2017-18 Player Evaluation Period!

It is a extremely busy time as the Spring 2017 season winds down and we once again we shift our focus as a Club towards preparing for next year’s girls development program. The player evaluation process in a Soccer Clubs is always an anxious time for players, parents and coaches who must grapple through countless issues mostly revolving around FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt).

FUD clouds judgment and often drives people into making poor deci-sions because if forces us to focus on things we cannot control, vice things we can. Focusing on the long term value of belonging to a soccer organization that makes development its #1 priority should be, but of-ten is not, the best way to manage FUD during this time period.

I am proud of the changes we have made over the last five months because we are strengthening our foundation and ensuring a future not focused on the short term results of a one-off team, but building a Girls program that will produce high performing players for years to come.

Gotsoccer© points, rankings and tournament trophies should simply be the measurement of a team that is achieving results because of hard work, commitment and discipline, it is NOT the reason to join a Club or quite frankly leave one.

IN THIS ISSUE:

2017-2018 Tryouts! P.1 Tryout Schedule P.3

VEPA P.4 AUFC goes SPORTS ENGINE P.6

Cognitive Dialogues P.7

AUFC’s Mission

Serve the expanded needs of

players in Northern Virginia who

enjoy playing competitive soccer

and want to advance their skills

to the next level.

Develop the player in an age ap-

propriate, experiential manner

and provide pathway opportuni-

ties to the highest level of the

game.

Expand the club and deliver an

experience that reinforces our

proud history of excellence and

championship play!

The Lioness A Monthly Journal from Annandale United FC

ISSUE #5 – MAY 2017

http://www.annandaleunitedfc.com/

What should be one of the primary factors for membership is simply if the Club has the vision, leadership, platform, expertise, network of strategic partners and specific program elements (Super-Y, VEPA, NPL, etc) to support a player reaching their goals. Ultimately if players are only focused on short term results then they are really playing for rec-reational purposes and not for long term goal attainment.

US Club Soccer was created to elevate and change the competitive youth soccer landscape by extending developmental principles championed by U.S. Soccer across more age groups and clubs, by linking competition with player development and identification platforms, and by delivering meaningful weekly competition culminating in the National Finals. US Club Soccer’s National Premier League (NPL) and associated venues allow us as a Club to focus on long term player development by affording appropriate levels of play, age appropriate challenges and growth opportu-nities. Unified under one national competition platform, and based on a common technical framework de-signed to improve long-term player development US Club Soccer provides AUFC players a platform:

Focused on long-term player development;

Implementing coaching standards and technical curriculum;

Designed for the country’s top soccer clubs, allowing consistent, meaningful high-level games appropri-ately scheduled with higher training-to-game ratios;

Allowing players to be scouted and evaluated by U.S. Soccer National Staff, College Scouts and Coaches across the nation;

Designed and structured by the clubs, based on the needs of the clubs, not a team;

Providing a pathway for qualification for the National Finals through regional competition.

Accessing top national tournaments (Jefferson Cup, Surf, Disney) to aid recruitment.

Offering no cost iD2 and Player Development program (PDP), an opportunity for the country’s elite youth soccer players to be identified and developed, and scouted for inclusion in U.S. Soccer’s National Team

How Will Playing with AUFC benefit my player?

AUFC is a player-centric Club that has over 50+ years of experience preparing youth players for advanced play (High School, College and Professional). With seven National Championships, dozens of Virginia State titles and hundreds of players who have gone on to play in College and the professional ranks, AUFC has a proven record of excellence and player development!

Nationally licensed technical staff focused on development;

Purposeful league matches against top clubs vice random traveling all over MD, DC & VA;

Access to top competitive programs including the PDP, Eastern Development Program (EDP), Elite National Premier League (ENPL) and Region-1 (ERL) competition;

Encourages training periodicity and social balance with High School play;

Year round training program to advance different aspects of development;

FCV partnership provides access to USL Super-Y league and the US Soccer Academy;

Access to Virginia Elite Players Academy (VEPA) a unique training and playing opportunities for boys and girls who wish to participate in extra weekly training and compete in top tournament play;

Partnership with Mid-Atlantic Sports consultants to assist with college recruitment.

Remember that true development comes when players identify performance goals and then commit to reach-ing them. Players who face adversity, challenges and who are prepared by consistent high level training from professional coaches will achieve success. AUFC is proud of our US Club Soccer relationship and remains committed to the ideals of Us Soccer. I hope when you make your own personal decisions you first connect with your goals, cast FUD to the side and then make decisions based on opportunities to exercise your ability to focus, train and excel your development.

