SSFC Mini Thunder/ValkYrie Youth academy!

Our Fall 2024 Academy was a wonderful success! More information will be released in early 2025 about our Spring 2025 Youth Academy!

Our Mini-Thunder/Valkyrie Youth Academy's aim is to provide an experience and an environment that promotes ongoing participation in soccer and a lifelong love for the game in our local area. Children just want to have fun playing soccer and make new friends. They should be free to acquire skills naturally while staying active and healthy, and at the same time develop important life and social skills. Children should be able to play as much soccer as they want, without the imposition of a competitive environment. Modern research is showing that skills and decision making are naturally acquired best through playing the game and/or through game-like activities.  This academy has historically prepared younger kids for our younger SSFC competition teams, and MANY kids have already transitioned from this academy directly into those youth teams. 

Our staff coaches, led by Coach Nick Christensen,  will work on the player's soccer technique — which revolves around core skills such as controlling the ball, dribbling, shooting, fakes, turns, and passing. These skills will improve through: getting lots of touches on the ball, fun game-like activities that motivate players to use different techniques, opportunities to make quick decisions about the best technique to use in a given situation, and plenty of positive feedback. Your child will also play many small-sided 4 vs 4 games to help reinforce what they've learned from Coach Nick. Your child will also get a Saratoga Springs FC training T-shirt to wear to his/her sessions. 

Have your mini Thunder/Valkyrie player wear his/her training shirt (they will receive this on their first night of the clinic), and appropriate athletic attire including soccer cleats and shin guards. Have them also bring water. 

Any child born in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 are eligible to participate in the sessions. If your child is rostered in a non-SSFC competitive soccer club he/she isn't eligible to participate in this academy due to UYSA regulations. If your child was born in 2015 or before, he/she may be eligible to enroll in "Technical training" , click on that option to the left for more information.