccer organization in our area like most parents do, pure chance, a roll of the dice. But I quickly saw in AYSO the principles with which I wanted to be associated. My second season, I became a referee, continued to coach and joined the board as a division coordinator. I was amazed at the amount of work required to run the region on a weekly basis. The referee scheduler had one of the ugliest jobs in the world, I suspect the only person with a worse job was me, division coordinator for U10B. I spent days trying to find coaches, begging, and more days trying to balance teams. I was given stacks of player evaluation forms and stacks of registrations every few days.. The time I was spending on being a division coordinator during July and August equaled a full-time job.
When I finished that second year, I was at a crossroads. I loved the organization but volunteering was hell. Our retention rate on division commissioners was nonexistent and I was beat to a pulp. But my daughters loved soccer... My third season with AYSO, I became Regional Commissioner (RC), thinking any job was better than returning to the coordinator position. I, of course, was wrong.
My goal as RC was to pull Region 44 (Sunnyvale, California) into the 20th century whether it liked it or not. The web provided the opportunity to leave the old methods behind and start fresh. The first application was referee scheduling, which provided a way for referees to specify their preferences via a website and a small application that plugged available referees into game slots. It took into account distance between fields, traveling time, phase of the moon, etc. It was definitely overkill. But it turned the hated referee scheduler job into something that could be considered fun to some.
Over the next two years other areas were automated. Within a couple years teams were being formed by the simple press of a button. No more hours slaving over spreadsheets trying to get columns to balance. This of course was only possible because the previous years player evaluations where collected online from coaches and assistants. And referees had gone from just viewing their schedules on the web to more complex tracking of game assignments and inputting game cards. Having the game cards gave us immediate feedback on whether our coaches were giving each player the 75% playing time our regional policies suggest. The division coordinators and coaches both had access to far more information on the players than ever before.
Each year brought more regions in our area, then neighboring areas.
This endeavor was now too successful to continue as a hobby.... WebYouthSoccer was born.
Bob Arasmith