Reprinted from:	Gazette.Net
	Date:	May 7, 2009
	FC Frederick to merge with Urbana Soccer Association
	Christian Brown | Staff Writer
	The FC Frederick Soccer Club and the Urbana Soccer Association have agreed to merge starting with the fall season, bringing a broader range of coaching to players. According to David Ward, president of the Urbana Soccer Association, the merger will bring 1,000 soccer players under one umbrella. In an interview May 12, Ward said that the two organizations began to discuss merging at the January 2008 National Soccer Coaches of America Conference. He said that one of the problems that Urbana Soccer faced was that parent volunteers, while dedicated and capable, could not offer young players the level of coaching that professionals could. One way he thought about raising the level of coaching in the association was to hire a professional coaching director. However, Urbana Soccer could not afford it. "Hiring a director of coaching as a paid position at $5,000 might have been a little bit beyond our means," he said. Ward said he approached FC Frederick with the idea of merging the organizations, which he said have always had a good relationship. Ward said that in the past when children in Urbana Soccer would want to play travel soccer — that is to travel to other locations to compete — they would have to leave to join FC Frederick anyway, which was difficult for them as they had become used to playing with one group of friends and now had to adapt to a new team. "We're talking about 10-year-old children here, not adults," he said. "It's like changing a job, it's stressful." He said that not only will the merger benefit Urbana Soccer, but FC Frederick will have a larger pool of players to move on to travel teams. "With a single club, it will be easier for us to identify kids who should be playing travel soccer," he said. Now that the organizations have merged, Ward said that the Urbana side will remain as the "classic" program, and children playing in Urbana will have access to a professional director of coaching. "We'll actually have a director of coaching as a paid position," he said, "so we got what we wanted." Bo Eskay, FC Frederick's president, said the goal of the merger was to spread out the soccer club's coaching staff, so that more children in Frederick County could benefit from its coaching model. FC Frederick boasts 30 nationally licensed soccer coaches, and Eskay hopes that the players from Urbana Soccer Association will benefit from their coaching. Both clubs will be known collectively as FC Frederick after they join in the fall, and will maintain training facilities in Frederick, Buckeystown and Urbana. In a press release from FC Frederick, Urbana soccer coaches said that bringing their association under the larger club's banner would increase the level of high school players. "The pooling of the resources of these two dynamic groups will result in a quantum leap in player development," said Chuck Nichols, the head coach of the Urbana High girls' varsity soccer team. FC Frederick is a nonprofit organization with the intent of developing and challenging players of all ages at their highest level, according to the release. E-mail Christian Brown at chbrown@gazette.net.