Central Florida To Host Inaugural Event In August
The National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s annual convention is the biggest soccer coaches gathering in the United States. Make that the largest in the world.
It is always in January and the weather is usually cold. This past convention was in Indianapolis, and next year it returns to Philadelphia.
Now there is something between conventions. The NSCAA’s inaugural Summer Symposium is scheduled for Central Florida in August.
Held August 1-3 at the Orlando World Center in Orlando, FL, the Symposium isn’t just a cutdown version of the convention, but rather a new event that offers a broad range of coaching education sessions.
The keynote speaker to open the Symposium will be former U.S. MNT defender Alexis Lalas.
“With our membership growing so rapidly and spreading out to every region and state in the U.S., we began to look at other locations and times during the year when we could provide coaching education programing,” responded Joe Cummings, CEO of the NSCAA, to a question about the Symposium origination.
“Also, we wanted a way to recognize those players and coaches whose playing seasons were in the January to June time frame.”
At the NSCAA convention over 1,000 players and coaches are honored annually at the All-America luncheon and other meal events. Because of the midyear schedule for the convention, many high school award winners were already in their second semester of college when they were recognized for high school honors.
Those who complete their high school seasons in the spring, will now be recognized and honored at the Summer Symposium.
“Since the playing seasons throughout the United States are so different we wanted to use this opportunity to recognize players and coaches who may not be able to make it to the winter convention, as they would be in season.”
When asked whether the NSCAA was trying to reach a level of coaches who had not previously been part of the NSCAA, Cummings responded, “not necessarily, as there will be field sessions for all levels of coaches and we hope that through their attendance at the Summer Symposium that they will become more active members of the NSCAA.”
The NSCAA was founded in 1941 by a group of high school and college coaches in the Northeast USA. For many years, it was prceived as a organization for college coaches, but today the largest member groups are coaches at the high school and youth levels.
NSCAA membership exceeds 22,000, and includes all levels of play. That was the blue print for selecting topics for the Symposum sessions.
“Our selection of presenters crosses all different age groups and levels of play,” said Cummings. “The topics were selected so that any coach, youth, high school or college would find a session to observe.”
The outstanding list of presenters includes University of Florida’s Becky Burleigh, UNC’s Tony DiCicco and Bob Gansler (both former U.S. senior national team coaches), along with former U.S. national team players Angela Hucles and Tony Sanneh, as well as Ian Baker and George Perry from the NSCAA coaching staff.
Cummings said the first-year goal was to attract 200 coaches and another 200 guests.
“We wish to keep it small and very intimate for this first year,” he said, “and grow the Symposium over a number of years.”
When asked how the Symposium will differ from the convention,” Cummings said, “It will be exactly like the convention , just a scaled down version. It is very important to us to maintain all the positive experiences of the winter convention in a summer setting.”