Welcome to the Kings Hammer Middle Tennessee September Newsletter! This edition features: Academy & Elite Boys Supplemental Tryouts, Rec, Tops, and Little Lions Underway, Team Successes, Juniors Cycle 1 Recap, Juniors Cycle 2 Registration Open, Featured Education: “A Letter from the Technical Desk: Player Report Cards – The Two Columns”, and more! If you have a player, coach, or team to be highlighted in future newsletters, please send photos and stories to pmast@kingshammer.com. Each newsletter will be posted on our website as well as our social pages.
Academy & Elite Boys Supplemental Tryouts: Oct. 1st
Interested in our Academy or Elite boys teams? Come to supplemental tryouts!
We are holding a supplemental tryout October 1st, 7:30-8:30pm at field 1, for U9-U10 Academy boys and U13-U17 Elite boys. Come out, show us your best soccer skills!
Rec and TOPS and Little Lions, Oh my!
We have officially begun Rec, Little Lions, and TOPS! It has been so fun seeing new and old faces on the fields. We feel all the joy on the fields when these programs are playing, keep up that good energy!
These programs are great first steps for all athletes, if you’re interested in any of these programs, check out our website for more information.
If you missed Little Lions first session, click here to check out our recap!
Kings Hammer brings the heat
Throughout the month our teams came in hot and no it wasn’t because of that late summer heat! So many of our teams have things to be proud of this month, here’s some of the highlights:
Multiple of our MLS Next teams started off their season with clean slates, so impressive and sleek, if you know what we mean!
Our inaugural season of SCCL has begun for the U11 and 12 Elite boys, and they are already showing off. As a result, the U12s became finalists at SCCL cup in Atlanta!
The U10 blue boys team won the Battleground Tournament of Champions while playing up in their age group, so impressive!
Many of our Academy teams played their hearts out at the United Cup of Champions, especially the U9 Girls team who played 12 rounds of penalty kicks, resulting in the team becoming finalists!
We are so impressed by all of these teams and their RELENTLESS ACTION so far in the season. Congratulations all, let’s make the next month even better!
Juniors Cycle 1 Comes to a Close
We officially wrapped up the first ever cycle of our Juniors program! It was such a blast to watch these players flourish and learn more about soccer.
If you’re curious about what a typical training session or game day looks like for the junior players check out our recaps of the first week:
Juniors Cycle 2 is open!
Juniors is a fun, coed, introductory soccer program for U7–U8 players, offered in flexible 6-week sessions throughout the year.
If you missed the first cycle or want to come back for round two, sign up now! Cycle 2 of the Juniors program is open until October 2nd.
For more information or to sign up click here!
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
Volunteer with us on the weekends!
A special shoutout to all our volunteers who spend their Fridays and Saturdays with us helping with Rec, Little Lions, or TOPS! We couldn’t do it without our volunteers or community, so why not lend a helping hand?
If you or someone you know is interested in volunteering, reach out to our Recreational DOC, Nathan McBeth, nathan@kingshammer.com for more information.
Share with us your college commitments!
College is just around the corner for some of our Kings Hammer seniors, which means college commitments are on the way!
We would love to celebrate with all our seniors. If you are officially committed to a college, please share your first and last name, a KH photo of you or you playing, and what school you are planning to attend to marketing coordinator, Paige Mast (pmast@kingshammer.com).
We can’t wait to see what the future holds for all our seniors!
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.
Stay Connected with KH Middle Tennessee
Don’t miss all the latest updates, news, and fun happening on our Kings Hammer Murfreesboro social pages!
Facebook: Murfreesboro
Instagram: Murfreesboro