The traditional soccer community sees youth soccer immediately and intuitively. It’s in their DNA. Coaches brought up in the universe of outcomes; the world where winning is prized above most everything, see what is currently here and arrange it. They see what the game is not what it means. When you see what the game is, it’s depressing. Who likes to think of a wonderful, excited child as a pawn in an adult scheme for ego gratification? Most coaches played the ugly game, not the beautiful one. Life is like that! There were hundreds of bricklayers involved in the construction of the Sistine Chapel but only one Michelangelo. How can it be different? Most coaches see the game in terms of immediate appearance. They see the game at a surface level but don’t really think about it-don’t really see what amazing potential it has to shape character.

When I started coaching 36 years ago this difference; i.e. the difference between the traditional approach and my outlook, seemed relatively minor. But then it grew…and grew…and grew until I had to investigate and change; I had to try something that seemed to make more sense. Some things you miss because they are so tiny you look right past them. However, some things you don’t see because they’re so gigantic. I and other coaches were both looking at the same things, seeing the same things, talking about the same things, thinking about the same things except we began to look, see, talk and think from a different viewpoint so that now we see things from a completely different paradigm.

Most traditional coaches really do care about the kids. It’s just that in traditional coaching there’s too much hunter, warrior, gatherer behavior that has seeped deep into the sports culture. This Gladiator, death or glory mode leads otherwise good people to do damaging things to children. To someone in this mode it’s awfully annoying to hear about this “brave, creative leadership stuff” all the time. This is all futuristic physiology and psychology, it isn’t really here, it’s a million miles away from winning the next game. To the traditional coach here and now is what it’s all about. He’s in a different dimension that stems from bringing down the Wooly Mammoth. The hunt has to result in an immediate kill or it’s failed. This is the whole national outlook on things. The weak are sacrificed for the strong. Those kids who can’t help the team win quickly are sacrificed for those who can regardless of long-term potential and consequences.

It’s becoming apparent that the Legends approach is a new dimension; that it isn’t a fad that’s going away next year or the year after. It’s here to stay because it’s a very serious and important way of looking at things that is incompatible with our “Naked Ape’ traditional coaching methods, but vastly better for all children. In the prism of tradition the Legends way looks incompatible with our sports culture but it’s actually the first wave of a more intelligent future that will make sport more enjoyable and a greater positive part of the human experience.

What we are experiencing is a conflict of visions of reality. Society as you view it in the current moment is reality, regardless of what the scientists say it might be. However, the world is changed by progress. Scientific and philosophical discoveries become reality and traditional coaches are going to have to do more than ignore it if they are going to be able to succeed in the new reality. They will discover this as more and more of their players burn out.

This is why traditional coaches get upset when the Legends method challenges their comfortable conformity. The Legends approach blows an all too obvious hole right through their limited vision and rote learning efforts. But they won’t face up to it because it threatens their whole in bred, win now, immediate gratification life style.

What you have here are two realities; one of historical behavior and one of long-term rationale. They don’t match and they don’t fit and they don’t have much of anything to do with one another. The Legends method focuses on the process; the traditional on the outcome; the Legends on brave, creative leadership; the traditional on giving away the ball and responsibility quickly. I could go on. You might say we have a little problem here.

Andy

why cant ur awesome approach keep a coach for girz 95/96? what's this, third or 4th change in as many years?

AB claims to have a great method, but it dont seem like you can pick coaches well

2020 -
Easy answer, you didn't read his last post. Andy is the ONLY Michelangelo and every other coach is a Cro Magnon wooly mammoth hunter.
You can only try to train a Cro Magnon so long and then you have to look for another ...

Resume for the new coach:

Scott Vermillion
(913) 909-3051 (913) 909-3051
svermillion76@sbcglobal.net

Scott grew up in Olathe, Kansas. Played for Olathe Soccer Club during his youth career and played for Olathe East High School. Named Gatorade Player of the Year and Male Athlete of the Year for the state of Kansas. He also holds the Single Season Scoring record for both Olathe East and Olathe South.

Scott played for the U17 National Team which was the first US team ever to win the CONCACAF Qualifying Tournament in 1992. In 1993, he played in the U17 Youth World Cup in Japan where they finished seventh. Scott played for the former U.S. national team coach Bruce Arena in a very successful Virginia University Dynasty from 1995-1997. During his tenure at UVA, was ACC Tournament Champions both in 1995 and 1997. Played in two NCAA Final Four's. Earned first team honors All-ACC in 1996 and 1997. Scott was named NSCAA All-American in 1997. Also in 1997, Scott was named to both the NCAA Tournament Team and the ACC Tournament Team.

Scott played for the U20 National Team. He played with the Olympic Team in 1996. In 1997, he played in Italy with the World University Team.

