It's About What's Good For The Kids

AYSO's volunteer foundation ensures that it's all about what's good for kids. It also makes AYSO very affordable. Every coach, referee, and administrator in our region is a volunteer. Nationwide, over 125,000 parents, neighbors, relatives and friends lend their time and talents so that each child gets a terrific AYSO experience. AYSO operates in a business manner, but volunteers ensure its "profits" are happy, healthy kids playing a sport they can enjoy for life.

AYSO has developed special training that helps parents who may have little or no soccer experience quickly gain the age-appropriate knowledge and skills they need to be effective coaches and referees. It also has unique administrative and management training. This ensures that each community program:

• Abides by the AYSO philosophies
• Offers a great AYSO experience
• Continues to grow, offering the AYSO opportunity to more children

It only takes a few hours to become qualified as an introductory-level coach or referee. But if you're not able to commit even that much time, there are many small jobs you can help with. Even a couple of hours each season are an important contribution to your team and Region!

AYSO training doesn't stop as long as you're having fun. Referees, coaches and administrators have clinics, workshops and other advanced training available to advance their skills.

Two-Part Volunteer Sign Up for Spring 2017

Part One: Volunteer Sign up

During the process of signing up of your child for one of our programs, you will be asked to select either a specific volunteer role, or elect to have us help find you a role that matches your skills, talents, interests and availability. Only "position specific," not private personal information will be collected during player registration. The information collected during that process just indicates your volunteer position preference, notes which division you want to support, and includes basic contact information that will be helpful once teams are formed.

Part Two: Volunteer Verification

In order to ensure the safety of all of the members of our Region 418 Family, we do background checks on all of our volunteers. Background checks are done annually and ensure that we doing everything possible to never place our kids' wellbeing at risk.  Any volunteer who is going to be directly working with our youth players or possibly come in contact with their personal information will have passed a comprehensive background check and will be required to complete AYSO Safe Haven® training.

Volunteer verification will be done in eAYSO, as it is the system available to us that has the highest levels of security to maintain the confidentiality of our volunteers' information.  Having volunteers register through eAYSO also generates an AYSO ID that is necessary to track the completion of other volunteer certifications as may be necessary depending on the role the volunteer wishes to fill.

Click here to register as a volunteer at eAYSO.org for Spring 2017. There is also a link to this site when you sign up to volunteer through your account on the AYSO Region 418 website.

Our CVPA (Child and Volunteer Protection Advocate) is your resource if you have questions or problems completing this process. Feel free to contact the Susan Boush, CVPA ,regarding any volunteer registration question you may have by emailing [email protected].

Each year, AYSO Region 418 provides more than 3,400 Chicago-area children with a youth soccer experience unrivaled in the City. 

We are an All-Volunteer organization who relies on everyone pitching in, in some capacity, to help fulfill our mission: 

Our mission is to provide high quality, low-cost youth soccer to as many children in our immediate and surrounding communities as possible.

We simply cannot do that without every family pitching in in some way.

There are many ways to be part of your child’s soccer experience.  Some positions require ongoing commitments, such as coaching a team. Other roles support one-time events, like picture day or helping out with our end of year SoccerFest Tournament. Some positions even allow you to volunteer on your own time, from your own home, wearing bedroom slippers if you like :-)

Upon registering your child, you will be asked to select a volunteer role. The roles listed are the most critical to the success of our program.
The more active referees and coaches we have in our Region, the better the high quality experience we can provide to more players.

If you have no desire to coach or referee, or your schedule just will not allow you to make that commitment, we have lots of other essential roles that need to be filled.  Simply select "Undecided - Help Me Choose" during your child's player registration process. You will be able to tell us about what you like to do, what you are good at, and how much time you are able to devote to helping the Region. We will help you find a role that works for you.

Only interest, not experience, is needed.

Region 418 is proud to provide the training and mentorship you need to be successful in whatever role you choose.

A complete list of volunteer positions is available on the AYSO National Website. To access position descriptions, please click here. 

Please contact Susan Boush, Child and Volunteer Protection Advocate, at [email protected] for more information on how you can become an AYSO volunteer.