WOYSA Organization and Philosophy WOYSA was founded by parents in the western area of Onondaga County to provide a recreational soccer program for our children. Our primary purpose is for our children to have fun and experience the physical and psychological development offered by participation in a well-supervised, competitive contact team sport. We are affiliated with the Youth Division of the United States Soccer Federation.   We believe that winning has been overemphasized in many organized children's sports programs, and that ultimately this will have a negative effect on the child's long term enjoyment of and participation in sports. The philosophy of our Recreational Soccer Program stresses a high level of participation coupled with playing for the joy of playing. Each child plays at least a full half of every game. Our teams play to win, but we emphasize that winning is its own reward and we discourage material incentives or rewards. We do not award individual trophies and we place no emphasis on league standings. This part of the WOYSA organization is strictly a recreational soccer program, providing opportunities for our children to have fun, to learn, to grow.   WOYSA serves the children of our community from 5 to 13 years of age. Our season begins in the fall and runs from early September until late October. We break for the winter, then resume with a spring session that runs from mid-April through the end of the school year in June. There are generally one or two practices a week and a game on Saturday. Teams are selected generally by neighborhoods with an attempt to balance ability as much as possible. Realizing, however, that it is impossible to have a system that would satisfy everyone, team placements are the sole responsibility of WOYSA.