Welcome to the Kings Hammer Swan City September Newsletter! This edition features: Strong Start to League Play, DPL Perform London, South Orlando Labor Day Cup Champs, Thanksgiving Skills Camp, Partnership Alert: Lobb & Mohr, Recreation Opening Day, Featured Education: “A Letter from the Technical Desk: Player Report Cards – The Two Columns”, Welcome Back TLC Catering, and more! If you have a player, coach, or team to be highlighted in future newsletters, please send photos and stories to acorbett@kingshammer.com. Each newsletter will be posted on our website as well as our social pages.
A Strong Start to League Play
League play is in full swing across Kings Hammer Swan City, and what a start to the season it has been! Our National Academy League boys have come out strong, our Girls Academy Aspire ladies are finding success as they kick off the new league in Florida, and our N1, WFPL, FGL, and USA league teams are hitting the ground running! We love seeing our players and coaches embrace our mission of being Relentless in all they do, both on and off the field. We are proud of the work being put in across every team and are excited for what lies ahead this season.
DPL Perform London
In recognition of their commitment, performance, and development throughout last season, Maeve and Jasmine have been invited to join the DPL 2011 International Team traveling to London, England this Thanksgiving. This is an incredible opportunity to represent Kings Hammer Swan City and compete on an international stage, and we couldn’t be more proud of the work they have put in to earn this recognition.
Congratulations, Maeve and Jasmine!
South Orlando Labor Day Cup Champions
Our U10 Elite Girls DOMINATED their first tournament of the season and are bringing home the hardware!
The girls went undefeated heading into the finals and finished the weekend in style with a 4-1 victory over Future Soccer Stars LLC to claim the Championship!
Our U9 Elite Boys came out STRONG. The boys went undefeated heading into the finals, then battled through a competitive championship match to earn a 2-0 victory over Brevard SA Elite and claim the South Orlando Labor Day Cup Championship!
Congratulations to both teams!
Thanksgiving Skills Camp
SOCCER. TURKEY. STUFFING.
Honestly, sounds like a pretty great to us. Yes, we are already talking about Thanksgiving.
Give your player something to do before the turkey and the leftovers with our Thanksgiving Skills Camp!
We’ll bring the soccer. You bring the appetite. Click here to register now!
Partnership Alert
Our Fall Recreation Season has kicked off and we’re taking a moment to recognize one of our longest-standing partners, Lobb & Mohr.
For too many years to count, Lobb & Mohr has proudly supported our players, families, and club. Partnerships like this mean so much to our soccer community because they go far beyond a logo, they represent local businesses choosing to invest in the kids and families in our community year after year.
Based in Bartow, Lobb & Mohr serves clients throughout Polk and Hardee counties, providing experienced legal representation in family law, criminal defense, estate planning, wills and probate.
As hundreds of our Recreation players take the field at Lake Parker Park tomorrow, we’re proud to recognize a partner who has been part of our Swan City community for so many seasons.
Thank you, Lobb & Mohr, for continuing to support our players and our club year after year.
Recreation Opening Day
RECREATION OPENING DAY WAS A HIT!
Smiles, goals, and teamwork. We had an amazing first day back on the pitch! We had a blast are looking forward to a fantastic season. Let’s go Swan City
From The National Technical Desk: Player Report Cards – The Two Columns
Over the next few weeks, depending on your location and where your program sits in its season, a Player Report Card is going to land in your inbox. Before it shows up, I want to tell you what it is, and what it is not.
It is not a grade. It is not a ranking. Nobody is being sorted. It is a conversation, written down.
Why there are two columns
Every line on the form has two answers next to it. One from your player. One from their coach. Receiving under pressure. Turning. Ball striking. Decision making. Speed, quickness, fitness. Whether they are proactive. Whether they are a good teammate. Whether they bring Relentless Action in and out of possession. Your player fills out their side first, before they ever see what the coach wrote.
That is the whole design. We are not handing a player an evaluation. We are asking them to evaluate themselves, then showing them how a trained set of eyes saw the same season.
When the two columns match, that is a great sign. It means a player knows themselves. The interesting part is when they do not match.
One of our younger players marked himself as only meeting expectations on receiving the ball. His coach had him exceeding it. He is better than he thinks he is, and now he has that in writing from someone whose job it is to know. One of our older players rated her decision making higher than her coach did. That is not a knock on her. That is the most useful sentence anybody could hand a competitive teenager, because now she knows exactly where to point her work for the next four months.
