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Franklin Square and Elmont Youth Soccer: Every Option and What It Really Costs

It’s a Sunday morning in October and you’re parked outside Sewanhaka High School with a folding chair in the trunk. Your kid’s division has the 9:00 slot. One hour, the training and the game stacked into the same hour, and then the soccer week is over. Eight Sundays, $195, that’s the fall. Somebody’s dad mentions that travel tryouts were back in May and you nod like you knew. Driving home down Hempstead Turnpike you finally do the arithmetic: one hour a week. Here’s every option a Franklin Square or Elmont family actually has, what each one really costs, and the honest case for not driving anywhere.

Written by Fernando, founder of Tiempo Soccer Academy (Rockville Centre, NY). Last reviewed: August 2026.

The short answer for Franklin Square and Elmont families

Both towns have a real club, and neither rec program gives your kid more than one contact a week. Franklin Square Raiders intramural is eight Sundays, September 13 to November 8, 2026, at $195 non-refundable, and the club describes it as one training session and one game every Sunday at Sewanhaka High School. That number, one session a week, decides more about your fall than the fee does. Elmont Youth Soccer runs recreational and LIJSL travel teams but publishes almost nothing, so the way in is the phone.

LIJSL runs about 60,000 players across 97 member clubs and 3,500-plus teams, including more than 1,600 travel teams (NY Red Bulls / LIJSL, 2026). Access is the quiet problem under all that size. In the Aspen Institute’s April 2026 read on New York City and New Jersey, roughly 150,000 kids in the region want to play and can’t get in, and 32% of families name fees as the main barrier (Aspen Institute Project Play, 2026). If the tiers are still fuzzy, start with the Long Island youth soccer development guide, then the rec, travel, academy and ECNL breakdown.

What Franklin Square actually runs

One club carries the town. Franklin Square Soccer Club, a nonprofit established in 1983, runs Lil Kickers, intramural, ball mastery, camps, and travel teams in LIJSL with select teams in the EDP League. Here’s fall 2026 intramural as the club published it.

Division Birth years Fall 2026 fee
Lil’ Kickers (U4) Aug 1, 2022 to Jul 31, 2023 $195
Instructional (U5/U6) Aug 1, 2020 to Jul 31, 2022 $195
Division I (U7/U8) Aug 1, 2018 to Jul 31, 2020 $195
Division II (U9/U10) Aug 1, 2016 to Jul 31, 2018 $195
Division III (U11/U12/U13) Aug 1, 2013 to Jul 31, 2016 $195

Every division is one Sunday session, start times 9:00 to 11:20 a.m. by age, registration closing September 9, fee non-refundable. Travel is the other door and it opens once a year: the club listed its 2026 tryouts as May 19 and 21, 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., also at Sewanhaka.

Notice where both happen. Not at Rath Park, the town’s park on Fenworth Boulevard, which the Town of Hempstead lists as a pool, courts and ball fields. The soccer lives at the high school because that’s where the field is. Field access is the constraint, and a one-day-a-week season is what a town looks like under it. That isn’t a knock on the club. It’s why the volunteers built the schedule they built.

What Elmont actually runs, and why you have to call

Elmont Youth Soccer Club is an LIJSL club with recreational and competitive teams, and its site says the right things about consistent technical, tactical and physical training. What it doesn’t do is publish. The facilities page still carries the template’s placeholder text where the field names belong, summer 2026 camp registration closed August 14 with nothing behind it, and there are no fees or tryout dates anywhere.

So in Elmont the first barrier isn’t money. It’s information. Getting in means calling 516-213-4882 and asking a human, on a weeknight, in whatever English the moment demands. That filters exactly the families who’d get the most out of the club. Call anyway. Ask the registrar what the season costs, which days the team practices, which field, and when tryouts are. Write it down. That’s more than the website gives you.

Both towns sit inside one school district, which matters later. The Sewanhaka Central High School District runs five junior and senior high schools enrolling over 8,200 students in grades 7 through 12 (Sewanhaka district school profile, 2025-2026). Franklin Square kids go to H. Frank Carey. Elmont kids go to Elmont Memorial. Both buildings start in seventh grade.

5 questions to answer before you register in either town

1. “Is one Sunday a week enough for her right now?”

