San Antonio Soccer Examiner, Chris Hockman sat down with Director of Coaching at the Alamo City Youth Soccer Organization, Lance Noble, to discuss their new USL Super 20 club Alamo SC, who will begin play in May 2012.
CH: With a 20 yearold age limit, how about the lower end, do 15 yearolds have a shot?
LN: 15 yearolds have a shot, we're more than willing to take a look at them but they're going to need to be top class, to make just the expanded roster, but we're not afraid to pick one up if he can play.
CH: Do you think you will get the support from clubs outside of ACYSO?
LN: We sure hope so, we've sent out a lot of emails, we've contacted all of the college coaches in the area, we think we have something unique, so we're hoping that the coaches allow the kids to play, that's going to be important to our success.
CH: What is your hope with college students, given most play PDL?
LN: Freshmen and Sophomores are obviously our target range, we're hoping the local colleges release their players and allow them to come try out, because I think that's going to be the backbone of the team, those players are more experienced.
CH: Why do it now?
LN: I just took this job (ACYSO, Director of Coaching) in July 1st and we decided back in November, the president and I, that this was something we wanted to do and so we bought it immediately and have been preparing slowly. Now we're at our one month (31 days, termed project 31 by ACYSO) to tryouts, we're now putting on a full court press with getting the word out. If you do it any sooner the kids forget but if you do it now, it's fresh in their minds and they can see the date on the calendar, it's good because we have an under 5 to under 20 system.
In 2013 we've already submitted papers to buy the rights to a Women's Super 20 team, so next year we'll have both men and women.
CH: What's the hope beyond that, do you want to go beyond 20?
LN: No. Because we're a youth organization, we will never go beyond Super 20.
CH: Geographically are you looking to draw your players from San Antonio or a broader reach?
LN: We're hoping for a broader reach, however, we want the majority of our team to come from San Antonio, there are a lot of San Antonio kids who are going to come in to tryouts that are at colleges from outside of San Antonio. I think for the most part we want a San Antonio team, we'd love to have an all San Antonio team.
CH: The Super 20 is expanding, how does that impact for you? Presumably it will be even more regional in 2012 than it was before these clubs (including Alamo SC) came in.
LN: I think there are 10 or 20 teams in Texas right now, so I think they're going to split it in to North and South (CH note: which is the set up of the Federation) so if you win the south you get to play the winner of the north.
When Austin happened it hurt us a little bit because we were hoping to get some Austin kids, when Laredo added, we were hoping to get some Laredo kids as well, so now we're focussed on our San Antonio players, we knew very few would come from Austin or Laredo so it's not that big of a loss for us.
CH: Austin and Laredo both have Premier Development League (PDL) teams do you feel that gap could be an issue.
LN: It'll be an advantage, the reason is those teams can take those players who are of (Super 20) age and play in PDL and then come down and play with us, or they can train with them all week and then come down and play with us in Super 20.
CH: How important is your links with colleges?
LN: Very important, again that's where those 19 and 20 yearolds will come from and so we're desparately counting on the support from college programs and we know we'll get them from some and we won't get them from others. The ones we don't get it from, I think, is a bit sad for the kids because they should have the opportunity to play in Super 20 if they want to.
CH: I know a big issue is that a lot of these schools have good linkages with PDL teams, for example Incarnate Word (UIW) has a good relationship with Laredo, do you feel it's going to be harder for you because those relationships are well established?
LN: Not really, I think the younger kids, which is what we're talking about, given PDL is basically a 23s league, so the Juniors and Seniors and players who just graduated go there, I think the local kids will want to stay close to home and of course that's a huge target.
CH: How is the season working, given all the Super 20 changes?
LN: It has expanded a lot so what they (United Soccer Leagues) are doing is we're going to start at the end of May and be done by the end of July and the first few weeks of August are the regional playoffs and then the national championship, so we'll be done by the second week of August.
CH: Are they looking to set a venue for those events?
LN: That I don't know, it's a good question. It could be a win the opportunity, I imagine the finals will be in Tampa because that's where the league office is, so it could well work like NCAA.
CH: How are you hoping to work with the Scorpions, obviously their schedule just came out.
LN: Yeah we're hoping to work with them, I know Tim (Hankinson, head coach of the Scorpions) and we'll be calling them if they want to take a look at some of our better players and if they have players in our agegroup who aren't playing they can come to us. We're also going to have a link with the Philadelphia Union through (San Antonio local) Ed Sakiewicz (Ed's brother Nick is president of the Philadelphia Union)
CH: What are your hopes?
LN: Obviously it's going to be tough, FC Dallas has three teams which is nuts but they have the resources to do that, Austin and Houston will be difficult as well. We certainly see ourselves as the underdogs but we're just starting out, but we want to be competitive and we think we can.
Our thanks to Lance Noble and ACYSO for their time and for answering our questions.
Alamo SC will be hosting tryouts, free of charge on February 19th 2012 from 9am at Culebra Creek/ASP Park, all players born 1992 or later are welcome to tryout, for all the necessary paperwork please visit the ACYSO website.
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