Neither gap is a problem. Both are the point. A player who sees themselves accurately can improve on purpose instead of by accident.
About the colors
We use a traffic light scale. Green exceeds expectations, yellow meets them, red is an area to work on.
Read that scale carefully, because this is where families get tripped up. Every rating is made relative to that player’s own age and team level. Yellow means a player is doing exactly what we expect a player their age, on their team, to be doing. That is a good thing. Most of the form should be yellow and green, and a red light is not a verdict. It is an arrow pointing at the next thing to go get.
A handful of reds is not a season gone wrong. It is a coach being honest enough to be useful.
What we are actually measuring
The categories come straight out of the KH Way. Technical ability. KH Soccer Theory, which is communication, decision making, and application. Phases and Principles. Style of Play, broken into tenacity, effort, and opportunity, in and out of possession. The physical side. And the part I care about most, the Player Profile section, where we ask whether a player is passionate, proactive, hardworking, engaged, and a good teammate.
That last group has nothing to do with talent. A player can be green in every one of those boxes on their first day here, at any age, in any zone. That is a choice, not a gift. We measure it because we mean it.
How it works
The form lives in PlayMetrics under the Forms section, and your player will also get an email link. Players complete their self-evaluation inside a set window, coaches complete theirs in the same window, and the finished card is released to families shortly after.
Your Director of Coaching will send exact dates for your program. Timing differs by location and by where your season sits, so do not worry if another market gets theirs first. Report cards are tracked and reviewed before they reach you.
We look at development like a three-legged stool, and each leg plays its part in holding up a child’s long-term growth. The club and its supporting staff are one leg. The family, guiding and challenging, is the second. And the player, who is the owner of their journey through this great game, is the third.
One note for Juniors and Premier families: your reports are handled directly between your DOC and your trainers rather than through PlayMetrics.
Any questions, your DOC is your first call.
The part that takes years
One report card is a snapshot. Useful, but one moment. The value compounds.
A player who comes through Kings Hammer on the competitive side will build a stack of these. Zone 1 at nine. Zone 2 at fifteen. Different form, same language, same standards, tracking the same things in the same words. Five years from now they can lay them side by side and watch their own development in their own handwriting. They can see the line they marked red at ten become the strength they are known for at sixteen, and see which habits held and which ones they let slide.
That is a rare thing to give a kid. Most of us went through youth sports with nothing but memory and a few photos. Our players will have a record.
What I am asking of you
When it arrives, do not skim it. Sit down with your player and read it together, both columns, line by line. Ask where they were surprised. Ask which light they want to change by spring, and then ask what they are willing to do about it on a Tuesday when nobody is watching.
That last question is the one that matters. A report card does not develop anybody. What a player does on the ordinary days between now and the next one is what develops them.
Two columns. One player. The work in between is theirs.
Bring the Relentless Action.
– Bronson Gambale, KH National Technical Director
Our Third Team
We love the third team and this family story is one to celebrate. If you have been in the community for long you know longtime referee Kyle Phillips has shared his love of the game with his daughter, who has followed in his footsteps for many years. Now, his son is joining the family tradition through the Futures Referee Program. There’s nothing better than seeing a passion for the game passed from one generation to the next.
Welcome Back TLC Catering
We are excited to continue our partnership with TLC Catering, a longtime soccer supporter in the Lakeland community and a valued partner of ours for many years. TLC Catering is no stranger to supporting our players, families, and the local soccer community. Providing catering for events and gatherings throughout our community, TLC Catering is known for bringing people together through great food and service. Partnerships like this help us continue providing incredible experiences for our players both on and off the field, and we are grateful to have organizations like TLC Catering standing alongside us.
Thank you, TLC Catering, for your continued support of our club and the game we all love!
GK Union Save of the Month
We’re diving head first into the new season! Congratulations to our first GK Union Save of the Month winners of the 2026-2027 season, Ryland from KH Murfreesboro and Penny from KH Columbus. Way to keep the opponent off the board!
Did you make an incredible save or a game-saving block? We want to see them! Post your best saves in the Kings Hammer GK Union Facebook group. Be sure to share throughout the upcoming season and YOU could be selected for our Kings Hammer Save of the Month! GK Save of the Month winners will be announced the Friday of the first full week of the following month.
Monthly winners will be posted on the Kings Hammer social pages and on the GK Union page.
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