I was 15 years old when one of my soccer coaches, Gordon Barr (son of U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer George Barr), called me up and wanted to know if I would like to become an intramural ref in the soccer club I was playing for, the Syosset Soccer Club on Long Island. I declined as I thought who would want to become a ref as that person is yelled at and booed.

Let me start this off with the short answer: a skilled sports knee surgeon has about a 90% chance of diagnosing an ACL tear based off the type of injury and the examination of the knee. So in the vast majority of injuries to the ACL, we use MRIs to confirm what we already suspect.

In the pre-dawn damp and cold of a Saturday morning in the fall of 2016, as I drove on a county road south of Atlanta, with my 17-year-old son half asleep in the passenger seat, I understood how much I would miss it.

Three years after introducing a new $25 online F license course, U.S. Soccer has again revamped its coaching license pathway.

Gerardo Mercado is a 19-year-old Salvadoran who arrived to the United States in 2013, just before the height of the United States' unaccompanied minor crisis -- when tens of thousands of children and youth began crossing our southern border without papers or parents, looking, like Gerardo was, for safety and a chance to start anew.

There is some very good evidence out of Columbia University in New York that women are in fact more likely to sustain a concussion than men, however their recovery times are similar (both took about 14 days).

The best way to figure out who's going to be voting for U.S. Soccer Federation President on Feb. 10 is to read Paul Kennedy's article, "Nuts and bolts: How U.S. Soccer's presidential election will work."

I started refereeing in New York in 1978. One of the things that was interesting about refereeing is it was very much an individual pursuit for me as nearly all games in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, with the exception of semifinal and final games, plus a few other notable games, were officiated by one referee with the help of two club linesmen, who simply raised the flag when the ball was over the touchline.

The choice of where to have your child play youth soccer can be very difficult. Multiple clubs, "select teams," or leagues will tout their services or programs, often with promises of glory down the road. There is no shortage of choices for where your child can spend the next year of development - and in the United States, parents have more choice than in any other country.