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OSSC Introduces Odyssey Development Academy In an exciting new development for the 2012 season, Odyssey directors of coaching Claire McLain, Chris McLain and Paul Stinson unveiled a new initiative to offer further training for the top players in the club. By invite only, Odyssey players identified as having the potential to be the best players in the club were offered a chance to participate in a training-only program featuring coaches from outside the club who haven’t the time to coach an OSSC team full-time. For approximately 25 weeks these 28 players will train twice a week in addition to their team training sessions. The 28 players will be split into two groups of 14 by age group, with mixed genders, and each group will train twice a week from 4-5PM at the OSSC indoor facility. The staff recruited to lead this program were intentionally not OSSC staff to begin with, as the need for exposing top level players to as many qualified and knowledgeable soccer minds as possible is important in developing players completely. To this end, Colgate head coaches Erik Ronning and Kathy Brawn will join ODA, Eric Watson, the men’s coach at Utica College (and Women’s U23 National Team staff coach), as will new Syracuse women’s assistants Neel Bhatyacharjee (formerly at Boston College and Georgetown) and Adam Reekie. Other coaches will help from time to time, and they will be announced as arrangements are made. This roster brings the number of colleges working with Odyssey to 4 for 2012, with 7 teams across both genders represented. Chris McLain explains the idea. “We have a great facility, great coaches and offer all sorts of programming for really young kids, goalkeepers and community members like our arrangement with Vernon AYSO, free pickup games open to the public, and so on. But as we wrapped up 2011 this past summer, we started talking about how we do all this, but nothing that goes above and beyond for our best players.” ODA was the answer to that particular question, but the club still had to find time and staff for the project. “I coached three OSSC teams last year, and will have two this year,” McLain says, “there’s no way I could take this on. Plus, there are a lot of coaches around the area we’d like to have work with our kids, but they can’t put the time in to take a team full-time.” The solution was to have a rotating staff of coaches who aren’t coaching a team spend one day per week at the club, cutting down on travel time and the overall committment required. “The other great thing is that we get some coaches who haven’t otherwise been involved before to come in the door, and see what we’re doing. Hopefully, some of them choose to become staff coaches in the future following their ODA experience.” The other issue was time. With OSSC teams training in the facility 5 days per week, from 5pm until 10pm, the only spot realistically available was from 4-5pm weekdays. Assuming that staff coaches would be tied up with league games on the weekends, and the ODA coaches would want to keep weekends open for recruiting trips and their own spring games with their collegiate teams, plus the many rental customers OSSC has on the weekends, the late afternoon time slot appeared to be the choice. “We felt that this program is special enough, and is aimed at the kids who want to be soccer players ahead of all their other extra-curricular activities, that getting to the facility by 4pm would be worth the effort” said McLain. “We want to continue to attract to the club kids who see soccer as their top extra-curricular activity, and this type of program is for soccer-first kids.” Claire McLain points out some of the benefits, saying “We looked at the top youth programs in the world, not just here in Central New York, and as the United States Soccer Federation did over the past couple years in developing their new curriculum, saw that most youth players are training four or five days per week, and playing, at most, one game per week.” The ODA program, she goes on to point out, brings the training regime for the most dedicated OSSC players into line with the international standard. “The goal isn’t so much to compete with other local clubs,” McLain points out, “but rather to compete on a global stage, and to offer world-class training to our players.” The program also brings an additional element of competition to Odyssey, as Paul Stinson describes: “The ODA is offered to the players in the club we feel have the greatest potential, are the most determined to improve, and have a noteable talent level already. It is a reward for not just being good, but being invested in the game.” Once the players are identified, Stinson says, they have to earn the right to return to the ODA. “After this first year, the McLains and I will reevaluate all the players, and the players in the club who weren’t in ODA, and decide who has improved enough, worked hard enough, and generally deserves a chance to be called one of the top 14 players of their gender for the next year.” The added sense of competition, the coaches hope, will bring out another way for the players in the club to measure their progress and motivate them to work that little bit harder to earn the right to be in ODA. The ODA program is slated to begin on January 9th, and run through the end of June. In July, evaluations will be made, and the next crop of ODA players will be invited to participate in 2013. |
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