Excitement mounts...!

I love this time of the year - the season is just around the corner, tryouts are this weekend, the schedule is out, season ticket sales are going well and player signings are being made. It's great to have new players added to the roster but also great to welcome back some familiar faces, some of them from our very first season as the Aztex U23's. We ask them to do a lot of community work behind the scenes and they have always responded so well - I get to hear all the great feedback and feel like a proud mum (mom). Kids don't always want to listen to parents or authority figures about healthy eating or the importance of exercise but will happily take advice from recognizable athletes.

Tuesday evening saw a soccer milestone - Amy Fearn became the first woman to referee an English Football League match. She first made headlines in November 2006 when Mike Newell, then the manager of Luton, took exception to her performance on the line in his club's defeat by Queen's Park Rangers.

"She shouldn't be here," Newell fumed after the match. "I know that sounds sexist but I am sexist. This is not park football so what are women doing here?" He went on to claim, "it is tokenism - for the politically-correct idiots. When do we reach a stage when all officials are women? Because then we are in trouble."

Newell subsequently apologized but was fined 6,500 pounds for his trouble by the Football Association. It's hard to imagine that kind of incident here in the US where women's soccer is well-established and respected although the ratio of men to women referees is still unbalanced. I'm interested now to find out what prevents women from becoming a referee - more later!

The banter has already started about the World Cup clash on June 12th between England and the US - could be the biggest watch party ever followed our game that evening against Vancouver. I'm not one to get involved in baiting and jeering at other people's teams .......but I'm willing to make an exception in this case! You're going down!!!!

Kay