Welcome to the official website of the International Saturday Soccer Series, sometime referred to as the "Saturday Schools Soccer League" for students of the Saturday Schools in the Washington, DC metro area, although it is not a soccer league in the usual sense of the term.
The affiliated soccer programs pursue two objectives at the same time:
- soccer: provide a sustained soccer education with professional coaches, and
- language: provide students with an opportunity to absorb one of their family's native languages without perceived effort by doing something that they passionate about.
The game days are designed to be friendly, celebrating language, culture, soccer and sportsmanship:
- games: playing soccer as part of a cultural experience and get-together six or seven times per school year
- finals: an average points system allows for flexibility, maximum playing time per player within the limited number of game days and inclusiveness for all teams
In line with these objectives, the affiliated soccer programs differentiate themselves from other soccer programs in two ways:
- soccer practices take place exclusively in the native language, and
- most teams practice weekly during the winter as well in order to provide a recurring language environment, which also has a positive impact on the progress in soccer skills that can be achieved every school year.
The soccer series also has several features that differentiate it from regular soccer leagues to make family planning and logistics easier, while maintaining half the weekends during the season for other activities:
- games take place during the fall and spring seasons , but only every second week,
- the games take place always in the same location,
- the games take place always at the same time,
- the different age groups play in the same location (on separate fields), allowing families to bring all their children at the same time.
Please visit the Teams page to meet the participating teams.
If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with us, you can do so by visiting the contact page.