East Central Academy Curriculum

A Note from our VP, Jeff Pozniak

This curriculum is intended to help clubs in the East Central Soccer District with new or smaller Academy programs to build a fun, robust program that will develop technical, smart players ready for competitive teams at U11, growing your program both in terms of number of players and number of volunteer coaches.

These are exciting years in a soccer player’s development – the foundational skills learned during their time in academy have the potential to set your players up for success in local, state and regional leagues, as well as high school, college and beyond.

Information in this packet includes:

How to launch each Academy year, including introducing the methodologies of the program, how to engage and recruit volunteers and how and what to train them to become competent, enthusiastic teachers of soccer.
Designing a training season, with age-appropriate areas and durations of focus in the various topics of soccer play, including a training season example.
Breakdown of what each training session should look like; field setup, pre-session coach huddle, player greeting, technical warmup, running and rotating activities, scrimmages and post-session player huddle.
Assigning coaches to training sessions and games.
How to coach games.

This is intended as a living document for both your club and the district. Areas that work well should be enhanced, areas that don’t work well should be modified or replaced with new ideas.

I WANT TO HELP. Seeing players that went through our academy program now playing in MLS Next, at MLS Academies and top US universities has been extremely rewarding and I’d love to give the players in your program that same opportunity. Please reach out if you have questions on any part of this packet, or if you’d like me to engage with your club to help grow your Academy program.

Have fun!
Jeff Pozniak
East Central Vice President
vicepresident@eastcentralsoccer.com

Additional Resources
(coming soon)