Our Center of Excellence program offers a structured program of training and competition, and is part of our commitment to providing the best possible opportunities for the soccer community we serve. We run the program on a year round basis, with different classes dove-tailing into other soccer league commitments. This supplement to the schedule of the commited soccer players ensures continual progression and development for all our players, enabling them to reach their full potential, guided by staff of the highest quality.
The SONESOCCER Center of Excellence staff includes former Manchester United youth coach and Sonesoccer President Andy Sones, with other familiar faces including Adrian Borrows (Director of Boys Academy Programs), Mark Woodward, Rob Alman, Graham Hickson, Denise Gosling and Doug Thompson. Because our trainers are permanent, we can guarantee continuity from year to year, enabling our players to develop the personal relationships that are key soccer success All coaches have worked in Center of Excellence programs in England as well as the United States, and bring their experience to create he ideal environment for players looking to take their game to the next level. Our Center of Excellence program incorporates technical, tactical and physical and psychological ideas from the finest youth development programs across the world, delivered through high quality coaching for the perfect training package.
The specific training elements covered include::
- Individual technical development
- Decision-making
- Physical Preparation
- Evaluation
Individual Technical Development incorporates a focus on individual skills and first touch. Much of our Winter Center of Excellence emphasis draws from the Dutch model of “Total Football”, which emphasizes the development of every player as a whole, rather than simply developing functional and positional pieces in a team jigsaw. The SONESOCCER philosophy of “Development through Understanding” increases the level at which each player understands the game, which involves the full range of individual skills, and experimenting with positions in scrimmage games. While enhancing the ability of our players to pass, dribble, turn, control, head and shoot, we constantly encourage players to understand their own performances and make their own decisions in the game, through knowledge gained in training.
Decision-Making on the field is a huge part of playing soccer at a good level, and the speed at which those decisions can be made will be the ultimate differentiation between the average and good player, and again between the good and excellent player. We work towards helping players make those decisions more quickly and more consistently, enabling them to perform better at the higher levels, where time is more limited, and the consequences of bad decisions are more damaging.
Our Physical Preparation provides all-round physical development with a season-specific edge. The winter brings players to us either mid-season or straight from a High School season, so, our focus is on developing sharpness – acceleration, reaction time, pace and power. We achieve this by incorporating a lot of Speed Agility work, often introducing players to new equipment such as speed hurdles, ladders, rings and parachutes. All this is delivered in a context of soccer, and coupled to specific practical situations, to release quicker, stronger and more agile players into the spring season.
The Evaluation stage involves players providing a self-evaluation of their progress through the program, and analyzing their performance of skills and in games. Rather than a broad “played well” or “played badly”, we teach players to understand what makes a performance good or bad, to give them specific, personal and collective goals in games, and feedback to help them achieve those goals. While it is often recognized (and easily said) that form comes and goes, we try to help players (of all ages) actually understand how to evaluate and assess component parts of a performance to improve their play.
We believe that our program offers the most complete training package available, a view supported by the many the players who come back year after year. You’ve tried the rest, it’s time to work with the best – the SONESOCCER Center of Excellence at Randolph Indoor Sports Pavilion.
