Club History
The Glass City Soccer Club began in 1996 as the Washington Local Soccer Club, a new travel soccer organization that was based in West Toledo, and played its home games at Erme Field. While the program had early successes, some restructuring was needed. Beginning in 1999, a new recreational program, also called Washington Local, was created to introduce young children to the sport of soccer in a supervised atmosphere. As the recreational program grew, however, the travel portion of the program seemed to decline.
Noticing the trend, the Administration of the program decided it would be best to split the program into two separate entities, and Glass City Soccer was given as the name of the travel portion of the program. While the first couple of years as Glass City were spent trying to regain the momentum of the late 1990's, the struggle to convince our recreation players to move forward continued.
The past two years have seen exponential growth in the club, especially in our youth division. Seeing the need for players to get involved at a young age, Tammi Mills helped in recruiting a team and a coach (Cameron Kruzel) from Washington Local for the Boys U-10 division for the Spring 2008 season, the first team from the club in the youth division in several years. While that first year had humble beginnings, an 0-10 record, they did see some close games, including three games that were lost by only one goal. But that season was the building block that encouraged other teams to join the club.
The following season (Fall 2008), that team split into two teams, a Boys U-10 and a Boys U-11. In addition, Brad South brought his team over from Washington Local to compete in the Boys U-10 division. That team went 4-6 in their first season, while Kruzel's team struggled to a 2-8 finish. The Boys U-11 team also struggled, only winning one game.
The Spring of 2009 saw many positive changes occur, the biggest being the hiring of Matt Koop as the Director of Coaching. Matt has put in place many things to help unify the club, including club wide fundraising, footskills clinics for all club players, and better communication between all coaches. The results have been immediate. In Spring 2008, the Boys U-11 team, led by Coach Koop, finished second in their league (6-4) and took second in the MIST Tournament. In addition, Brad South and Dave Wagenhauser lead the Girls U-10 team to a second place finish in their league (8-1-1). The Boys U-10 team was taken over by Bob Axtell, and they finished in fourth place with a 5-5 record.
The Spring and Summer 2010 Seasons look to be a promising as nine Glass City teams will take the field, all looking to improve upon our past successes. Four of those teams will begin the season in tournament play. We are excited to see the growth of travel soccer back at Glass City.