Dear Families,

I am pleased and excited to introduce myself as the USA Elite Executive Director.  In the past, I have been bombarded by families looking for a new opportunity in their local area.  In response to those questions USA Elite Sports Club was created to offer families a new and different type of youth sports club.  A club that puts the players first and is focused on not only creating a competitive and challenging environment, but also developing young players in a way that will allow them to be prepared for adulthood.  With that in mind ... USA Elite Sports Club was formed!  

USA Elite will provide the youth and families of our communities with a player-centric development approach.  We will focus heavily on the "people" involved in our organization.  To help with this, we will rely heavily on the triangular relationship between the Player, Parent and Coach.  Open communication is the bedrock of our approach.  Having parents and coaches work with one another to make sure no stone is left unturned will help to cement some of the most meaningful relationships that our young players can have.  A coach is a very important person in your child's life and we want to foster that relationship.  

At USA Elite, we aim to have the most qualified coaches on and off the field.  What does this mean?  It means that first and foremost our staff members are good people that that make decisions that ultimately are for the betterment of our players.  Secondly, our staff members are organized and great communicators.  Lastly, USA Elite staff members are extremely knowledgeable about player development and are passionate about their continuing education.  Our staff members understand that we stop growing when we make the decision to stop learning.  

Our general approach to teaching is simple:  soccer is a game of failure in many respects.  You might be like ... wait, what?  What I mean is that we might try to score a goal one hundred times during a game, but only experience actually scoring a goal 1, 2 or 3 times.  So the question becomes, during the game, did our players RESPOND or REACT to the 97 failures that actually occurred.  At USA Elite we focus heavily on teaching that RESPONDING is a much better option as opposed to REACTING.  RESPONDING is much more positive where REACTING comes across with a negative connotation.    

Developing young players that are RESPONDING to situations on the field has a direct correlation for them in the real world.  As a staff, USA Elite believes that positively RESPONDING to adversity in our lives is one of our core principles in regards to how and why we teach.  It is equally important that we do not always give the answer, but, rather ask the question that will allow players to come up with the answers themselves.  So often, youth sports coaches provide instructions to players in such a way that you might think they were playing a video game.  In youth sports we call this "joysticking" and it is not something that USA Elite practices.  The truth is that players learn faster not necessarily by being directly told what to do, but being guided so that they come to the answer themselves via a question based teaching model.  When players are able to answer the questions we ask we refer to this as the "REALIZATION MOMENT".  Specifically, it is that moment when the player realizes that they now understand a skill, idea or competency.  You will notice that by being a member of USA Elite our staff will constantly look for the opportunity to bring about a "REALIZATION MOMENT" when teaching your child.

Lastly, I would like to reiterate from USA Elite that we are focused on developing the whole person.  We believe strongly that you must have a core base of skill before experiencing true success on the field and our developmental approach will create some of the must technically and tactically gifted players around.  Our goals as a club are quite simple 1)  create an environment that fosters individual and team growth 2)  create technically and tactically gifted players and 3)  create relationships that encourage a life long love for sports so much so that our players want to continue playing in Over 30 and Over 40 leagues when they get older. 

We hope that you will join us.

Thank you,

Josh Racette

USA Elite
Executive Director