A senior board member with the Hanover Soccer Club says their elite youth teams are becoming increasingly competitive in the Winnipeg Soccer League. Brian Froese says they have teams participating at the U9 through U17 age groups. He adds the teams are constantly getting better because of commitment by the club to start teaching skills right from age four on up.

"Instead of just having kids coming out and uneducated parent-coaches supervising kids just running around kicking the ball, we have a very specific training model that we follow and it's very focused on skills development and having fun an enjoyment. That's the most encouraging part, we can already see the work that we're doing in our mini program, some of the fruits of that labour are evident now as we're seeing increasing numbers in the younger age groups wanting to play at that competitive level of soccer."

Close to ninety kids are attending evaluation camps this weekend and next weekend to try out for the elite U9 to U17 teams.

Froese says among communities outside Winnipeg, the soccer program in Steinbach stands out and is above average in terms of programming and numbers of participants. He adds registration for this year wrapped up a week ago with about 475 participants in the youth program.

"There's a small drop in our mini program, the four to eight-year-old category and, in our community youth program there was a small drop-off there as well. We expected that with the new website and the fact that we put the registration deadline a whole month earlier than past years, we anticipated that it would be a little bit lower. So we're very pleased with how the outcome has been."