Club Alliances Dave Guthrie, Executive Director Indiana Soccer Association AGM workshop

The soccer landscape in Indiana and the US has changed significantly over the past several decades. The amount of change is substantial and the speed of change continues to increase. Community-based soccer clubs a few years ago were able to offer an appropriate level of play for nearly all of their players; both the recreational player as well as the travel player. Current recreational programing has improved over the past several years and is quite attractive. Most recreational players are provided a good fit within their community-based club.

The travel programing offered by clubs has improved substantially. However, travel programing is more challenging due to the more diverse needs of travel players. The disparity among travel player’s wants, needs, expectations, skill mastery, and socio economic condition, make it very difficult for the community-based club to appropriately and efficiently assemble homogeneous playing groups out of these very non-homogeneous players. There are a number of contributing factors that produce this disparity i.e. more professional training methods, improved training environments, some players electing to focus on soccer while others elect to play multiple sports. Regardless of the reasons for this disparity, the disparity elevates the challenge for coaches, teams, and clubs to provide a meaningful, homogeneous, training and playing environment for this diverse set of players.

Exhibit A [depicts the disparity exhibited among all players approximately 25 years ago] * note – green represents no soccer skills and limited disparity in program demand while dark red represents a varying set of demands and a high level of skill mastery. The more proficient travel players of 25 years ago and their level of diversity are represented by light orange. Exhibit A

Exhibit B [depicts the wide disparity exhibited among today’s players] *note – today’s players have access to more educated and proficient coaching, better training environments; they train more months of the year, play more games, have the opportunity to play against stronger competition, etc. It should also be noted in Exhibit B that the entry level player resembles exhibit A’s entry level player. However, the continuum of player is >3x wider and the more proficient player demonstrates a high level of skills mastery Exhibit B Entry level More Proficient Player

NOTE: Alliance Declaration deadline date is May 1 of each year

Thank you for your attention PLEASE Explore the Possibilities Dave Guthrie, Executive Director Indiana Soccer Association AGM workshop