My kids and their friends text each other and meet up at one of the open public fields to play. For fun.

Parent-organized pick-up is an oxymoron. You are talking about something other than pick-up.

My DS is at a large club and one of the parents organized a pickup game. Just ask around and see if any of the parents where you are at have or know of one of a game for your child’s age. If no one has one then just try to do it yourself. Set up a signal or whatsapp chat group and just start sending messages. The kids will want to play with different kids and try to keep the parenting or coaching out of it and let the kids just play for fun. Also invite other kids from outside your club if you know of anyone. If you can get a core group of a few kids they will have fun and more kids/parents will start coming once they realize it is good experience for them. Hope that helps.

My son is interested in indoor pickups, especially at Sofive Rockville. A few times he was there but it was mainly adults so he didn't join. I am looking for kids 2011-2010 who will be there this Friday 7pm or Sunday 7pm for pickup.

RFK fields is a great venue for this for various reasons. They'll be booked weekday afternoons during the season, but could largely be free during the offseason and you can usually find space on the weekends. The reservation calendar is available online so you should have a good idea when you can find free space.

I've organized games with my kid's former teammates in the past pretty successfully. I based the invites on lists from his first and second clubs (ages 7-12). As the kids changed clubs they were able to bring teammates and friends as well. And at that age, the more athletic parents can play to help fill out the ranks.

https://eventsdc.com/venue/fields-rfk-campus/calendar[url]

It all comes down to not enough people wanting to play pickup because soccer isn't popular enough. If it were more popular, there would be demand for more fields, turf areas, lighted fields, etc. For that matter, people would be playing in empty school parking lots if there were truly enough demand.

DS regularly plays pickup in Northern VA. Problem this time of year is finding fields with lights.

The problem is more likely that fields aren't available. Sofive for example, has a winter league, and is full of practices for young travel players (ask me how I know). Same for Rockville Sportsplex and the Soccerplex. Outdoor grass fields aren't supposed to be used in winter (Montgomery County doesn't allow), and the turf fields are fairly booked for older travel teams

We just need to have the kids pay a quick registration fee and maybe a small fee to support our non-profit. That would ensure we have a fair pick up game. How else are they going to use the public field space that is already fully reserved by my non-profit? *sarcasm font*

I didn’t think you’ll get too many parents willing to travel that far for pickup soccer. You’d have more luck finding kids in your general area and meeting at the same location every time.

There was a post about pickup basketball awhile back that got derailed by a troll. IIRC, they organized through the town Facebook group.

Anonymous wrote:It would be important to have kids that are relatively close in skill level. At that age, there is a world of difference between top team soccer and 5th team soccer.

No, they’re not. Ur ignorance is showing. Ask any foreign coach and they’ll tell you that their street ball and pickups had all ages. That’s how you actually get better. I know you’ll feel offended so I look forward to ur American rebuttal loaded with yet more ignorance

Once you try to organize pickup games it starts to become just another rec league. The most successful pickup soccer I have seen are basically just a time and place, communicated through a group chat and word of mouth, with no restrictions placed on age/gender/ability. It takes a while to get traction and sometimes not many people will show up.

The problem you’ll run into is there just isn’t a lot of demand for pickup soccer. If there were a lot of demand there would already be a lot of pickup soccer. I see plenty of pickup basketball happening at courts all over the area. Nobody organizes it people just show up. Soccer isn’t as popular here.

This doesn’t sound like a pick up anymore

It would be important to have kids that are relatively close in skill level. At that age, there is a world of difference between top team soccer and 5th team soccer.

We know that our kids need to play more pickup to develop creativity but nobody actually does it. Any ideas on how to start a weekly pickup session aimed at getting kids playing across the clubs and across the DMV?

I live in DC but willing to travel. Initial thoughts are to rotate the location such as The Fields at RFK in DC, Lewinsville in McLean, SoFive in Rockville and any other locations you suggest.

Please chime in with any requirements you would want if you have a child who practices or plays 10+ hours per week to participate in pickup a few times per month against other motivated players in the DMV born between 2012-2014.