ALWAYS UNITED!

Scott Norberg

Girls Director of Coaching

scott_norberg@annandaleunitedfc.org

Tryout Information

Annandale United FC is looking for hard working, committed players that have the passion and desire to play at the highest level. All players trying out should bring water, shin guards, ball and wear a white shirt (returning players should wear normal training kit). Registration for Try Outs is free and mandatory. Players are also strongly advised to contact directors of coaching to express interest in advance.

Contacts Bo Amato Technical Director bo_amato@annandaleunitedfc.org (703) 932-3881 Trevor Parker Director of Coaching trevor_parker@annandaleunitedfc.org (703) 966-2195 Scott Norberg Girls Director of Coaching Scott_Norberg@annandaleunitedfc.org (757) 412-8836

AUFC Travel Tryout Schedule

Boys Tryout Schedule Location: Mason District Park 6621 Columbia Pike, Annandale, VA 22003 Wednesday(s) Dates - 5/24, 5/31 5.45-6.45pm (2009s/2008s/2007s/2006) 6.55-7.55pm (2005s/2004s/2003s) 8-9pm (2002s/2001s/2000s/1999s) Thursday(s) Dates - 5/25, 6/1 5.45-6.45pm (2009s/2008s/2007s/2006) 6.55-7.55pm (2005s/2004s/2003s) 8-9pm (2002s/2001s/2000s/1999s) Saturday(s) Dates - 6/3 4-5pm (2009s/2008s/2007s/2006s) 5-6pm (2005s/2004s/2003s 6-7pm (2002s/2001s/2000s/1999s)

Girls Tryout Schedule Location: Pine Ridge Park 3401 Woodburn Rd, Annandale, VA 22003 Wednesday(s) Dates - 5/24, 5/31 5.30-6.30pm (2009s/2008s/2007s) 5.30-7.00pm (2006s/2005s). 7.00-8.30pm (2004s/2003s/2002s/2001s/2000s/1999s) Friday(s) Dates – 6/2 5.30-6.30pm (2009s/2008s/2007s) 5.30-7.00pm (2006s/2005s/2004s). 7.00-8.30pm (2003s/2002s/2001s/2000s/1999s) Saturday(s) Location: Mason District Park 6621 Columbia Pike, Annandale, VA 22003 Dates - 6/3 4.00-5.00pm (2009s/2008s/2007s) 5.00-6.00pm (2006/2005s/2004s/2003s/2002s/2001s/2000s) Register for AUFC Tryouts

FIVE VIRGINIA SOCCER CLUBS ANNOUNCE HISTORIC PARTNERSHIP

FREE Elite Player Academy for Member Clubs

Annandale United Football Club (AUFC), Great Falls Soccer (GFS), Herndon Youth Soccer (HYS), Springfield Youth Club (SYC), and FC Virginia (FCV) have formed an unprecedented new partnership, named Virginia Elite Players Academy (VEPA), All five area clubs have committed to the VEPA Training Program to establish a FREE academy training opportunity for elite players from within each club.

VEPA’s Training Program will begin in the Fall of 2017 and will provide unique training and playing opportu-nities for boys and girls across the U11-U15 age groups

Each of the clubs will continue to operate separately, but will collaborate to provide further elite-level training for the very best players from VEPA member clubs. Technical Directors from each of the five independent clubs will identify players from each age group from their respective memberships to create select VEPA Training Pools. Only players from within VEPA member clubs can be selected to be part of this program.

Players that are selected into the VEPA Training Program will continue to play with their respective clubs and teams, but will also have the opportunity to train once-a-week with other elite players from each of the five member clubs. Players from the VEPA player pools will be selected to compete in some of the most prestig-ious youth tournaments in the country as well as internationally.

VEPA training sessions will be guided by an internationally-synthesized methodology formed from some of the best youth development programs from both Europe and South America. VEPA’s curriculum will be estab-lished using the extensive knowledge and experience of our member clubs’ Technical Directors.

Virginia Elite Players Academy (VEPA)

Each member club’s Technical Directors will form the collaborative Board of Directors in order to make joint decisions on the strategic vision, direction, and future expansion of the program. The Technical Directors of each member club are: Bo Amato (AUFC), Richie Burke (FCV), Radovan Pletka (GFSC), Nick Arzani (HYS) and Julian Lee Chang (SYC).

