US youth soccer is broken. This is the spec for a club families own.

Solstice FC is an open specification for a community-owned youth soccer cooperative: affordable, transparent, merit-based. Every decision was argued through 37 structured debates and scored before a line of bylaws was written.

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Championship Final3-judge panel

Community-First vs. Systems-First: should Solstice FC be a community-first organization that builds systems, or a systems-first organization that serves communities?

AFF

Community Organizer

2-1

NEG

Systems Thinker

Logic
Feasibility
Evidence
Clash

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The model

Four commitments, each decided by a debate.

Community-owned

Nonprofit cooperative, one club one vote. Clubs are member-owners, not franchisees.

Round 2, Governance Model. AFF 16-15.

Affordable

$2,000-$2,800 a year, flat. No hidden fees. A constitutional cap at 150% of founding rates. Scholarship target of 20% or more of the roster.

Round 4, Fee Structure. NEG 15-15, split decision.

Merit-based

Metro-scoped promotion and relegation from U13. Every criterion and standing is public. Technical metrics over physical, with maturation context.

Round 5, Tier Structure. AFF 18-16.

High floor, full autonomy

Licensed coaches, training minimums, financial transparency, SafeSport. Above that floor, clubs run their own methodology, culture, and programming.

Round 7, Club Autonomy vs. League Standards. AFF 16-15.

From the workshop

Built in public. Every step written up.

Sep 11, 2026Four Posts Rewritten Against Google's AI Overview: What the Data SaidI captured Google's AI Overview 30 times for each of six queries, traced what it extracts and from whom, and rewrote four posts to match. One was already cited in 28 of 30 captures. Two queries failed the gate. Here is the method and the numbers.Sep 11, 2026Six Months Later: What a Maintenance Checkup FoundThe site sat untouched from March to September. I ran the maintenance skill built on day two. Here is what it found, what it fixed, and the one thing it almost broke.Mar 9, 202612 More Debates: Operations, Governance, and the Hard QuestionsThe original 25 debates designed the club. These 12 expansion debates answer the operational questions you hit when you actually try to build it.

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Who's behind this

I'm Houston, a dad in San Diego whose kid plays competitive club soccer. I've watched families spend $5,000–$15,000 a year on a system that's fragmented, opaque, and structurally designed to extract money rather than develop players.

Solstice FC is the turning point. Latin solstitium — “the sun stands still.” The moment the longest night ends and the light starts coming back. US youth soccer is in its longest night. This is the design for what comes next.

Everything is published. Everything is open. The spec, the debates, the reasoning, the failures. That's the point.

The landscape research About this project