The email came in Tuesday night and the subject line was one word: Rosters. You scrolled past the greeting and found your son on Elite Boys White at U12. There is also an Elite Boys Red and an Elite Boys Blue at that age, and nothing in the email says which of the three is the one you wanted. Nine miles north in Hicksville a parent you have never met is reading the same email with Blue in it instead of Red, asking the same question in a different parking lot. Here is what those colors mean, what these two clubs charge in 2026-27, and what to ask before Saturday.
Written by Fernando, founder of Tiempo Soccer Academy (Rockville Centre, NY). Last reviewed: September 2026.
The short answer for Levittown and Hicksville families
These are two of the biggest youth soccer operations in this corner of Nassau County, and they sort kids in two different systems. Levittown tiers you by program and prices each tier separately, from $230 at the bottom to $1,565 at the top. Hicksville tiers you by color inside one travel program and publishes no price at all. In both towns, the word on your kid’s roster email is a placement, not a verdict. Most of the panic here comes from reading a placement as a verdict, so that gets its own section below.
Scale first, because it explains the waitlists. LIJSL runs roughly 60,000 players across 97 member clubs and more than 3,500 teams, 1,600 or more of them travel teams (NY Red Bulls / LIJSL, 2026). Big does not mean easy to enter. Across New York City and New Jersey the Aspen Institute counted roughly 150,000 kids who want to play and cannot get in, with 32% of families naming fees as the main barrier (Aspen Institute Project Play, 2026). In small villages the barrier is that no program exists. Here it is the opposite: plenty of programs, a window that closed in August, and a color nobody will decode for you. If the tier words are slippery, start with the Long Island youth soccer development guide, then come back for the local map.
What each club runs, and what it costs
Levittown Soccer Club publishes its whole 2026-27 fee ladder on its own FAQ page, which is more than most Long Island clubs manage. Hicksville American Soccer Club publishes none of its fees. Its registration page answers the price question twice, for travel and for intramural, with one sentence: “Please see registration page for current pricing.”
| Program | Club | Ages | 2026-27 fee published | Who coaches it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Touch | Levittown | U4 and U5 | $230 half year, $350 full year | NYCFC youth coaches |
| Academy Phase I | Levittown | U6 and U7 | $230 half, $350 full, optional $65 skills | NYCFC youth coaches |
| Academy Phase II | Levittown | U8 | $400 half, $625 full | NYCFC youth coaches |
| Interleague | Levittown | U9 to U13 | $360 half, $550 full | NYCFC youth coaches |
| Elite | Levittown | U9 to U14 | $1,565 | NYCFC Youth Coaches or LSC staff |
| Travel | Levittown | U15 to U19 | $400, by invitation | Parent volunteer coaches |
| Soccer Stars | Levittown | 5 and older | Free, Sept 19 to June 19 | Club, with Buddies volunteers |
| Intramural | Hicksville | U5 to U9 | Not published | Club |
| Developmental | Hicksville | Before U9 travel | Not published | Weekly professional coaching |
| Travel | Hicksville | U7 to U19 | Not published | Team coaches, invitation only |
Two rows there decide most family budgets. Interleague and Elite are both two 90-minute sessions a week run by NYCFC Youth Program coaches, at overlapping ages, for $550 and $1,565 (Levittown Soccer Club, 2026). And Elite carries costs the fee does not cover, which the club names plainly: tournament fees, unsponsored clinics and camps, game day uniforms, additional travel. Ask what the gap between those numbers buys, out loud, before you pay it. There is a real answer. It is just not on the page.
How to read a color on a roster without panicking
In the 2026 New York East listings Levittown fields 32 teams, 19 boys and 13 girls, with four at U13 boys alone: Elite Boys Blue, White, Red and Grey. U12 has three, U11 and U10 have two each (2026 team listings). Hicksville SC fields 17 teams and its travel page describes the same structure in fewer colors: Red and Blue at U9 and U10, Red, Blue and White at U11 and U12.
Neither club publishes a key. No page on either site says Red is the top team and White is the second, which is less a cover-up than what happens when volunteers place a couple hundred kids in June. So here is what a color tells you: where your kid stood, on one or two evenings in May, against the other kids who showed up. That is the whole claim. It does not describe a ceiling and a color at U10 does not predict U14. Levittown’s FAQ says plainly that players are reassigned seasonally for competitive balance. The roster is a working document.
Most training builds technique. Tiempo builds skill.
