I began coaching the Woodbury Inferno (currently a U15 team now in 2007) in January of 2002.  The team was then called the Woodbury Blaze, and I opted to change the name (much to the chagrin of the girls) the following year to help inspire fear and awe in our opposition. 

The club had offered to find a team for me to coach the year before, but as that was my first year with the club, I wanted to get my feet wet prior to committing to take on a team on top of my other club duties. The board then came to me again in November of 2001 with the same offer to get me a team, and I agreed to the idea. 

There were two teams at that particular time in the club without a coach in place; a U12 boys team and a U10 girls team.  I chose the girls team as I had worked with a number of those girls the previous summer and fall in skills clinics.  I had also been gravitating to the girls side of things within the Thunder camps, and within the community clubs that I had begun to work with in the late 1990s (Eagan, Lakeville, Sibley, and White Bear Lake).

Due to some weird numbers at the age group and the fact that MYSA was transitioning to small-sided games at the U9 and U10 levels, it was decided that we would take 17 of the U10 players and play them up to the U11 group.  U11 was still 11v11 at that time and the ability to roster 17 and have a group play up instead of turning away a few kids because of the "off" numbers was appealing to everyone.  I knew that most of the other clubs didn't have extremely knowledgeable coaches at these younger age groups and my involvement with these girls should give them a little edge in order to help them compete one age group up.

We played up to the U11 Classic 2 age group (this was the middle competitive level at that time as the U11 age group had C1, C2, and C3) that summer.  It was a very successful season that saw us win the State Tournament at the C2 level.  Based on this success, the idea was to play the girls up to the U12 C1 (top level) age group the following year.  I knew that we needed to put the work in in order to be able to compete at the top level of the older age group, thus my first push towards year-round training came that following winter (2002/2003). 

Up until that time Woodbury had offered an indoor competitive league for all interested players in the Jan/Feb months.  Players who signed up for this league were placed on teams (usually different teams than their main summer teams), trained once per week, and played a league game on the weekends.  Tryouts were in the fall and tryout results were posted in October, so the team that played in the summer usually stayed together for the fall season. 

After tryouts results were posted for the next year's (2002/2003) team, I got the group together and laid out my plan for year-round involvement.  Needless to say, there were some trepidation on the part of many of the parents as they had been accustomed to taking November and December completely off from soccer, with some taking January and February off as well.  However, the parents group had seen the development the girls had made under me the last year and put their trust in what I thought was best for the girls.

Now we were not the first team to tackle true year-round involvement.  By "true" I mean structured, year-round training in a team environment.  There were many older, high level teams in Minnesota that would begin winter training immediately upon the conclusion of the MN High School season in mid-November.  However, I believe we were the first younger team to train consistently throughout the year multiple times per week. 

The benefits to this year-round involvement were concrete.  I attribute much of the girls success,  back then and yet still today, to the fact that they were able to touch a ball on a consistent basis in the Minnesota winter months during their Golden Age of Learning.  Not to mention that the team had begun to attract more and more talented players to our ranks, and that they team was under the guidance of a relatively knowledgeable coach.  Put all this together and some real development can occur.  And it did.  See Keys To Accelerated Player Development

The success of this team opened the door for some people to begin to criticize me.  Accusations of favoritism towards the Board's Team (Coaching Director coaching, multiple Board member's kids on the team)  began to fly, and the Woodbury Soccer Board was eventually forced to address it.  The SoWashCo Alliance and then the Woodbury Soccer Academy both had roots due to this criticism as I looked to expand the model I had created with the Inferno to other teams.  In current form, this model is Bangu Tsunami Soccer Academy that is beginning to thrive today.