The Academy tryout season is here. Below are a few resources we thought might come in handy.
Alexandria’s Academy tryouts kick off next week with the U9 (2011 birth year) age groups. The U17+ girls’ sessions will take place the following week, and all other age groups will try out the week after Memorial Day.
Last year we wrote about tryouts from the club perspective and explained why we hold our tryouts later than everyone else in the Northern Virginia area. (A helpful and applicable read!).
Before diving into tryouts and information about the upcoming season we have to give a shoutout to our THREE teams headed to the Final Four round of State Cup—2007, 2006 and 2005 boys. Many of the players on these teams have been together for years and we love seeing them find success together. The 2006 and 2005 girls advanced to the Elite Eight and both lost in close, hard fought games.
As we look to the coming season our Technical Team has been hard at work planning and adjusting the training curriculum. In the coming months we’ll be rolling out some exciting updates to our widely recognized positional possession based style of play.
We’re very excited about the coaching staff for the upcoming season and we recently rolled out the coaching teams for each age group. We also introduced the goalkeeper coaching slate and are thrilled to have these four talented and knowledgeable keeper coaches back again for the coming year. We are committed to providing our goalkeepers with age appropriate keeper training each week of the season.
If you’re new to ASA or the Academy program itself here’s a handy guide with FAQ’s and additional information. That guide will share more about our team structure, competition levels, support staff and more.
If your son or daughter would like to attend a practice PRIOR to tryouts to get a feel for the training environment and to meet the coach please email Chris Arnold at [email protected]. This gives us an opportunity to see your player before the official tryout date and provide helpful feedback as to where we see him or her fitting into our program.
Finally — as you may have seen we hired a new Academy Director who will be working closely with Chris Arnold, Deputy Director of Academy and Programs to oversee the program. Jennie has been out at the fields meeting many of you already and is looking forward to introducing lots of new initiatives in the future. We’ve recently hired a Player Pathway Director to focus on college placement and post-high school opportunities. Keep an eye out for updated information on player pathways, volunteer opportunities for students, college recruiting support and more!