Under about eight, yes, and it isn’t close. A six or seven-year-old needs touches, a ball at home, and a reason to still like the game in December. Above about nine, one hour a week is where kids plateau, not for lack of talent but because the week is long and none of it is soccer.

Do the arithmetic once: eight Sundays at an hour each is about eight coached hours between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, at roughly $24 an hour. As a price, nothing in western Nassau is close. As a development plan, it isn’t one. And the fix usually isn’t more hours. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends delaying single-sport specialization until at least around age 12 (Brenner, Pediatrics, 2016), and highly specialized youth athletes carry roughly 2.25 times the odds of overuse injury (Post et al., 2017). The gap in most kids here isn’t hours. It’s that nothing inside the hour is aimed at anything.

2. “Did we already miss the tryout?”

For Franklin Square travel this year, probably. The club listed tryouts as May 19 and 21. That’s the Nassau pattern: the fall roster gets decided in spring, months before the boredom shows up on a Sunday in October. It isn’t fatal. This fall is intramural plus what you build yourself, and next May goes in the calendar today. Our tryout preparation guide covers the eight weeks before that date.

3. “Do we know what travel costs here, in writing?”

Neither club publishes a number. Normal on Long Island, still a problem, because the club fee is rarely the real figure. Ask the registrar for the season fee, the uniform kit, the tournament count, the winter plan, and whether referees and permits are billed separately. Then add gas. A number somebody told you in a parking lot is not a number.

4. “Who is actually coaching the hour?”

In town programs it’s usually a parent volunteer, and plenty are excellent. The question isn’t qualifications, it’s whether the hour has a target. Ask what he’s trying to teach across these eight weeks. If it’s something specific you could watch for from the sideline, you’re in good hands. If it’s “have fun and get better,” that’s a schedule, not a plan.

5. “What happens in seventh grade?”

Families in other towns never have to ask this one. Sewanhaka’s schools run grades 7 through 12, so the building and its athletic department enter your kid’s life two years earlier than in a district with a separate middle school. Call the athletic office at Carey or Elmont Memorial and ask which levels field soccer teams. Whatever the answer, the runway ends around U12 here, not U14.

The drive-time math, honestly

Both towns sit on the western edge of Nassau, so training in Valley Stream, Lynbrook and Rockville Centre is closer than parents assume. Driving distances, town center to town center, at free-flow speeds.

From Valley Stream Lynbrook Rockville Centre
Franklin Square 3.8 mi, about 8 min 4.0 mi, about 10 min 5.1 mi, about 12 min
Elmont 3.0 mi, about 7 min 5.2 mi, about 10 min 6.9 mi, about 12 min

Now the honest correction, because free-flow is a fiction on a weekday evening. Hempstead Turnpike at 6:00 p.m. is not Hempstead Turnpike at 10:00 a.m. Add half again and you’re at 11 to 18 minutes each way, so a round trip with a session in the middle costs about two hours. Say that out loud before you commit, because that’s the real purchase.

Here’s the part clubs never put next to it: a travel season doesn’t spare you the driving. LIJSL’s 97 clubs stretch from the Queens line into eastern Suffolk, and you don’t pick your away fixtures. A family that flinches at 12 minutes to Rockville Centre on a Tuesday will drive 40 minutes to a Sunday away game without blinking, because the schedule said so. Compare the real totals. Our Valley Stream parents’ guide runs this math from the other side of the Cross Island.

Most training builds technique. Tiempo builds skill.

The case for staying local, which is stronger than anyone tells you

I run a private development program and I’m about to argue you out of buying one. If your kid is six, seven or eight, the Franklin Square Sunday plus a size 3 ball in the driveway is the correct purchase this year. Not a supplement, not an academy, not a trainer. $195 and a ball. Anything else at that age buys down your anxiety, not their development, and it’s the most common expensive mistake I watch families here make.

The case holds longer than people think. The kids on that field are the kids in your kid’s class, and at nine the social reason to keep playing is the actual reason. It’s $195 against a travel bill that commonly clears $2,000. And the reasons kids quit organized sports are almost never about coaching quality: it stopped being fun, it stopped being theirs, the adults made it about themselves (Changing the Game Project). All three get worse when you add travel to a kid who didn’t ask for it.

