In the past my son had 2 positive seasons with the Ela Soccer Organization. We loved his coaches but, this fall was different. This fall the coach's son regularly pushed children down to the ground on the team. I approached the coach about it and he said he would take care of it. After a couple of practices, it started again. The practices became less like soccer and more like an episode of the Super Nanny. By this time it was obvious it was out of the coaches control and I contacted the organization. I sent members of the board a detailed email of dates and times that incidents happened and even gave them a name of a parent I knew on another team who had witnessed one of the incidents. I asked them for a team change because my son loves soccer or a 50% refund as my son was still attending a soccer skills training they offered. Ela claimed they conducted a full review and told me that no misconduct had occured and it was too late to change teams and they were not refunding my money. What makes me so angry is they could say no misconduct had occured. This child regularly pushed children down and was never disciplined. This child and the coach's inablity to discipline put the kids on the team at risk. I will never participate in this organization again and hope people think twice about joining. Your child's safety could be at risk. It is too bad because had the board members handled the situation properly, I would not have written this review but, now I can't trust that their best interests would be for a child's safety. Too bad because we had 2 wonderful coaches prior to this incident. Shame on you Ela Soccer.
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