Youth & High School

New England Youth Sports Festival to be held in 2007
October 27, 2006


The first-ever New England Youth Sports Festival is to be held at Gillette Stadium from 23-25 March, 2007.

The event will feature a unique format of sports activities and skills training for boys and girls from ages 6-18, as well as educational workshops and clinics for parents, administrators and officials involved in youth sports.

Six youth sports organizations – Mass Youth Soccer, New England Pop Warner Football, New England Babe Ruth League Baseball/Softball, New England Amateur Athletic Union Basketball, Mass Youth Hockey and Mass Bay Youth Lacrosse League – will help plan the event and oversee sports clinics, activities and workshops.

“An event like this has been a long time coming,” said Mark Matanes, State Commissioner for EMass Babe Ruth Baseball. “It's the perfect opportunity to showcase everything that is great about youth sports.”

The governing bodies of the six sports agreed to take part in the first-of-its-kind event, which will promote sports participation and generate much-needed revenue for the participating youth sports organizations.

“This is the first time all of these groups have been in a room at once to discuss how, together, they can promote youth sports,” said Bernie Weichsel, the festival's producer at Wednesday's meeting of the event's advisory board. “The meeting was incredibly productive and my excitement for what can be accomplished at this event has reached a new level.”

The board members discussed logistics for skills training that will take place in Gillette Stadium's Dana-Farber Field House and potential topics for educational workshops, which included sportsmanship, sports specialization and steroid prevention.

“Youth sports are all about sportsmanship, development and preparation for life,” said Phil Jordan, Northwest Region Director for Mass Bay Youth Lacrosse. “Whatever sport a kid chooses to play, it's just great that they are playing sports, which is why we are excited to be a part of this.”

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