Scott played with the Men's National Team in 1998 and then joined the Wizards in the MLS. He was one of the first 10 players selected to play and train with Project 40 the MLS feeder program. As part of the Project 40 program, he trained with Sunderland in England for four months. Was a highly-touted defender in the MLS, the Kansas native started 22 games in each of his first two seasons in the league. Scott was then traded to the Colorado Rapids in 1999 and played two years in Denver. In 2001, Scott was traded to DC United where his MLS career was ended prematurely by an injury.

Resume of the outgoing coach:

Jamie Leeper
(913) 851-9898 (913) 851-9898 x35
(913) 563-5191 (913) 563-5191
jamie@soccerexcellencekc.com

Jamie Leeper is originally from Loughborough in Central England. He was the 1st team soccer captain for his high school and was an ever present on the Leicestershire county soccer team during his junior and senior years. He spent 3 years at the University of Leeds and was the captain of the 2nd XI who won back to back league championships (2001-2003). Upon graduating Jamie played semi-professionally for Loughborough Dynamo FC before first visiting the USA as a Challenger Sports coach in the summer of 2004. Jamie gained many accolades in his second summer and in August 2005 was rewarded for his efforts with the head coaching position at Gallup Catholic School, NM. Jamie spent 3 years in New Mexico and in this time he gained his teaching license and a Masters degree in secondary education from WNMU.

During the 08/09 school year Jamie taught Physical Science at Shawnee Mission Northwest, where he was also the boys’ JV coach and girls’ C team coach. Jamie coaches two of the 02/03 Junior Legends teams and is also the coach of the girls’ 95/96 World Cup team, girls 94/95 Red team, and Girls 93/94 black team. He holds a UEFA C license, and a USSF D license.

Jamie works full time in the HappyFeet Legends’ office and is a tournament director as well as being involved with sales and marketing of the HappyFeet program at the local and national level. He also assists in the process of training franchisees.

Jamie now lives in Lenexa with his two dogs and a cat. Jamie loves to travel and spent 6 weeks in the summer of 2008 traveling through Central Europe. Jamie is an avid Tottenham Hotspur fan, with Jermaine Defoe being his favorite player. Jamie loves to see kids be creative and develop new skills, and enjoys being able to help change children’s lives through the game of soccer.

Two great resumes. IMO their qualifications, background and philosophy make them the best developmental option in the age group for aspiring young females.

Andy

I had to post this because it sounds like the old Legends versus the rest argument that we know and love so well! You’ll see that the “Barney” in this argument sees things from the opposite point of view.

Andy

PS: Here’s the link if you’d like to see all the opinions:
Guardian page about Barca

By Barney Ronay
The Guardian, Saturday 22 May 2010

Why are Barcelona so annoying?

Mainly it is the manner in which they paint themselves as 'més que un club'. Yeovil Town are more than a club. Get over it

This week two of the most bizarrely bloodless major transfers you could hope to see were decisively entrained. Amid scenes of absolutely no acrimony whatsoever, David Villa (already gone) and Cesc Fábregas (off soon) both pledged themselves to Barcelona, leaving Valencia and Arsenal looking a little bit like a man whose girlfriend has just been pinched by some entirely charming and handsome beret-sporting poseur who also manages to do a really good job of assuring them they should be feeling terribly flattered by all the attention. Barcelona are good at this. The most widely fawned-over of all clubs, theirs is a peculiar kind of velvet-glove imperialism. It is time someone took a stand on this. Mainly by breaking the omertà and pointing out that Barcelona are by some distance the world's most annoying football club.
Mainly it's to do with that sense of swooning self-love; not so much the idea but the manner in which they paint themselves as "més que un club". The fact is all football clubs are "more than a club". Yeovil Town are more than a club. Get over it.

Even more annoying, but related, is Barcelona's unshakeable conviction that they are intrinsically good. We are the ewoks here, they shriek. We are the Dukes of Hazard. Never mind that as a regional powerhouse they have such economic might they can even self righteously abjure shirt sponsorship (the Bono-style Unicef endorsement is also annoying. You keep thinking: just get Carlsberg on the phone and buy a proper centre-forward). No other football club anywhere insists with such needy, weepy fervour that you love it. This is cloying and I refuse to swoon.

Then there is Barcelona's cultural imperialism, a more subtle form of consumer home invasion than a shirt flogging friendly in China, whereby Barcelona instead style themselves as an elite product: the kind of brand adopted by people who feel they are above adopting brands. Barcelona are an iPod team, a vintage Japanese denim team; something undeniably good but also somehow tarnished by an accumulation of gloating approval. Naturally, with this in mind, it is easy to feel irritated by the manager Pep Guardiola, who is clearly bright and even nice but spoils this by looking like a swanky graphic designer, someone who might own a coffee table made out of barbed wire.

