The US Way is essentially our shared development philosophy that we want to be
able to permeate
across the entire landscape of how we develop players, staff, and coaches based
on their
individual needs, not based on any other factor besides the individual person,
their environments,
their lived experiences, and try to culminate a real holistic experience around
developing
that person to become the best that they can possibly be.
The US Way is a pleasant approach, is our framework for development of the
individual
player. We believe at US Soccer that everything starts with the individual
player being at
the centre of all we do.
So we want parents to be able to utilise us to know what the best paths and the
best
systems are for their kids. We want coaches to be able to use the ages and
stages to really
provide a great framework in coaching methodology for their players, and we
want clubs to be
able to use it so we have a shared philosophy across how we're developing our
players,
not just in the international level but from the club level as well. So we
share a theme,
a national narrative, and a national feeling going all across the landscape.
I think for a coach that we're using this resource is really looking at who is
the player
that's in front of them. What does that individual person need? So what is
their age, the stage
of their development? Each player, regardless of their chronological age, will
be at different
stages. So how do we meet the player where they're at and achieve his or her
individual
needs?
Every day we have lots of boys and girls going to a training session, going to
a club
to be the best versions of themselves, and they go with lots of aspiration to
the training
field and with the US way we just want to provide the free work for the coaches
to support
the coach in organizing a learning environment for all of these boys and girls.
As a volunteer coach or as a parent if you want to start the coach, we try to
provide
some very simple concepts, very easy to implement that will allow you to be
successful and meet
the needs of the player.
The purpose of the U.S. Way
U.S. Soccer's Oguchi Onyewu, Tracey Kevins, and Barry Pauwels explain U.S. Soccer's player development philosophy and how coaches can use it.