House League is a non-competitive program that introduces boys and girls born 2001-2005 (Grades K-4) to soccer. At the youngest age level (U6) the players play in a mixed boys’ and girls’ league. From U7 to U10, the boys and girls play on separate teams. At the younger ages, players play on small fields with 3 players / side. As they progress through house league the field size gets larger as does the number of players on each field, up to 6 a side at the U10 level. Each child gets equal playing time and will be given the opportunity to play all positions. Every effort is made to create balanced teams. Sportsmanship, fair play, and teamwork are stressed.

The Soccer Season

The soccer season starts in mid September and finishes with a Jamboree in early March. There are no games scheduled during Thanksgiving weekend or during the Christmas break (mid-December to early-January). Games are cancelled occasionally due to bad weather.

The boys play games Saturday mornings and the girls play Saturday afternoons. Depending on the age group, the Dunbar teams play in-house, against another local club or in the U9 and U10 girls’ case, in a Vancouver wide league. All U6 games are played Saturday mornings, mostly at McBride Park (5th and Blenheim).

With the exception to the U6 program, each team usually practices outdoors once a week after school or in the early evening. The U6 players do not have a mid week practice. In October, gymnasiums are available for the younger groups to practice. Practice times are determined by the team's coaches and field/gymnasium availability. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee in advance the day on which your child's practice will take place.

House League Rules

For more information about the House League Rules (DSA, KSC and PGSC) visit our referees page.

Equipment & Uniforms

All players will be supplied with a Dunbar Soccer uniform (jersey, shorts, and socks) in September, which must be returned at the end of the season. All players are required to wear shin guards; soccer cleats are recommended and no baseball hats or other hard objects should be worn.

Fees

For registration, rates are available from the current Registration Page.

Parent Volunteers

Dunbar Soccer is a volunteer-based organization and your participation is essential to the Club's success. Please ensure you indicate on the Dunbar Soccer Registration form how you will help.

Team Formation

At the House League level, the teams are set by age group coordinators. In order to ensure the success of our league, teams are created to be balanced and fair and depend greatly on coach availability. Friend preferences are sometimes taken into account to the extent that the coordinators can meet the above objectives.

Special age considerations - u6 Teams

Underage U6 players , 4 year old preschool age, will automatically be waitlisted and if space allows, be placed on a team conditionally meeting the following criteria:

• There is space on a team and no other U6s (Kindergarten) are on the waitlist
• The under age player has a skill level and maturity comparable to the median within the team
• The coach agrees to have an underage player
• The parents agree that the underage U6 player will play U6 again the following year with his/her natural age group.

Contact Names

Your team's coach/manager will be contacting you in early September. If you need to speak to someone before September, please refer to the CONTACT page for you Group Age Coordinator's email.

Tryouts

At the house league level, tryouts are not necessary. All players are eligible and welcome to play on a team.

Playing up

Please refer to the DSA playing up policy.

Duration of Games

U6 and U7: 2 halves of 20 minutes, or 4 equal periods of 10 minutes, with a 5 minute half time break.

U8 to U10: 2 equal halves of 25 minutes, with a 5 minute half time break

Locations:

Fields most often used for House include:

• Chaldecott
• Queen Elizabeth Grass
• Queen Elizabeth Annex
• Lord Kitchener
• McBride Park

Additional points about Cancellations, Fair vs Rough Play, Parent Viewing area, Live Balls, Throw ins vs. Kick ins

Below are a few reminders and some answers to questions that have come up in the past. Please have a read as it will help us all be on the same page going forward and enable us to continue to deliver an organized, fun and exciting program for all of our players.

1)Cancellations, Alternates, Showing Up For Games
At certain times of year where weather can be wet, cold, and unpredictable, please remember that only the club, through its age group coordinators can cancel games. Therefore, all coaches/teams need to show up for their scheduled game. In the past, we've had instances where one team didn’t show up because it was “too rainy” leaving another team showing up with no one to play. The club will use a common sense approach to cancel games due to excessive rain. Factors to consider are field condition (whether or not the field will be damaged by playing on it) and the young players’ ability to play in the conditions. Example: normal rain we play, freezing rain or heavy rain we don’t.

