Email From Coach Surran:

Iron Horse Youth Players and Parents,

A big thank you to all of you for participating with Iron Horse this fall.  All of the coaches had such a wonderful time coaching your kids this fall. We felt like the kids got a ton out of this fall and when we saw the kids play in Vegas, we were very pleased.  Remember, this is a marathon and not a sprint and Iron Horse is committed to player development over the long haul.  The summer tryouts are coming up on January 13 and we hope to see all of you back.  The Iron Horse summer program provides a great opportunity for further development opportunities because of the number of practices and skill sessions.  You will see a huge jump in skill level over the summers if you make it to all the practices and skill sessions. 

All of the coaches are excited to watch our players with their home programs this spring. If you see me or the other coaches out at the fields, please say hello. I hope to get to watch all of you play in the spring to see how you are developing. The summer program is going to be great and we are going to be attending some fantastic tournaments. The rising freshmen will even be competing in their first recruiting event…I know that's unbelievable!!!  

Once again, summer 2013 tryouts are free but we need everyone to pre-register HERE before you attend tryouts.  This ensures that the coaches have your son's name on their rosters while they are evaluating on the field!
   
All of the summer tournaments we are attending will be age based.  I have attached a chart to help you determine your players correct age bracket.  We have picked our summer lineup this year to help families with vacation time in July (with the exception of the last U15 tournament).  We will begin practicing in mid May and continue until you have been to your final tournament.  Last year we had the practice schedule posted on the website by late March in order to help you plan, but I can not give you specifics now about practice schedules because we don't know when we will have the field.  

Summer Exposure in Annapolis, MD is an extremely well run tournament.  It had 260 teams last year and of course it's very competitive.  As mentioned above, for the first time, we are taking a U15 team to a recruiting tournament.  The Terp Classic in College Park, MD was an invite only tournament and whether you like it or not they are recruiting players earlier every year.  This will be a 2017 year only event.  Shore Wars Virginia Beach will be our final tournament for U13-U11 age groups during the last week in June.  Our U9 group, will only go away to Summer Exposure, but will additionally play in the Texas Draw in Plano.       

Summer 2013 Youth Tournaments (see age chart below)

U15 Summer Exposure June 15 & 16 Annapolis, MD Confirmed
U15 (recruiting tournament) Terp Classic July 19-21st College Park, MD Confirmed

U13 Summer Exposure June 15 & 16 Annapolis, MD Confirmed
U13 Shore Wars June 29 & 30 Virginia Beach, Confirmed

U11 Summer Exposure June 15 & 16 Annapolis, MD Confirmed
U11 Shore Wars June 29 & 30 Virginia Beach, Confirmed

U9 Texas Draw June 1 & 2 Plano, TX Confirmed
U9 Summer Exposure June 15 & 16 Annapolis, MD Confirmed

Again, thank you to all of you for participating this fall. We hope all of our Iron Horse families have a wonderful holiday season!

All the best,
Coach Surran

Email from Tiffany Surran:

Parents and Players,

What a fun filled weekend of lacrosse.  I tried to get around to all of the teams games, but my son's schedule conflicted the most with 5th grade so I am bummed I did not see you play but thrilled for you that you made it to the semis.  I know coach Surran got to all of the teams games and helped coached in many of them as well.  I at least saw 1 game of the other 4 teams we had in Vegas this weekend.  Below are some Thank You's and a recap of the weekend as well.  Coach Surran will send his own wrap up youth email next week similar to the one he sent for the high school teams (which you may have seen on the website) with the tryout information for summer (yes, everyone needs to tryout again) and the summer youth tournaments we are participating in. We are blessed to have some great families and coaches and I was glad that I got to meet and talk to so many of you! 
I know I am going to leave people out of these thank you's but this is what I know.  It takes a lot of help to pull all of these trips off successfully!

