ACA Youth Development Program

[Vishal Tiku]

Hello all ACA Members!

The purpose of this email is to solicit volunteers to form an ACA sub-committee whose objective will be to develop, socialize and implement a Youth Development Program for ACA starting in Fall of 2016. If this is of interest to you perhaps, please read on.

If you've been following the national Cricket scene, you'd know that there is a very focused effort underway by the ICC to promote and develop Cricket as a sport here in the US.​ This is the first time ICC has gotten directly involved with US Cricket and from all that one can glean, they certainly mean business. ICC spent a majority of 2015 engaging US Cricket Stakeholders across the country (that ACA was also a part of) to try and come up with a high level strategy that would accomplish this challenging objective. While there were many strategic objectives/goals that came out of this activity spearheaded by the ICC, the most important and a cornerstone objective identified was Youth Development and engagement. It is clear to most everyone that Cricket cannot take a footing in the US unless we get the young boys and girls playing the sport.

If ACA wants to be an organization that is seen as the primary credible governance body for Cricket here in Arizona, we must establish a Youth Development program. It simply is not an option to continue to ignore this unless of course all we want to do is to organize recreational Cricket for expatriates which we have been doing for the past 25 years. Without a functioning Youth program, there is little to no chance of ICC or the US National Governing Body supporting/recognizing ACA in any manner. Apart from staying relevant as a sports organization nationally (which could yield many benefits in the future), getting the young playing in Arizona will ensure that all the teams/clubs we have worked so hard to form continue to exist 15-20 years from now with a wealth of young talent as a feeder of future players. A successful Youth League would also potentially generate positive revenue for ACA that would enable us to continue to make inroads into reducing the financial burden of ACA Teams/Clubs.

So.. in short... the time to act on this is NOW! If we can get 10 or so passionate people that love the game and are willing to commit some of their personal time towards seeing it really foster and grow here in the Valley and surrounding areas, there is no reason why we can't make it happen. There are enough interested youth and parents of children here in the Phoenix metro that would love to participate.

The high-level objectives of the Youth Development Sub-Committee would be as follows:

• Brainstorm and come up with a detailed executable plan that includes formation of Coaching Centers and a Youth League between now and our summer AGM. There are many promising ideas around what this plan might look like that can be built on and further defined by the sub-committee. Will share those details once we have enough volunteers to form the sub-committee.
• Present and obtain approval on the plan at our summer 2016 AGM.
• Develop a coaching curriculum that can be consistently used across the coaching centers. There are many existing workable models that can be adopted.
• Identify and organize a coaching workforce.
• Implement the plan starting Fall 2016.
• Continue to support the program operationally once implemented including all coordination and organization around the coaching clinics and the Youth League itself.

If all this seems of interest to you and you would like to volunteer to help, please send a reply to acae...@googlegroups.com.

Regards!

Vishal Tiku

On Behalf of the ACA Executive Committee