The future of soccer starts here; Friday Night Lights

By rscaife
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Updated: July 13, 2017

STATE COLLEGE – Practice makes perfect.
Words that coaches and athletes live and breathe by.
As the popularity in both girls and boys soccer increases, athletes spend their off season conditioning and playing and competing in local soccer club teams.
One of the best kept traditions of this is an event called Friday Night Lights held by the Penn United Soccer Organization.
For five Friday’s of weeks out of the summer both boys and girls soccer players and volunteer coaches converge at State College’s Memorial field with the chance to tune up their skills, make new friends and play and scrimmage in a sport they love.
In charge of this event is Justin Giedroc. He is the FNL director for Penn United.
“The program is called Friday night Lights and it’s been around for several years now with the club and I have had the opportunity to help run the program,” Giedroc said. “I know it has a good tradition behind it. It’s a really good program and I like it.”
The night is mostly used as special scrimmage games for the kids.
“It’s basically a glorified pick-up games for the kids,” Giedroc said. “You can’t really go wrong with that.”
Athletes make the trek from Centre, Mifflin, Clinton, Blair, Huntingdon and Juniata Counties.
“We have players from all over visit the camp. We have no teams representing any certain location, Giedroc said. “But we have kids from Clinton, Mifflin and Centre and also Huntingdon County that I know participate.”
Though the group might not participate in individual drills this year, Giedroc has in the past had some special events for the kids.
“I don’t know if we will do it this summer. It normally we have one session we will have half of it we’ll have the kids work with our staff doing activities and technique with the kids,” Geidroc said. “The next half will be scrambled time where but most of the time it’s just as you see just a bunch of kids and teams getting together to hone their skills and it gives them an opportunity to play in the summer.
The size of the event tops at or above 120 kids in the few hours on a Friday.
It has been something that has been on the rise, popularity wise.
If you want to check out the future high school soccer stars, both boys and girls, come out to Memorial Field and watch.
It will be worth the trip.