Both doors open into the same room. The kid on White who feels demoted stops trying things in games, because trying things is how you look worse. The kid on Red who has been the best for two years stops trying things too, because he does not have to. What fixes both is one email: ask the coach to name two things your kid should be better at by March. If the coach can name two, you have a plan. If not, the placement was about numbers rather than about your kid, and you know that too. The travel readiness checklist is for before the tryout. What to do when your kid gets cut is for the week after.
Two age cutoffs, nine miles apart
This one costs families a season and almost nobody catches it. Levittown runs on the August 1 seasonal year: First Touch born after August 1, 2022, Academy after August 1, 2020, Interleague after August 1, 2017. Hicksville’s registration page uses a different clock entirely. “The age of the child on January 1st determines their age.” A kid born in October sits near the top of one club’s bracket and near the bottom of the other’s. If yours has spent two seasons as the smallest body on the field, that may not be a talent problem. It may be a calendar nobody chose.
While you are asking, ask Hicksville which minimum age applies to a three-year-old. The registration page says a child “must be 3 as of January 1st, or they cannot play.” The intramural page says a child “must turn 3 1/2 years old sometime during the current soccer year.” Both live on the same site, so one is stale. Volunteer boards with day jobs do not owe you a perfect website. You still get to ask.
Where you will actually drive
Hicksville keeps everything inside the hamlet. All six listed venues are local, and travel U12 and younger plays at Giese Park while U13 and older moves to Kevin Kolm Field on Plainview Road, the one everyone still calls Triangle Park, and John Walker Memorial Field.
Levittown cannot fit inside Levittown. Seven club fields sit in the hamlet, including Division Avenue High School, Pelini Park and Market Lane. Four do not: Cuomo Field and East Broadway School are in Seaford, Hunt Road Fields and MacArthur High School in Wantagh (Levittown Soccer Club, 2026). This is the most populous unincorporated community in Nassau County, 51,758 residents at the 2020 census, and its club still borrows two towns’ fields. That is what 32 teams looks like on a Sunday, and the Wantagh, Seaford and Massapequa guide covers who you share them with.
If you have a daughter, read this section first
The gap between these two clubs on the girls side is not about coaching. It is about how many girls signed up.
Levittown fields 13 girls teams in the 2026 listings, including Elite Girls at U11, U12, U13 and U14, then Wildcats, Thunder, United, Reign and Dragons up through U20. Hicksville’s listings show two, Thunder at U16 and U17, plus a girls Academy at U7 and U8 and a Thunder side at U15 on its travel page. Read that plainly: a Hicksville girl between roughly U9 and U14 has no listed club team in her own town this season. That is nobody’s fault, and it is the single fact most likely to decide your daughter’s year. It is also nowhere on the registration page. Call the travel director, ask whether a team is forming at her age, then ask what happened last year, because tryouts held is not the same as a team fielded. Then call Levittown, and Island Trees FC too. The girls soccer parent guide covers how to read those answers.
Four questions to ask before you pay in Levittown or Hicksville
1. “What is the total, and what happens to it if we quit in October?”
At Hicksville the number in the cart is not the number you were quoted: a HASC Facilities Fee lands on every registration, a 4% card fee on every order, $30 off the second and third child. And the refund policy is strict. All costs are final, no refunds unless a valid reason is presented to the board of directors, and an approved partial refund carries a minimum deduction of $150 plus applicable fees. Strict is not unfair. Uniforms and permits get bought in August either way. Read it before the season, not during the week your kid decides they are done.
2. “What does the extra $1,015 buy?”
That is the gap between Interleague at $550 and Elite at $1,565 for the full year, both two 90-minute sessions a week with NYCFC coaches. The difference is league level, season length and how many weekends leave the county, plus tournaments and uniforms on top. Make the club say it in one sentence. If the sentence is good, pay it happily.
3. “Is a parent volunteer coaching this team, or a paid coach?”
Levittown answers this without being asked, which I respect. Travel at U15 to U19 runs on parent volunteer coaches. Elite is coached by NYCFC Youth Coaches or LSC staff. First Touch, Academy and Interleague run on NYCFC Youth Program coaches. A parent volunteer is not automatically a worse coach, and some of the best people on Long Island sidelines have day jobs. It is a different purchase, and you should know which one you made.
Hicksville does not answer it on the site, so ask. And ask who decides the color and what would move your kid up. The second half gets you a plan, or silence, and silence is information too.
4. “Will there be a team at this age next year, and when does registration close?”
Ask for last year’s answer, not this year’s hope, especially at U15 and up where Levittown switches from Elite to parent-coached Travel by invitation. Levittown’s fall window typically runs May through Labor Day and spring December through mid-March, with late registrations going on a first-come waitlist. Hicksville opens fall in July and spring in January. For the competitive tracks the tryout is the real deadline, because you register after you are selected, not before.
