OK, first calm down. A little background to help. Albuquerque Soccer League and Albuquerque Women's Soccer League are USASA and USSF-affiliated soccer leagues that plays three seasons annually of men’s, women's and coed soccer. Our fiscal year starts September 1. Hence, we begin registration anew every year in August and begin a nine game fall season the Sunday after Labor Day. We play the Fall Classic soccer tournament in late November, then close down play in December, January and February. There’s indoor play (dasher board style) but we have no connection with it. Google can help you find that. In mid February, we play the Mark Underwood Memorial tournament in Socorro in conjunction with New Mexico Tech. It’s a men’s open tournament. The first Sunday of March starts our spring season that runs 8 games. We determine division winners based on the combined results of the fall and spring season and give out awards at the end of the spring season. As of 2007, we have 6 men’s divisions, five women's divisions and 3 coed divisions. The first weekend of May, NMSSA hosts the annual Chile Cup for men, women, and coed at our complex in Bernalillo.
For summer soccer, we offer a recreational coed league on Monday and Tuesday evenings after work and a competitive coed league on Wednesdays and Thursdays after work. The difference between the two is that we do not allow premier or first division men and premier division women or college soccer players in the recreational play. it is intended for less skilled players and we attempt to eliminate as much sandbagging as possible. We do not keep standings or give any awards in the hope that the summer play can be as enjoyable and uncompetitive as possible. We have varying degree of success depending on the nature of the people participating.
Also, in the summer we play men’s Over-30 on Friday after work. AWSL plays women’s Over-30 Thursday after work. Both ASL and AWSL play Futsal on Sunday afternoons and evenings. ASL will offer a competitive men's league for the first time this summer for play on Sundays.
We do not play any veteran’s age soccer during the fall and spring due to a lack of demand. We’re starting an Over-40 men’s division under the lights at the soccer complex in Bernalillo this spring to see what kind of results we get. Hopefully, it will get off the ground. We also do not have any age differentiated coed soccer. The shortage of those types of play is basically a respons to the local soccer market. Each time we’ve tried to start over-30 or over-40 coed, the result has been a resounding yawn.
Bear in mind you can register year round and we pro-rate the registration fee about every 4 weeks. There is a $20 fixed charge to join NMSSA and USASA and pay your accident and liability insurance coverage. Those payments aren’t negotiable.
The best approach is to look over the standings that are posted weekly. That’s going to give you a fairly straightforward assessment of the teams and their relative strengths. It should give you some ideas as to potential teams that might be looking as well. If we can be real for a moment, Manchester United has a lot less trouble attracting players at the top of the table than Portsmouth does on a seven game losing streak. So the teams in the bottom half of your desired playing level are more likely going to need immediate help.
In the folder on the left side of the front page of this site is a handy dandy list of team representatives and alternate team reps to contact. You can also contact Michele or Kessick, our office staff, to get a note stuck on the bulletin board at the office, and you can head to the office live and in person to check out teams that are advertising. While you’re there, for a mere $15 you an buy an NMSSA soccer ball as well. We’ll also put air in for free.
It’s usually helpful if you’ve had some recent experience. For example, if you started for Italy in the 2006 World Cup final or are currently on the US Women’s National Team, that might help you at least get a tryout. In addition, if you’re standing upright, breathing, have a picture, and can get to the office in about ten minutes, you stand a pretty good chance of getting picked up that way as well. Seriously, a little telephone work will usually get you an interested team in very short order and Michele or Kessick will have some idea of people who have recently been in to check the board for players. Each team has there on standards for practice (none, for example), but you can usually find some other teams you can pick up with for practice. Same with uniforms and general attitude.
