E90: Youth Soccer Discussion: Iowa Soccer League vs. Club Development League featuring Matt Sahag of Kick It Forward

And again, we are back with the hot topic of Iowa youth soccer: the discussion surrounding the Iowa Soccer League vs. the Club Development League. We gather up our gear and head down to the conference room studio to chat with Matt Sahag, sometimes known as the Titan Tactician, but today appearing as a Youth Soccer Consultant. Matt, who played four years at Drake and captained the squad his senior year, has his USSF "B" License and in his nearly 20 years in the Des Moines area, he has coached for the Ankeny Soccer Club, Johnston Urbandale Soccer Club, Sporting Iowa and most recently with Vision Soccer Academy, albeit briefly. By day, Matt is a partner in the law firm Dickey, Campbell & Sahag and in his spare time, he founded Kick It Forward, with which he loves to positively disrupt the Iowa soccer community.

 

This past summer of 2020, in the relatively new pandemic era, a contingent of youth soccer clubs in Iowa proposed a new league with the Iowa Soccer Association called the Club Development League (CDL). Episode 85 of the podcast tried to provide a neutral overview of the differences between the CDL and the previously all-encompassing Iowa Soccer League (ISL). Episode 89 goes in depth into the history of how this situation came about, and provides a good perspective from the leader of an ISL club. Today's episode reviews the standards of the different leagues and provides some solutions to potentially keep the ISL and CDL together under the ISA umbrella.