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There is no mistaking it, Charlotte Soccer Academy is a powerhouse. From the moment you enter onto their website’s landing page to the time when Brad Wylde, the academy’s executive director and one of its founders, explains the doubts that the club faced as it grew: none.
But perhaps that’s the wrong way to put it; as I talk to Wylde over the phone he doesn’t make his club out to be anything that it’s not. For all of the hard work he has put in, and for all of the inherent challenges in managing a massive club, he makes it clear that Charlotte Soccer Academy has had an upward trajectory throughout it’s existence.
“To be honest with you over the years we’ve never…ever lost numbers.”
Photo courtesy of Brad Wylde, Charlotte Soccer Academy.
Wylde has sent me a graph of the growth of CSA’s player pool. It looks like something out of a dream scenario: up and up and up they go, to where they are now. Charlotte Soccer Academy is currently an organization that can provide every level of play, from four-year-olds to U18s, from competitive to recreational.
Providing every level of play is a simple statement that belies the sheer size and success of the club. It means 17 full-time directors of coaching with over 250 years of cumulative experience and another 85 licensed and paid coaches. It means over 200 teams and 2,500 players in its competitive program with an additional 2,500 in its recreational one. It means competing in the US Soccer Development Academy and Elite Clubs National League, the highest levels of youth soccer for boys and girls, respectively. If there is a pinnacle of youth soccer, Charlotte Soccer is at it, but that’s not to say that Wylde’s work is done. It never is.
The ambitions of Wylde and CSA are paired with a simple goal: to make every child feel valued and important, from the dabbler who wants to compete in 10 different sports to the standout destined for the senior 1st teams.
Check out this Golazzo from @CSA_Soccer 's Tyler Fewin over the weekend! pic.twitter.com/NOpkVr3iDj
— Charlotte SA (@CSA_Soccer) October 26, 2015“That’s one of the reasons why I think we’ve become successful, because let’s be honest, I mean the elite players, from a business model, they don’t pay your bills. Your bills are paid by the kids who just wanna come out and play soccer. So you’ve got to make sure that those kids feel important and valued.”
“So our directors of coaching — I require that they can only coach two teams max. So they can actually go around and direct. They have to know ever kid by their first name, their age groups. They need to make sure they go and support the other teams, support the coaches working the teams. Some of our best coaches work one really good team and one average team.”
It’s that kind of commitment that makes Charlotte Soccer Academy seem almost too good to be true. The average youth soccer player knows some level of disillusionment with the sport because of the very things that Wylde and his staff so actively try to counter. If a player feels left out or invisible it can ruin their experience, whether or not they admit it or show it. So can a club really be so good that it has a yearly struggle to find competitive games for its best teams, and still pay attention to the little person?
The answer, Wylde says, “isn’t rocket science.”
“I think the success comes from the kind of people I’ve brought in here that really just go above and beyond their paycheck and ensure that not just the elite player but the player that just wants to play soccer is getting a service and feeling valued.”
“Coaching is 90% personality,” affirms Wylde. “There’s no dictatorship here in the club. I mean, you’re only as good as the people around you.”
A simple philosophy, but sometimes all it takes to be successful is to do the simple thing well.
If where the club is now is impressive, then where Wylde hopes it to be in the future is even more so. Wylde envisions a future of youth soccer in the United States that involves the youth academies of every single MLS team coming together along with 8 other elite clubs in what will be the best youth soccer league in the country. Wylde wants Charlotte Soccer Academy to be one of those 8 other elite clubs, without losing its ability to serve each of its players the way it currently does. It is a goal that provides a challenge consummate with the status of the club.
“When we look at our staff, when we look at our infrastructure, when we look at our facilities, I can compare them with some of the best MLS club academies in the country. I’ve spoken to people who are with...MLS clubs that don’t have the facilities for training that even we have.”
Those facilities include the currently under construction OrthoCarolina Sportsplex. Coming in at $11 million when completed, the complex will feature 5 artificial turf fields, one FIFA certifiable grass field, and parking for 500 all under lights, along with a covered picnic shelter and an onsite building housing physical therapy, a weight room and conditioning center, and a first aid station. It is a facility that shows that Charlotte Soccer Academy can compete with the best clubs in the country.
Wylde also hopes to get an MLS team in Charlotte, a team that would incorporate Charlotte Soccer Academy as it’s development academy. “So a kid can come to CSA at 4 years old and can see a vision of a player performing and going all the way through to play in the professional league. That would be the ultimate goal.”
These endeavors comprise the kind of good-to-great transition that so many entities would love to complete, but very few actually realize. They are nothing short of romantic, both for their difficulty and for what success could bring. Soccer is still growing in the United States. Over the next 50 years, Wylde’s ambitions could very well transform Charlotte Soccer Academy into a club with the kind of domestic reputation that is currently reserved for Arsenal FC in England and FC Barcelona in Spain.
It will take a lot of doing, but this club has had a history of doing what needs to be done. One thing seems certain, Wylde isn’t going to overthink things.
“If you’ve got good facilities and good coaches you’re going to have a good club.”
50 years from now, we could be saying of Charlotte Soccer Academy that its genius really was in its simplicity.
You can check out Charlotte Soccer Academy online here.
Follow me on Twitter: @yetly
