Kid Friendly Goalie Gloves: What Youth Soccer Players Have Been Missing
Apr 29, 2024
To all the soccer moms and dads out there—shopping for what kind of soccer gear gives you the biggest headache? Shin guards? Shorts? Headgear?
From personal experience, we’d say buying goalie gloves makes us roll our eyes the most. Think about it—you have to buy a new pair every month, it’s hard to size them (remember kids’ hands grow), and they often look like uglier versions of adult gloves. Also, many of them offer little protection from injury.
That’s why we launched our new line of Challenger Youth gloves, designed especially for kids. We made them to look and feel fun for kids, but also, to support the development of their goalkeeping skills. Here’s what we came up with.
A closer look at our new Challenger Youth goalie gloves
The first thing you’ll notice about these gloves is that they don’t look like standard goalkeeper gloves. They’re for youngins', so you’ll find kid-friendly aesthetics on them.
We incorporated animal skins (not literally, just the shapes), robot circuitry, and camouflage patterns. Since our gloves use what’s known as a sublimated backhand, it allowed us to add bright colors without having to add bulky screenprinting or rubber labels.
Why does this matter? Well again, these kinds of design draw kids in—its the type of stuff you’d see on a Fortnite skin. With that said, we’re not in the business of making video game cosplay, so we also moulded them for function too.
They contain a thin latex layer, and foam backing to ensure young players have a secure fit and proper feel for the ball. A good feel is crucial, because it helps young keepers master their ball handling and shot-blocking skills.
The gloves are also moulded into a slim fit which is age-appropriate for younger hands. However, there’s super wide access which makes it easier for parents to adjust the gloves where needed. And there’s also a long cuff with an elastic strap to help secure the gloves on a player’s hands. Upon release, these gloves will be available in sizes 4-8.
Why we launched the Challenger Kid’s goalie gloves
We’ll say this bluntly—most goalkeeper gloves for kids suck. If you’ve struggled to find a decent pair of gloves for your kids, you know how it goes (it can be a pain).
What we’ve noticed is that most goalie gloves for kids fail in three aspects:
- Youth gloves look boring, and are often just cheaply-made versions of adult size gloves.
- Youth gloves often don’t offer real protection.
- Youth gloves use cheap materials that reduce performance and skill acquisition.
There’s a stat out there that says 70% of kids quit sport by age 13. How that skews in soccer needs further study, but what we imagine that frequent injuries, poor performance and just a lack of fun might have a similar effect in the beautiful game. We’re not saying that colourful goalie gloves are guaranteed to keep kids interested in soccer, but we’re confident they can keep them invested in being goalkeepers longer.
With that said, we constructed our Challenger gloves to be the opposite of traditional youth gloves, using the approaches we mentioned earlier.
Reminders on what makes our Challenger Youth Gloves perfect for kids
- Fun - Who else makes youth goalie gloves with animal or robot designs?
- Protective - They contain finger spines to stop those pesky and painful jammed fingers.
- High quality - Call them Disney-like, or PG-rated gloves if you want, but they still pack a punch when it comes to performance and they’re built to help kids master their ball control skills.
Ultimately, we wanted to bring the fun of being a goalkeeper back again for kids, while helping them become masters in the box. Our Challenger gloves is our contribution to that goal (pun intended).
Parents first, player second: The true motivation behind the Challengers
We’ll take this a bit deeper.
Here are at Storelli, we’re all former players and more importantly, we’re soccer parents now, just like you. We know the joys (and the struggles) of being a young footy player from personal experience, but also, through observation. We’ve visited pitches across suburban America, and we could tell that young goalkeepers have been forgotten. And because of what we’ve seen, we put ourselves in kids’ shoes (or in this case, gloves).
Knowing that being a single-digit goalkeeper can be overwhelming, we side its time to make the position feel a little less ominous. That’s why we infused the kid-friendly designs and colors you see on these gloves, without sacrificing the materials and cuts that can help them become great.
So far, we’ve seen in our tests that when kids put them on, they don’t want to take them off. We’ve even had a major sporting chain (we’ll let you guess) ask if they can carry the Challengers.
If you’re looking to buy a pair of kid-friendly gloves for your young players, a pair of Challengers is your answer. If your kids are like ours and don’t want to take them off, you can thank us for having that “problem”.
