Local Players Get Premier League Experience

After a rigorous but fun training session on July 30, Broadneck Area Youth Sports soccer players left the auxiliary turf field at Broadneck High School smiling and satisfied with what they had just done and learned.

The same went for the next night as well. Players and coaches alike took an opportunity to soak in the two-day experience.

A small thing to a massive international soccer club turned out to be something huge for a sizeable local organization.

Ahead of the July 31 Stateside Cup game between Premier League rivals Wolverhampton Wanders (colloquially called Wolves) and Crystal Palace at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, academy coaches from Wolves worked their connections with stateside partners for an opportunity to generate some goodwill and till new soil in the Annapolis area.

The result was Wolves academy coaches taking an assortment of BAYS teams for two days of training. For such a short duration, the experience left an impact in both directions.

“All the kids have been super friendly, which is a credit to the parents and the community. Really polite, really well coached, they listen and they’re eager to learn. The area is beautiful as well … It’s my first time here,” said Shawn Briscoe, one of Wolves’ academy coaches back in the United Kingdom and the club’s international lead academy coach. “I’ve been working in the states for the past seven or eight years, and every year I come back, it’s gotten bigger and the kids get a lot more talented. I’ve been impressed with some of the kids here, even though we only get a few hours with them. They’re great kids, and the eagerness to learn is huge. I can’t coach that, so if they want to come to learn, that’s a great thing.”

The connection to BAYS came via one of Wolves’ existing partner clubs, Player Sports Academy in Virginia. Some of PSA’s staff knew 2013 Broadneck boys coach Finbarr Clancy from their days in the Republic of Ireland. The conversation started and grew to involve BAYS leadership, including travel coordinator Justin Geddings, soccer commissioner Doug Brown, and Richard Eaton of PSA.

The net result was a successful experience that, if nothing else, gave the local all-volunteer organization a taste of professional trainings and efficiency. Of course, the greater goal is to inspire the next generation of soccer players and fans in a community that has demonstrated it can support the sport on a broader scale.

Whether that’s getting first eyes on a local phenom, building deeper relationships between the clubs, or simply making more people aware of Wolves and other teams beyond the “big six” of Premier League soccer, one thing was obvious: everybody wins in these kinds of experiences.

Especially coaches, who can learn from professionals and apply some principles to their own practices, complete with a bridge-building experience.

“It’s good will for the club. It looks good, and these kids are paying attention to Premier League, and they start looking at Wolves now, and maybe they know some of the star players and start playing attention. That’s only good for football and kids who look at football,” Clancy said. “And these guys are really humble guys. They’re not coming in and thinking they’re better because they’re academy coaches; they want you to help, because they’re your players. They want you to come interact, and if the kids listen to them, they’re more inclined to listen to you as well because you’re working with them. … Everybody wins. Kids win, parents are delighted they get free training from professional coaches, and we get to learn from them as well.”

Briscoe said, “Part of my role is working with the international partners and growing the Wolves brand, doing stuff like this, doing talent camps, developing coaching programs. The coaches get to see how we coach, and we can learn about them and how we can help them as well. It’s much more than a one-off thing for us; we want to help them and keep growing to establish relationships. And this is a great start.”