Clint Dempsey's professional career has taken him from MLS's New England Revolution to Fulham to Tottenham Hotspur to his present team, the Seattle Sounders.

It's 99 degrees Fahrenheit and not a cloud in the sky at one of these wonderful American soccer complexes -- with eight fields hosting scores of youth games all day long. Many, if not most, of the refs are working multiple games throughout the four-day event.

My 15-year-old son really wants to play college soccer. ...

Aspirations to play college soccer and hopes of a scholarship are apt to influence many decisions young players and their parents make. We've relayed some of the common questions we've heard from parents to Lisa Lavelle, president of The Sport Source, which has spent more than 20 years in college counseling for student-athletes.

Perhaps the most impressive player so far during the USA's run at the 2015 Women's World Cup has been 24-year-old Julie Johnston.

Club linesmen are those volunteers who help a solo referee determine if the ball is out-of-bounds. The ref should tell club linesmen before the game, "Raise the flag only when the entire ball goes over the entire line. Do not give me the direction of the throw as I will determine it."

The U.S. women's national team has given us some wonderful examples of how one can't draw conclusions about a player's potential based on their early time in the sport.

When at age 13 Margaret Domka refereed her first game, she remembers' being "scared out of my mind."

Mickey Kydes is the founder and president of Beachside of Connecticut Soccer Club, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Beachside SC, whose boys teams compete in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy, is also a New York City FC affiliate.

If you watched the USA at the U-20 World Cup in New Zealand -- you saw it score just one goal in its final 300 minutes of play. On the other hand, it didn't concede a goal in its final 210 minutes -- and missed a semifinal spot by losing a penalty-kick shootout to Serbia.

When Rubio Rubin was very young, growing up in Oregon, and didn't have a game himself, he'd show at his older brother Bryan's Westside Metros games and hang out on the bench.View image | gettyimages.com

For only the fourth time in 14 appearances at the biennial U-20 World Cup, the USA has survived to play a fifth game, having won its round of 16 clash with Colombia, 1-0. Next up is Serbia, on June 14, and a win would take the USA to the semifinals, a feat accomplished only once, when in 1989 the Bob Gansler-coached squad finished fourth in Saudi Arabia.

When I started refereeing in 1978, all games under-8 on up were 11 vs. 11 on full-sided fields with goals that were 8 yards by 8 feet. Two decades ago, the younger age groups switched to small-sided games to help the players' development.

The USA, which finished second in Group A after falling 3-0 to Ukraine, will face Colombia in the round of 16 of the U-20 World Cup on June 10 (3:30 am ET) in Wellington, New Zealand. Coach Tab Ramos' team will aim to become the first U.S. team to win a knockout stage game at the U-20 World Cup since 2007.

The last time we reported about embezzlement at a youth soccer club or league, the figures were $40,000 and $15,000. Now comes news from Boston Globe Magazine of an alleged $195,000 rip-off at the Framingham United Soccer Club, which serves 1,200 children between the ages of 5 and 18.