Middlesex youth soccer program traces beginnings to October 1982

by Larry Chowning – 

The current YMCA Middlesex youth soccer program started Oct. 2, 1982, as the “Tidewater Summer Soccer League Fall Youth Division,” when a group of parents and soccer fans met in the Middlesex High School (MHS) cafeteria for an organizational meeting.

The organizational meeting announcement in the Southside Sentinel read, “All interested children and parents should attend. Parents or other adults willing to volunteer as coaches, supervisors are needed. No previous soccer experience or knowledge is necessary.”

Archie Soucek, a graduate of Christchurch School and, at the time on the Christchurch board of directors, was a parent who attended the first youth soccer organizational meeting. By then his son Jason was old enough to play and his younger son Andrew was coming of age. Bobby Mason, a 1977 graduate of MHS and former soccer standout, coached with Soucek that first year.

Soucek had been an all-star…