The money, annualized
Hicksville’s numbers sit behind a checkout, so you cannot compare the towns from your couch. And here is the test to run on Levittown’s $1,565: ask how many sessions and games are in those ten months, then divide. Per session it is not outrageous for professional coaching. Per year, on top of a sibling’s program and the gas, it is a real allocation of family money, parent driving time and kid weekend hours. The Nassau County cost guide has the working ranges once uniforms, winter training and tournaments are counted.
Then there is the number parents here ask me about privately. Private trainers list from about $50 a session on the CoachUp marketplace (CoachUp, 2026) and Long Island academies run well past that. At 30 sessions a year that is $1,500 and up, on top of the club. If your kid is seven and you are choosing between $230 of First Touch on a Saturday morning and an hour a week alone with a trainer, buy the First Touch. Strange sentence from someone who sells private mentorship. Still the right call at seven.
Where Tiempo fits
We are not a club. We do not run LIJSL travel teams, we are not competing for your Saturday, and we sit about nine miles south of Levittown in Rockville Centre. That is 20 to 30 minutes, longer from Hicksville, and I will not pretend it is nothing. So here is who should not make that drive. If your kid is under about ten, stay home and play in town. If your kid is already in Elite, training twice a week with games on the weekend, they do not need a fourth session. They need a Tuesday off. The pediatric guidance points the same way: the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends delaying single-sport specialization until around age 12 (Brenner, Pediatrics, 2016), and highly specialized young athletes carry roughly 2.25 times the odds of overuse injury (Post et al., 2017).
Who we are for is narrower. The kid who has been on White or Blue for two seasons, who can name the thing that is stopping them, whose parent has heard “she just needs more confidence” three years running and never once been handed a plan. We are the structured individual development layer next to the club, built on the PaC Method and a six-week Athlete Development Blueprint that names one thing to fix instead of a schedule to fill. If your kid is happy at Interleague on a Sunday at Pelini Park, stay there. We will say so on the call, and the call is free.
Frequently asked questions
My son got placed on Elite Boys White instead of Red. Is that bad?
No, and neither club publishes anything that would let you call it good or bad. Four Elite Boys teams exist at U13 in Levittown alone: Blue, White, Red and Grey. A color reflects where a kid stood on one or two evenings in May against whoever showed up, and Levittown’s own FAQ says players are reassigned seasonally for competitive balance. Ask the coach for two things to fix by March.
How much does Hicksville American Soccer Club cost?
The club does not publish it. Both the travel and intramural entries say to see the registration page for current pricing, and the fee appears at checkout. What is published: a HASC Facilities Fee on every registration, a 4% card fee per order, $30 off the second and third child, free from the fourth, and no refunds without board approval. Email the club with your kid’s name and date of birth and get the number in writing.
My daughter is 11 and we live in Hicksville. Where does she play travel?
Probably not in Hicksville this season. The 2026 listings show two Hicksville girls teams, Thunder at U16 and U17, with a girls Academy at U7 and U8 and a Thunder side at U15 on the club’s travel page. Nothing published between. Ask the travel director whether an 11U team is forming, then call Levittown, which lists Elite Girls at U11 through U14, and Island Trees FC, which runs travel U9 to U19.
We missed the Levittown registration deadline. What now?
Get on the waitlist, which the club runs first come first served for First Touch, Academy and Interleague, then work sideways the same week. Island Trees FC in Levittown runs intramurals U4 to U10 and travel U9 to U19. The Nassau County PAL runs youth soccer at the Hicksville Athletic Center on South Broadway, with discounted fees for Town of Oyster Bay residents who bring a tax or utility bill and a license.
Sources
- Levittown Soccer Club, accessed September 2026: FAQ and 2026-27 fees, programs, Interleague, Academy, fields.
- Hicksville American Soccer Club, accessed September 2026: registration and fees, travel, intramural, locations. Also Island Trees FC and the Hicksville Athletic Center.
- Team counts, 2026 New York East listings: Levittown, Hicksville. Population, 2020 census: Levittown. League and research: NY Red Bulls / LIJSL, 2026, Aspen Institute Project Play, 2026, CoachUp, 2026. Brenner JS, Pediatrics, 2016; Post et al., American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017.
Fees, divisions and tryout dates change every season, and the people running both clubs are volunteers with day jobs. The registrar is the source of truth. This page is the shortcut to knowing what to ask.
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– Fernando, Tiempo Soccer Academy · Rockville Centre, NY · tiemposoccer.com
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