January 30, 2018

Dear CYSA family,                                                   

For over 25 years our passion at CYSA has been and continues to make available youth sports to the children and families of our community. We believe youth sports fosters growth in our youth both physically, mentally and emotionally. We are passionate about providing these opportunities to engage in recreational team sports to the families of our community. You are our community. We love watching your children play, compete and grow! Our constant desire is to improve the experience for each child and grow the number of participants involved in youth sports.

I’ve been involved with CYSA for the past nine years a volunteer coach and now as the Program Director. The lack of adequate opportunities and venues for youth sports has long been a point of frustration for me personally and I’ve heard many of you echo those same sentiments. There are very few gyms and only one indoor soccer facility in our community. Getting adequate rental hours is very difficult to accomplish. While we have a great working relationship with ASD and the Muni, we also are at their mercy for facility space for almost all our programs. As a result there are many changes in the schedule over a season causing disruption in all our schedules. CYSA hopes to alleviate these scheduling issues and provide more opportunities for athletics to our community.

At the Annual Meeting for CYSA the Board of Directors voted unanimously to move forward with the long term plan of building our own multi-sport facility in the Eagle River area.  Our initial goal is to build a multisport facility with two full size basketball courts for basketball / volleyball and a turf field for soccer / flag football. This facility will immediately provide greater athletic opportunities for all the children and families of the Eagle River / Chugiak community.  

While we are early in the process, CYSA asks for your help in these areas.

1.       Communicate with us! – Do you like the idea? Do you know people that could help (land available, donations, professional skills we could use)? Do you know of other groups that would partner with us?

2.       Are you willing to contribute? – This will not be accomplished by one person! We will need people to help by volunteering, being on our Board of Directors, possibly donating time or skills, and of course financial contributions. A link for donations has been setup on our website for donations that will go directly toward the building fund.

 (*CYSA is a 501c3 approved business and all donations are tax deductible.  # 92-0134613)

Imagine a facility open daily for your kids to play basketball, volleyball, football, soccer, rugby, baseball, softball, track and field or another sport right here in Eagle River! This facility will take time, money, blood, sweat and tears!  Yet I believe it will be greatly beneficial to the children and families of our community.  Join us in this goal and may our children be blessed by this great opportunity!

Sincerely,

Brian T. Rolston

CYSA Program Director