Coaches will meet after each tryout session to decide which players we’ll invite to join next year’s NASA Tophat Marietta Junior Academy Girls group. We’ll post these players’ tryout numbers on this page, and follow-up with in-person conversations, phone calls or e-mails.
We have invited the following players to join our returning Junior Academy players for the 2023-2024 soccer year. Players are listed by tryout number or initials, not by name.
Invitations:
Returning players: 1, 11, 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 46- Day 1 (May 22): no invitations
- Day 2 (May 23): 6, 10, 18, 40, 59, 81, 88, 103, 104
- Day 3 (May 24): 3, 17, 29, 30, 41, 45, 54, 56, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 111, 114, 151, 190
- Others: 122, 123
We’ll send an e-mail to each invited player’s family to confirm the invitation. Update from Friday, May 26 @ 4 PM: We’ve completed invitations for the players listed above. If your daughter’s tryout number is listed above, but you have not received your invitation e-mail, please check your junk folder or e-mail ward.swain(at)nasatophat(dot)com.
If your daughter was invited to join, jump to the “What happens next?” section below for further information.
Missed tryouts?
If you missed our tryout sessions due to vacation or another schedule conflict, but are interested in the NTH Junior Academy Girls program, please e-mail coach Ward to arrange an informal tryout.
Not invited?
If your daughter isn’t invited to join, we strongly encourage her to continue playing! (Handled properly, this is a great opportunity for her to learn resilience and develop self-motivation.) The NASA Tophat recreational program has leagues for players age 4-19, and participation doesn’t require a tryout.
She should set a goal of becoming a player who wants to have the ball at her feet (has the confidence to dribble and looks to score goals), stays alert when teammates have the ball, and works hard on defense to regain possession when the other team has the ball. If your daughter wants ideas for improving her skills, please check our play at home activities.
If she loves the game and sticks with it, she’ll always have a chance to achieve her goals. Players develop at different rates, and a player who isn’t invited to join this time around may blossom by this time next year.
Over the 22-year history of our Academy program, we’ve had many cases where players tried out one year and weren’t invited to join, but kept playing and made it into the Academy program the next time around. These players showed that determination and effort (and sometimes an extra year of maturity) can help you reach your goals.
What happens next?
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- Make an informed decision: We want everyone to be fully informed about our program. Please review the information and links below for general information about the NTH Marietta Junior Academy Girls, along with details about fees, our schedule, and player / parent guidelines. If you have questions, please contact coach Ward.
- Junior Academy overview and goals
- Frequently asked questions
- Junior Academy fees
- Schedule:
- Summer 2023: The girls are off until Academy Team Camp starts the week of July 31. Does your daughter want to put her soccer ball away for a while but stay active? Feel free to enjoy the break from organized soccer! Swimming, tennis, dance, gymnastics or martial arts are good options. They keep players in shape and help with overall athletic development. Summer is also vacation and nature camp time. We may have an occasional informal (optional) kick-around (see our Fridays / July Days sessions). But we won’t have any regularly scheduled team training. If girls want to practice skills on their own, here’s a list of play at home activities. NASA Tophat offers summer training programs and camps for players who are interested in scheduled training. More info: Summer 2023 schedule
- Fall 2023: We’ll start regular fall season practices the week of August 7. Girls in the United Quest Park group practice Mondays and Wednesdays at 5:30 PM, and girls in the Metro North Park group practice Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:00 PM. (Girls are welcome to attend practices at the other park if they want additional training opportunities.) We’ll start our fall 2023 regular season game day schedule the weekend after Labor Day. We’ll finish the weekend before Thanksgiving.
- Winter 2023-2024: We’re off December and January. We may have an occasional informal kick-around, but we won’t have any regularly scheduled training. We fully support girls playing basketball or participating in other activities during the break. (Gymnastics, dance and martial arts are all good cross-training activities.) NTH offers group winter training sessions for players who are interested in scheduled training.
- Spring 2024: We’ll start regular practices in late January or early February, exact date to be determined. Weather permitting, we’ll play an intra-Academy festival in late February, then start weekly Junior Academy play in early March. We’ll finish the season by playing in the NTH Adidas Select Cup tournament in May.
- Summer 2024: Players will go though tryout sessions for the 2023-2024 soccer year. (Current invitations to the NTH Junior Academy are in effect for the 2023-2024 soccer year.) Our older girls (2016 birth years) will tryout for the U9 Academy group, while our younger girls (2017 birth years) will tryout for Junior Academy again. Tryouts typically start the Tuesday after Memorial Day.
- Player and parent guidelines:
- Notify the coach: Please respond via e-mail to coach Ward by Wednesday, May 31 to let him know if you accept the invitation. (There is no obligation to join. If the level of commitment isn’t right for your daughter or family, the NASA Tophat recreational program is still available as an option.) If you accept the invitation, please include the following info in your message. Link: our data usage policy
- Your daughter’s name and date of birth
- Her preferred park (Metro North or United Quest)
- Her top three uniform number preferences (link: uniform number selection)
- Parent names
- Phone number(s)
- E-mail address(es)
- Registration: Registration opens in late May or early June. Be on the lookout for a registration e-mail from NASA Tophat registrar Stevi Nuss.
- Orientation: We have replaced in-person orientation meetings with an on-line orientation presentation. We recommend all new families review the presentation to learn more about the Junior Academy program (schedules, procedures and philosophies) and other related topics.
- Uniforms: Please submit uniform number requests by Friday, June 16.
- Make an informed decision: We want everyone to be fully informed about our program. Please review the information and links below for general information about the NTH Marietta Junior Academy Girls, along with details about fees, our schedule, and player / parent guidelines. If you have questions, please contact coach Ward.
Data usage policy:
- Our coach and/or team manager uses family contact data for Junior Academy Girls communication purposes. We don’t send many group-wide e-mail messages, but if we do so, we use the “Bcc” method to keep e-mail addresses private.
- We send a roster / contact sheet PDF file to current members via e-mail before the start of each season. (We don’t post the PDF file on our web site.)
- We submit player names, uniform numbers and parent e-mail addresses to our uniform supplier (soccer.com). Our supplier deals directly with each family for uniform orders.
- When we play in a tournament, we are usually required to submit player names and birth dates to the tournament host.
- We don’t publish player birth dates, parent names, phone numbers or e-mail addresses on our web site.