June 25, 2024

Dear Club and League Representatives:

As a reminder, all affiliated clubs/leagues must comply with the following adult athlete requirements:

• An Athlete Background Screening and SafeSport Training are REQUIRED for all athletes who are currently 18 years or older.

• Affiliated MSYSA clubs and leagues may not require any athletes under the age of 18 to complete either requirement, regardless of what age group they play in. The Background Screening and SafeSport Training are not required until athletes turn 18 years old.

• Athletes who are currently 17 years old but will turn 18 during the seasonal year (through July 31, 2025), are STRONGLY ENCOURAGED, but not required, to obtain a Background Screening and complete the SafeSport Training before the season starts, to avoid a potential lapse in eligibility. Note: Should an athlete turn 18 during the seasonal year but not have completed the Background Screening and SafeSport Training, they would then be considered ineligible and are likely to impact team(s) eligibility.

The adult athlete background screening is a little different than a normal background check for a coach/manager in GotSport so there will not be an immediate update to their status in GotSport when they have completed the consent form. Once the form has been completed, MSYSA has to run the check independently and then manually add the approval into GotSport on our end. Our goal is to do them in batches approximately once a week (usually Wednesday or Thursday). If you ever have someone that urgently needs to be approved, please reach out and we can try and expedite it. Also, if there is someone who claims they completed it 10+ days ago let us know and we can look into why their status may not be updated.

In addition, for SafeSport certificates, those also do not update automatically. They need to either be uploaded to the player’s GotSport account by the club admin, the parent (new this year), or emailed to safesport@michiganyouthsoccer.org in order to show approval. Please review the adult athlete guide for club administrators document linked below which includes specific instructions on how to upload a SafeSport certificate to a player’s account.

Please carefully read/review our updated resources and instructions below to assist with implementing the requirements.

• A general summary of information regarding Adult Athlete Risk Management can be found here.
• Instructions intended for adult athletes (aged 18 and above) are available here. This includes information for 17-year-old athletes who will be turning 18 during the season. 
• Information for Club Administrators is available here.

Should you have any questions after reviewing our resources, please contact the MSYSA State Office.

Sincerely,

MSYSA State Office

stateoffice@michiganyouthsoccer.org