Hundreds of soccer players packed the Red Rose Arena on Easter Monday. As usual, they wanted to score goals on each other. But on that day, there was a bigger goal that was more important than a win or a loss.

Manheim Central soccer player Logan Crills was being treated for cancer at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the goal was to raise $5,000 to help his family. Between parking and meals and costs not covered by insurance, there is no end to expenses when a family has a medical crisis, so the Lancaster County soccer community stepped up to help.

Yesterday organizer Doug Shelly reported that the one-day tournament raised more than $6,000 for Logan’s family. Congratulations to all involved.

Before the tournament started, the players and parents painted the stands

On the first night of the soccer tournament here in La Mesa, Colombia, I got a little taste of the quality of the teams my sons would be playing against. While we were waiting in the central plaza for the inaugural parade and opening ceremonies, I asked the U13 coach for Compensar in Bogotá about his soccer school’s program.

“We practice two hours every day, Monday through Friday,” he said. “If they boys fail to progress, they are let go from the team.”

“So it’s similar to the Ajax program in Holland?” I asked, referring to one of the most notoriously Spartan but successful youth programs in the world.

“Yes,” he said, nodding at the normal-looking 12-year-olds sitting on the benches next to him. “We are always working toward developing professional soccer players.”

The differences between a typical U.S. soccer tournament and this Colombian soccer festival in La Mesa, which is a town of about 30,000 residents about two hours south and west of Bogotá, continued from there. Because there are only three nearby fields in this mountainous Andean town, the game schedule started at 6 a.m. and continued until 11:30 p.m. Since we lived here in 2007 and 2008, my sons were invited to come back for the tournament and return to the teams they had played on two years ago.

The schedule for the next day was posted every evening at the stadium, and it was incumbent upon the coaches – usually called teachers here in Colombia – to find out when their team played and get their team to the field. But if they didn’t quite manage it, arriving an hour or two late for example, the faux pas was forgiven and the game was rescheduled.

Another difference was that the tournament was not cancelled. Torrents of rain began falling on Tuesday, the first day of the tournament, and it continued throughout the week. The fields were “unplayable” by U.S. standards, but the soccer, or some facsimile of the game, continued. My older son’s Under-15 team played Ubaté, another Bogotá-area town team, at 11:30 p.m. under the not-so-bright stadium lights, in pouring rain and huge mud puddles. The La Mesa team ran and played their hearts out in the first half, going up 2 to 0. Ubaté regrouped during the half time and took advantage of La Mesa’s exhaustion, scoring two quick goals to tie the game. By about 12:30 a.m., both teams were severely fatigued from running in the deep mud and standing water. Gabriel, my older son, won the ball in Ubaté’s end and switched the field, where a La Mesa forward — surprisingly unmarked — managed to dig the ball out of mud inside the 18-yard box and shoot, getting the team a goal and a much-needed win.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, La Mesa could not get such a good result when my younger son’s team played Compensar, the Bogotá club that is “always working toward developing professional soccer players.” The future professionals were also hampered by the terrible field conditions, but they managed to score three goals against the La Mesa Under-13s. The La Mesa goalkeeper walked off the field, huge tears mixing with the mud on his face. His teammates tried to console him, although they were also disappointed with their performance. “The mud and puddles hurt them more than they hurt us,” my younger son, Mario, said.

I spent about three hours reading the paper and drinking strong coffee.  I should have brought it to the internet cafe so I could quote it exactly, but one commentator said there were two positive aspects to the disappointing South American performance. He wrote, “We will not have to see Diego Maradona running naked through the streets (he had said he go streaking if the team won the World Cup) and Brazil will find a coach who is less of a caveman, who understands that soccer is played with your feet but not just long balls.”

This is our one relaxed day after being at the stadium practicing and cleaning yesterday. Tomorrow is the uniform distribution day and Tuesday the soccer festival starts here in La Mesa, with an evening parade and praise performance. There will be games all day every day until Saturday.

The kids seem to have fit in very well on their old La Mesa teams. Gabo started on the Under-15 team in a match on Wednesday, about 36 hours after we arrived, and then started in the Under-17 game also. They won both games. Gabo scored the sixth goal in a 6 to 0 game against a team from a nearby village on Saturday.  Mario’s age group has just been practicing, but they are very excited for the festival.

This is a great way to start to learn about the history of South Africa. Now I want to show Cry Freedom to my children. That will be more profound.

The other two semifinal teams are the German powerhouse Bayern and the French Lyon. Inexplicably, Manchester United and Chelsea are out.

So fire up that TV, or at least the DVR, and enjoy.

But this year I felt as though I came away with a slightly different mindset. For years I’ve been saying that soccer should be for everyone, that cutting kids and excluding kids from the world’s sport makes no sense. I’ve felt as though I was a voice in the wilderness.

Then I went to a few workshops at the coaches convention that made me feel as though there are kindred spirits out there — and these kindred spirits are some of the biggest names in soccer. Tony Diccico, who coached the U.S. Women’s team that won the World Cup in 1999, and his partner at SoccerPLus, Dave Newberry, gave a great presentation on the importance of revitalizing local, inexpensive, volunteer-run soccer clubs that will get low-income and medium-income kids out on the soccer field.

Diccico and Newberry are offering to help local clubs change by providing new curricula, evaluations, and procedures. But they did not push their professional services at the workshop. Instead they emphasized what volunteer soccer boards can do on their own, without hiring expensive consultants.

The focus has to be player development. “In my mind player development is develop the total child,” DiCicco said. “We are losing a lot more players than we think we are losing, and we are losing them a lot younger.”

Local clubs need to develop a strategic plan with five key points, they said.  The points are 1) adopt a philosophy of player development; 2) implement a player development curriculum; 3) implement a program of coach and parent education; 4) create a year-round system of assessment and outcome based programming; 5) get feedback from players and parents.

Newberry described how when his child finished a swimming class, he received a simple sheet where the skills that he had accomplished were checked off. Just a simple checkoff sheet would be a great place for soccer organizations to start.

Two other presents, from wildly different perspectives, also left me feeling less lonely in my quest to make soccer available and inclusive of all players.

Bill Beswick, a British sports psychologist, talked about how desire is so much more important that talent in forming soccer players.

And Mike Barr, who is the director of coaching for Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association, talked about how expensive soccer clubs are contributing to soccer players’ mental burnout, physical overuse injuries, and not necessarily helping them develop into the best soccer players.

Of course I went to the usual great field sessions and got lots of new ideas to teach my players, but these class room sessions showed that we need to change, not just to help kids, but to help American soccer.