On Wednesday, October 1st, 2008, the BC Soccer Association kicked off the second season of its "Kickin' - Soccer in School" program at Maywood Elementary School in Burnaby. Under the enthusiastic support from Maywood principal Susan Montabello and her faculty, 50 grade 4 and 5 students enjoyed a bonus soccer session and were put through their paces by Geoff McCormick, Derek Possee and their PASS coaching staff team. Overall, most everyone of Maywood's 450+ students enjoyed their soccer days with the program.

In front of invited dignitaries like Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, MLA for Burnaby Willingdon John Nuraney, Dave Ellenwood, Director of Burnaby Parks and Rec, the kids were having a "kickin'" good time. The fact that Burnaby soccer leaders like Graham Mervin on behalf of the BDYSA has also made their way to this fine community school to show their support completed what was an all around successful event.

Program funding partners Tom Walker and his team from 2010 Legacies now were on hand representing the BC Sports Participation Program and Mr.Kelly Ip from the Telus Community Board Vancouver presented BCSA Chief Executive Bjorn Osieck with a $10,000 donation to benefit participating Kickin' partner schools in the Lower Mainland.

This exciting opening comes at the heels of a great opening season, during which BCSA, its members and soccer community partners delivered this program, which is designed to both inspire kids to adopt a healthy lifestyle and to build community capacity, to close to 6000 K-7 students in 30 elementary schools. Close to 14,000 soccer activity hours were delivered in Burnaby, Prince George, Victoria, Powell River and the Sunshine Coast last season.

For more information on the program and how you can get involved, please contact susanlenio@bcsoccer.net.