Please check your email for cancellation notices and change to alternate field notices from your coordinator. For all U6 thru U12 ages, on most of our fields, the clubs have user discretion to use them even when they are closed as the players do little damage to the fields. Therefore, house league games may still be on a grass field even if the Field Status Line/Website says it is closed. A message sent out by coordinators and updated on club homepages will override the Field Status Line/Website.

Finally, the only circumstances in which coaches should cancel a game is if they show up to a field to play and they both deem it unsafe to play. This could be due to large pools of standing water or the field being frozen and hard (ie, you cannot stick your finger into the field surface) Therefore, during the colder months, the club may not cancel games, but the 9am and 10am coaches may show up and decide it is unsafe, but by 11am games may go on due to thawing. We understand people would like to know ahead of time in such circumstances, but we have no way of predicting if a field will freeze over night. We also do not want to cancel games to early the day before, in case we end up with a nice Saturday. We will do our best to notify everyone as early as possible of any cancellations whether they occur the day before the game or the day of.

2)Fair Play/Sportsmanship and Fouls/Rough Play

For U6 and U7 coaches, you are the refs. Therefore you need to call fouls and explain to players what is appropriate contact and what is not. This is just as important as other skills such as teaching them to shoot and dribble properly. We also must instill a sense of fair play and sportsmanship amongst our players.

For U9/U10 where there are refs, coaches must still teach their players as to what is appropriate or not. We have very inexperienced refs at house league who are sometimes very reluctant to make calls on fouls out of fear of making a mistake. Therefore, just because a team or certain player does not get called for something, it does not mean that a foul or rough play is not occurring. Please make sure you discuss any fouls with players on your team that are repeatedly making them so they learn the proper way to challenge for a ball, even if refs have not made calls against them. This can be done during a ball out of play or during the time they are a sub. Finally, if you have players being over aggressive persistently, you should take them off the field discuss it and depending on number of actions, not play them the remainder of the game.

Appropriate:
Incidental Contact with shoulders when running alongside someone for ball
Leaning in with shoulder to shoulder to establish body position on the ball (not body checking with shoulder)
Incidental Contact with other player while kicking/playing a ball
Turning body with knees bent and arms out in athletic position in order to keep opponent separate from ball (ie, shielding the ball)

Not Appropriate
Deliberately kicking the ball at an opponent
Deliberately Kicking, hitting and tripping opponent
Grabbing jerseys,
Elbowing or shoulder charging
Pulling down players/football style tackles
Straight arm shoving
There have also been some reports of players not shaking hands after games and players calling others names.

We also want to remind everyone that soccer is a contact sport and there will be collisions, tackles, and competition for the ball. As a result, there will be fouls that are called and not called. There will be some players that are more aggressive than others, just as there are some players that are faster than others. And finally, there will be different interpretations of what is a foul or aggressive play amongst all of our coaches, players, parents, and refs. We need to find a middle ground on what is acceptable, try and eliminate what is obviously unsportsmanlike and curtail players who are routinely fouling, but also be tolerant of players’ eagerness to compete for the ball.

3)Parent Viewing Areas

Due to more rain coming our way, our fields will be under more stress. We want to stay on grass as much as possible. Therefore, we ask coaches to try their best to get their parents to stay clear of the area between the two fields at all ages as this is the area that is taking the most abuse. The more chewed up the grass gets, the sooner and more often we will be on gravel. Thank you to all the parents who are already doing this and thank you to teams that are clearing out the centre immediately after their games. The next teams on the field really do appreciate it.

4)Two Common Questions

a)"live ball" (after a goalie makes a save) - do we play with this rule or not?
If a goalie makes a save and hangs on to the ball, then places it on the ground, it is a live ball and may be kicked by any player on the field. This applies from U7 thru U10.
If the ball goes off the endline after a shot wide and it is a goal kick. The ball is not live until kicked by the team awarded the goal kick.

b) Do we do "throw ins" or "kick ins" or ether way is fine?
For both U7/U8 we do kick-ins. At U9/U10 we do trow-ins.

5)Coach to Coach Game Confirmation Call
Finally, all coaches are reminded that they need to contact their opponents before every game to make sure both teams know the game details. Generally the home team coach should be contacting the away coach on Friday to confirm. This is especially important during this time of year where we may be switching to alternate fields the day before a game and especially when there is cross club communication involved. Coordinators should be able to forward you contact info for all teams from all three clubs in your age group.