“VEPA is great for our players, coaches, and members. At Annandale United FC we are determined to create opportunities for our players, and we have worked tirelessly in the past to keep finding ways to do more for our membership. This collaborative group of progressive clubs in Northern Virginia will enhance our ability to cre-ate increased opportunities for all our players.” - Bo Amato, Annandale United Football Club Technical Direc-tor.

“What excites me most about VEPA is that in addition to be a training program, it is really a collaborative effort of idea generation and sharing, where each Technical Director has equal say at the roundtable. While it is starting out as simply a training program, there is open discussion of how we can implement some more pro-gressive ideas as part of our program offerings.” - Radovan Pletka, Great Falls Soccer Club Technical Director

“We realize some of our top players would benefit from an environment where they can train alongside the best players from five other like-minded clubs. So the VEPA concept is enticing since we are always trying to find new ways to inspire and develop our players. Over the past few years we have been bringing some of the best coaches and players in the world to work with our players. We are excited to have the opportunity to utilize our extensive network to benefit even more players as part of the VEPA program.” - Nick Arzani, Herndon Youth Soccer Technical Director

“At SYC, we are looking to increase opportunities for all our players, from the grassroots to the most elite lev-el. VEPA provides an avenue for our very best players to continue to grow and develop to their fullest poten-tial. We strive to be a club that keeps the game affordable, while providing the best possible environment to nurture our players. The VEPA vision of a free program therefore aligns perfectly with our mission, and gives our players an elite pathway that is both sensible and economical.” - Julian Lee Chang, Springfield Youth Soc-cer, Technical Director.

“I am thrilled for FC Virginia to be a part of the VEPA Collaborative, which is the first elite level training pro-

gram in the area to be driven exclusively by top Technical Staff from each member club. Through VEPA, we

can introduce a progressive, professional training program that is free of costs, and is geared towards develop-

ing the truly elite player.” - Richie Burke, FC Virginia Boys Technical Director

SPORTS ENGINE is the leading provider of sport life management web soft-

ware and mobile applications for youth, amateur, and professional sports.

Powering more than 500,000 sports teams, leagues, clubs, and associations,

SPORTS ENGINE features a complete suite of easy-to-use tools that help

sports organizations manage, connect, and communicate with a diverse

range of stakeholders, including athletes, parents, administrators, coaches,

referees, scouts, volunteers, fans, journalists, and sponsors.

AUFC is proud to launch our new NBC SPORTS ENGINE powered website

just in time for our 2017-2018 Player Evaluation period. Of note, SPORTS

ENGINE provides seamless integration with US Club Soccer and other Club

affiliates like FC Virginia and the USL Super-Y , providing our members unparalleled access to content,

scores, standings, social media and seamless league registration. Providing AUFC members straight through

processing to US Club Soccer’s KYCK registration carding system, AUFC will save countless hours for our vol-

unteer Team Managers and administrative staff. Additionally each AUFC team will have the ability to create

and host media content and display team schedules, including the option of synchronizing with popular Per-

sonal Electronic Device applications like TeamSnap©.

AUFC is going “all-in” with SPORTS ENGINE and will now conduct all business electronically. Members must

register for a SPORTS ENGINE account immediately to ensure successful program membership and to inter-

act with the Club on issues such as player offer acceptance, carding, league processing etc. Don’t delay!!

www.annandaleunitedfc.com

AUFC chooses Sports Engine!

Cognovation Dialogues: Soccer is a Thinking Game!! Dr. Darren McKnight, AUFC Cognitive Development Advisor and author of “Soccer is a Thinking Game”

Generally speaking, there are three activities that can empower better thinking: physical exercise, deliberate learning, and focused meditation. Isn’t it great that the act of play-ing soccer (i.e., exercising) actually helps you think, which aids you in playing soccer – a wonderful, vicious cycle. So, we just need to focus on how learning and meditation fit in. Note, that benefits from thinking better on the soccer pitch will help in other areas of a player’s life, such as school and social set-tings.

Three performance metrics applied to exer-cise, learning, and meditation are intensity, frequency, and duration. Of these three, in-tensity is the most important. Intensity represents the focused effort one puts into the activity coupled with the process of having challenging, yet achievable, goals to pursue on a continuing basis. Don’t just jog around the pitch during practice – do your best on every move, every drill, every run, every set, etc. Now, you may ask, which parameter is next most important? It depends on your goals.

