Three years ago, I was the Director of Player Development and co-head coach of a U-16 girls club in Connecticut. We took a very holistic approach to training our players, striving to make them not only the best players they could be, but more importantly, the best people as well. That team ended the year as one of the best in the region, and we were lucky enough to send more than ¾ of the team on to play at various universities across the country. A massive part of helping t

A few weeks ago, news broke that the US Soccer Federation was hiring Tom Byer to oversee a new pilot program with youth players between the ages of 2 and 6, to help improve their technical foundation and overall comfort with the ball. This was met with praise and scorn from both sides of the isle, with Raymond Verhiejen making the strongest comments against this new program, even going so far as to call Byer a “circus clown”. Raymond is known to make incendiary remarks on Twi