3-4 Team:
Thanks to the 3-4 team particularly Andrea Walton and Coach Lee who organized a black jack tournament for the players.  From what I understand for a nominal $20 entrance fee your player could get a black jack lesson and then compete in a tournament with prizes at the end.  The group bought their own chips and prizes and had a good time.  Maybe next year we can do this for all of the players.  Also thanks to Ann Shannon Hassell who makes a mean roster card.  She did them for 7-8 also!  The 3-4 team went 3-2 and had a set schedule so no playoffs, but a nice winning record.

5th Grade Team:  Thanks to all of our players and families for being gracious with our Vegas families.  I got the nicest email from Marci Ballin about how they would love to play with us again some time and how much you all made them feel welcome, so I appreciate that.  We were down 5 players from the original roster due to football injuries so Coach Surran put out some feelers and we got some extra players. 
They were the 3 seed overall in the playoffs.  The 5th grade team had a record of 3-2 and advanced to the semi finals. 
 
6th Grade Team: Thank you to Beth Buell and Becky Schutz who got a bunch of the coaches sandwiches on Saturday.  They were literally eating and coaching since they were trying to coach as many games in the day as they could. I got to see a few 6th grade games and you guys were an impressive group.  They were the 3 seed overall in the playoffs.  Your record was 3-2 and this team also advanced to the semis.

7th Grade Team:  Thanks to the parents on this team especially Ann Shannon, who again made the roster cards and Kevin Mcguire who took Kolbe to lunch on Saturday.  This is a special group for me with some really nice players and parents from many different lacrosse organizations across the metroplex and I'm glad through Iron Horse that I have gotten to know many of you so well.  See an email I will copy and paste we received from a parent on the Utah Starz about this team and how gracious and nice our boys are....Wow, this mom took some time out of her busy schedule to write an email which means you guys really made a good impression.  7th grade was the 4 seed overall in the playoffs and went 3-2 and had a tough 1 goal loss in the quarter finals.

8th Grade Team:  Talked to some really nice parents on this team that I didn't really know.  This team had the toughest schedule and played some good teams.  They went 1-3-1 on the weekend.  They missed making the playoffs by 1 seed.

Coaches:  Our coaches are paid coaches but they went above and beyond this weekend.  Coach Surran, Coach Cole, Coach Olin, Coach O'Connell and Coach Sherman were on the field for 12 solid hours 6:15 am tp 6:15 pm on Saturday making the rounds to coach as many other teams as possible when it did not directly conflict with their own games (Coach Lee was at the Black Jack tournament).  We did ask Adrenaline if they could spread our Saturday schedule out so we could do this.  Coach Surran (8) and Coach Cole (7) were supposed to help each other and Coach O'Connell (6) and Coach Olin (5) were helping each other, but when there was no direct conflict often times all of the coaches were on the sideline.

Hotels for next year:  Coach Surran, Kolbe and I stayed an extra day to do hotel recon for next year.  We toured many hotels on Monday.  This was my first trip to Vegas and we were trying to evaluate kid friendliness, smoke factor and cleanliness.  After going to many hotels we definitely have a preference for next year if they are willing to give us a deal.  

Pictures:  Lisa Sinak is uploading pics onto our IH Facebook page of the 6 & 7 teams.  If you have pics you would like to upload, I can give you temporary access as an admin to do it yourself, I just need the email address associated with your Facebook account to do that.
Merry Christmas and see you on the field in the spring!

Regards,
Tiffany Surran

Email from mom from the Utah Starz:

Email from Sarah Gwilliam

Hi--just hoping you can pass this along to the right person. My son is a middle schooler who plays for the Utah Starz. His team played one of your MS teams at the recent Las Vegas Adrenaline event. When I asked him which team he enjoyed playing the most, he said “No question--the Iron Horse team”. When I asked him why, he said they were the most friendly and gracious competitors and just seemed like all-around good guys. I just wanted to pass along some thanks from a mom who appreciates teams and coaches who are not only trying to compete, but trying to raise good young men as well. Thanks and we hope to meet up with your teams again at a future tournament! Sincerely, Sarah Gwilliam

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