Like many kids who grew up in Athens, Ga., I’m a child of the Athens YMCA. A couple of days a week, we’d pile over to the Y to practice whichever sport was in season — football in the fall, basketball in the winter, then short soccer and softball seasons. Game days were usually Friday or Saturday.
The Y has modernized a bit with the times, giving families a few more choices. You can play soccer in the fall as well as the spring, and they have taekwondo and other programs as well.
The best part — between the Y and the schools, kids can take buses from school.
We have afterschool programs in my area as well. At my school, they can take buses to karate, taekwondo and a private school. At school itself, they have chess, science, cooking, dance and all sorts of things.
Notice anything missing? There’s no soccer.
Instead, parents pick up their kids from these afterschool programs, toss some food down their throats and drive them to soccer practice, sometimes at the schools from which they departed a couple of hours earlier.
And then the parents sigh with resignation when they realize their kids are graduating from the “one practice, one Saturday game” weekly schedule to something more serious.
The net result: They gripe that it’s overkill to have two soccer practices a week. Meanwhile, their kids are in karate five days a week, and they think nothing of it because the dojo picks them up. The parents don’t even see it. And they’re happy to pay for it because their kids have afterschool care.
Those soccer practices, meanwhile, are being run by volunteer parents who may have gone through some U.S. Soccer training program to teach fun drills — excuse me, games — but are poorly equipped to deal with 15 kids who aren’t behaving.
Why aren’t soccer and other youth sports taught in afterschool programs? Why is a volunteer parent a better coach than a part-time PE teacher who might pick up a few extra bucks? And is there a goldmine waiting to be claimed by the first people who set up the soccer equivalents of afterschool karate and taekwondo programs?
Duresport.com 
Timely article, apparently this can be done if an MLS team is willing to subsidize it:
http://www.mercurynews.com/earthquakes/ci_18907036
Basically the Earthquakes are paying to make soccer an after-school program from ages 9 to 12 in one school district. It would be interesting to find out whether transportation is involved in that, as you suggest, because I can see how it would be a big factor in practice time.
Thanks! I just Tweeted that.
Why not get the kids to the point where they can play small sided games? Instead of focusing on a lot of skills work, get them playing games – with facilitators ensuring the kids play safely and settle arguments and disputes.