Where local stops being enough is narrower than “she’s good.” It’s when your kid asks for more soccer unprompted, when she’s the one kicking a ball against the garage in November. That kid needs somewhere to put the appetite. The travel-readiness checklist is the longer version of that test.

What a year actually costs in these two towns

Town intramural. Franklin Square is $195 for the fall, non-refundable, and that’s the whole soccer bill. Elmont doesn’t publish a figure, so call. Nothing in western Nassau is cheaper for eight weeks of organized play.

Travel. Neither club publishes it, and on Long Island a competitive season commonly lands between $2,000 and $5,000 a year once club fee, uniform kit, tournaments, winter training and gas are counted. That sorting is real: about 70% of pay-to-play families earn more than $50,000 a year and a third more than $100,000 (SFIA, 2018, sfia.org). Get every line in writing first. Our Nassau County cost breakdown itemizes what the fee leaves out.

Private training. CoachUp lists soccer trainers from about $50 a session (CoachUp, 2026), and Long Island academies run $75 to $125. At 30 sessions a year that’s $1,500 to $3,750 on top of what you already pay, which is a decision about the family’s year, not a budget line. When private training is worth it makes the case both ways.

School soccer. No club fee, and here the building opens in seventh grade. Best value in the county, and the one path nobody markets to you.

Where Tiempo fits, and when we’re the wrong call

We’re not a club. We don’t run LIJSL travel teams, we don’t compete in tournaments, and nobody needs to leave the Raiders or Elmont Youth Soccer to work with us. Tiempo is the structured individual development layer that sits next to your kid’s town program, at fields in Rockville Centre, Lynbrook and Valley Stream. From either town that’s 7 to 18 minutes depending on the hour.

The work runs on the PaC Method, four stages by age: Pre-Foundations U4 to U7, Foundations U8 to U11, Performance U12 to U14, Elite U15 and up. Every family starts with the Athlete Development Blueprint, a six-week intake whose whole point is to name one gap and build against it, so you can tell afterward whether it worked. Confianza, Responsabilidad, Habilidad, Pasion. Those aren’t translated values, they’re lived ones, and sessions run in English and Spanish because that’s how families here actually talk.

We’re the wrong call in four situations, and I’d rather say so than take your money. Your kid is under eight: register for the Sunday and skip us. Your kid didn’t ask for more soccer: adding hours to a kid who’s coasting produces a kid who quits. Your family is already at four commitments a week: the fifth breaks the week. And you want a guarantee about college: nobody honest sells that.

FAQ

Is Franklin Square intramural enough for a seven-year-old?
Yes. At seven the job is touches and enjoyment, and one structured hour on Sunday plus a ball at home covers it. Division I is U7/U8, birth years August 1, 2018 through July 31, 2020, at $195. Save the travel conversation for U9 or U10. A second program at seven usually buys you a burned-out nine-year-old.

We missed the May travel tryout. What can we do this fall?
Register for intramural, then build the rest yourself. Eight Sundays gives you a game a week, and the missing piece is individual work on one named gap in between. In week two, ask the coach what he’d want to see by next May, in specific language, and go work on exactly that. Kids who arrive at a tryout with a specific answer are the ones who make it.

Elmont’s website doesn’t say much. How do we sign up?
Call 516-213-4882 and ask for the registrar. Ask what the season costs, which days the team practices, which field, and when tryouts are. The club is real and its teams play in LIJSL. The information gap is a volunteer capacity problem, not a sign the program isn’t worth joining.

We speak Spanish at home. Does that make any of this harder?
The soccer, no. The system around it, yes, and that’s fixable rather than a reflection on your family. Forms, tryout instructions and coach emails all move fast in English. Ask any club for the registrar’s phone number instead of fighting the form. We wrote a full guide for Spanish-first families on Long Island, and at Tiempo the call and the sessions happen in either language.

Sources

Fees, tryout dates and coaches change every season. Each club’s registrar is the source of truth. This page is the shortcut to knowing what to ask.

¿Prefiere leer en español? Lea esta guía en español: las opciones de fútbol juvenil en Franklin Square y Elmont.

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DM us. Let’s see if Tiempo’s a fit. Or call 516-548-6810. It costs nothing to find out we’re wrong for you.

– Fernando, Tiempo Soccer Academy · Rockville Centre, NY · tiemposoccer.com

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