For everyday goals, frequency is next most important whereas to attain world class standards, duration is the next most important. For regular people just trying to stay healthy, having a single weekly 3-hour physical workout, meditation sequence, or studying session is not as good as six separate 30-minute efforts throughout the week. Intense activities that last only 10-30 minutes can provide very tangible results. In addition, once you make daily activities in these three dimensions a habit, it is much easier to maintain and improve performance.

I work out every weekday morning – it is as natural as grabbing the morning paper or brushing my teeth after a meal. As you make it a habit to exercise, learn, and meditate regularly you will likely have to mix up your exact efforts periodically to avoid boredom. This is why your coach may change the types and order of drills from time to time during practice.

For the ones of you who think that your child is going to be a world class soccer player, there is a sim-ple equation to follow. In order to logically expect that your son or daughter is going to be at the top of soccer world in ten years, your child needs to invest 1,000 hours a year to deliberate practice! This ob-servation and supporting research is well documented in the books Outliers (Gladwell, 2008) and Bounce (Syed, 2010). This means that on average one would have to spend 2 hours and 45 minutes a day for over 3500 days to achieve the level of commitment that the likes of Lionel Messi, Michael Jor-dan, Serena Williams, Roger Federer, etc. have shown to rise to the top of their respective sports. How-ever, these people also had their family sacrifice significantly to make this opportunity manifest itself for these individuals.

There is significant commonality between how you continue to improve physically versus cognitively. I stated earlier about the importance of deliberate practice (i.e. regular and challenging activity). If you can do ten push-ups, is doing five push-ups a tough workout? No. You try to do as many as possi-ble in the first set and then do your best in the second set, even if it means only doing six in the second set – you must challenge yourself.

You should do the same thing cognitively. If you do crossword puzzles that you can complete easily in

fifteen minutes then these crossword puzzles will probably not serve to enhance your cognitive fit-ness. However, if you concentrate on continually trying more difficult crossword puzzles or trying to do them faster or even apply different solution techniques then indeed you will gain cognitive benefits.

So, how do we actually learn (i.e., store tidbits of, hopefully, useful information in the brain)? A useful axiom I reminded my Physics students of when I was a professor was that students typically learn 10 percent of what they read; 20 percent of what they hear; 30 percent of what they see in visuals; and 90 percent of what they “do” (i.e., in real life or in a simulation).

Meditation is the final component to develop better thinking. Meditation, in a variety of forms,

can indeed enhance cognitive ability. Meditation is not just laying around and doing nothing; it re-quires deliberate activities to encourage your mind to focus on alternative skills and information. Be-ing lazy is not being spiritual! You can equate this situation to listening… Listening is not just the lack of talking. It is the active, focused effort to absorb what someone else is saying.

A recent study examined how meditation helped elementary school children be more receptive in the classroom and actually even perform better on tests. The teachers at Toluca Lake Elementary School led the children through 45 minutes of exercises once a week for 10 to 12 weeks focused on breathing, listening, movement, and reflection. The techniques applied the Buddhist meditative practice of mind-fulness, which is meant to promote greater awareness of one’s self and one’s environment. Bringing this practice into schools is “really about teaching kids how to be in a state of attention, where they can perceive thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions without judgment and with curiosity and an open state of mind.”

The teachers noted that the students were calmer on the playground and in the classroom with an ad-ditional benefit of improved statewide standardized testing scores. While mindfulness can produce in-ternal benefits to kids, the report also found that it can create a more positive learning environment, where kids are primed to pay attention. The children learned to practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until it became their default mindset and they were able to look forward to every new day in a constructive way.

So when your coach asks your child to close his/her eyes and visualize a perfect cross to a streaking forward, he is not being lazy – he is adding a valuable dimension to your child’s soc-cer skills. Embrace the beautiful sport of soccer in both action and thinking.

Dr. Darren McKnight is currently Technical Director for Integrity Applications, Inc. (IAI) based in

Chantilly, Virginia. He leads teams to develop creative solutions across widely disparate domains. Dr.

McKnight has authored five books including “Soccer is a Thinking Game!” and over 100 technical pa-

pers which he has presented in 15 countries. He has appeared on tens of TV, radio, and newspaper inter-

views including with Discovery Channel, BBC, CBC and Space News.

4216 Annandale Rd,

Annandale, VA 22003

www.annadaleunitedfc.com

SEE YOU ALL ON THE PITCH!!!