Above all I dislike their non contact tippy-tappy style of play, often deemed, like Barcelona themselves, to be intrinsically "good". I have a theory the popularity of this style owes a lot to the fact that it looks good on TV: a televisual style, suited to the armchair rhythms of possession-foul-replay-pundit-blather. It is so obviously and demonstrably high end. Oh look – a backheel! A dinky one-two! This is good football even if you don't really know that much about football, accessibly high spec like a £40 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
But perhaps the most annoying thing is that so many players now feel bound to emote that it is "their dream" to play for them. It makes you wonder why Barcelona don't just franchise themselves in every country, a global Barcelona brand that might finally turn the world an annihilating shade of Barcelona; and where they can all play each other endlessly, untouchably good and pure. While the rest of us, Fábregas-less, are left to get on with our everyday bad football with its scruffiness and spikiness and enduring imperfections.

A response from the same page by “Bobeto”

You've been saving that one for a while haven't you Barney? It's a fairly subjective argument, so allow me to be fairly subjective in my response.

I'll preface this by saying that while I admire Barca, I'm not a die-hard fan. So while I disagree almost entirely with what you're saying, I'm not doing so from partisan one-eyedness. That's not a word is it? Basically I'm not writing this through the peculiar specs of Jimmy Burns

"Barcelona instead style themselves as an elite product: the kind of brand adopted by people who feel they are above adopting brands. Barcelona are an iPod team, a vintage Japanese denim team; something undeniably good but also somehow tarnished by an accumulation of gloating approval"

Just because everyone else likes them doesn't mean you shouldn't. I admit here that saying this makes me a something of a hypocrite: there are players I really like like Sinisa Mihajlovic almost entirely because everyone else was going on about how he was the devil incarnate and forgetting that he was one of the best players in the world. I love Rensenbrink, despite being born a half a decade after he stopped playing, purely because he isn't Cruyff.
However in both instances this is me going against popular opinion in a positive way - they don't like him/he is ignored, so I will champion both. You're going against popular opinion in a negative way: everyone goes on about how great x is so I'll go against them.

When I watch sport I find myself generally supporting the underdog. Except on the few occasions where I believe that the favourite is doing something so amazing that I want the history books to reflect how incredible I believe they are. Sometimes I get my wish (I always support Federer and have been rewarded), sometimes I don't (Greece beat the Czechs, Liverpool beat Milan - two defeats that left me heartbroken because the underdog story paled into insignificance compared to the beauty of what the favourites were doing).

With Barca, I want them to be the first team to win back to back Champions League titles, because they are an astonishing team with brilliant players who play football that is beautiful beyond any football I've seen before. Speaking of which...
"Above all I dislike their non?contact tippy-tappy style of play, often deemed, like Barcelona themselves, to be intrinsically "good". I have a theory the popularity of this style owes a lot to the fact that it looks good on TV: a televisual style, suited to the armchair rhythms of possession-foul-replay-pundit-blather"

Isn't it often repeated that English style 100mph football is the best suited to TV hence the massive TV ratings around the World? Barca's style looks good on TV because it is aesthetically pleasing generally, regardless of where you watch them from, be it the Camp Nou or Shanghai.

I have a theory too - that this is a very English position to take. The single most annoying comment from the fallout of the Barca Inter 1-0 that I saw on these pages was about how "arrogant" Barca were in still passing the ball about the area with a minute to go. Because launching it into the box - which had been so successful up until then hadn't it? - is somehow the honourable, decent thing to do... There is an animosity to Barca here that I don't see anywhere else - although I'd happily be corrected on this point.

But nonetheless the fact that Barca's style is so alien to English football culture surely contributes to the animosity accorded to them. And while I accept that there is no 'right' way to play, surely the fact that Barca as a team have a philosophy that isn't limited to spending money (although obviously economics comes into it), and that that philosophy is an appealing one - youth system, aesthetically appealing football, supporter owned club - is admirable, even if it's not an inherently 'good thing'.

An analogy: I know the World Cup is now a brand. I accept that it's commercialised. I accept that the football in the Champions League and European Championships is of a higher standard. But it's still the World Cup, the biggest competition of any kind - only the Olympics and Nobel prizes are in the same post code as to what the World Cup means. So despite it's faults it still leaves me in awe of what it means, and I get more excited about the World Cup than anything else.

I know that Barca are commercialised. I know the Unicef thing is as much a look-down-the-nose sneer as much as a philanthropic gesture. I know Clive Tyldsley goes on about them almost as much as that night in their stadium. I know that they got knocked out by an Inter team that was better over the two legs. I know that people go on about how great they are even though they know sod all about football. But they're still the best team in the World. They still play football better than any team I've seen in my lifetime. They play football in a way I doubt I'll ever see again.

They should be celebrated.

Traditional coaches see soccer as tactics and players as pieces in a bigger game with the end result as the prize. Legends coaches see soccer in the moment, as a vital step in a much more important game, with character for life as the positive consequence. When teaching children it is important to ignore basic human concerns, e.g. winning, in favor of the divine, e.g. giving. Ordinary people rebuke those who search for divine truth in life. This is because they lack appreciation for the path to true happiness and fulfillment. Much as the life of the lottery winner is usually destroyed by the temptations that come with the unearned and undeserved windfall, the potential of the young soccer player will be curtailed by an outcome based tactical approach to any type of practice and game play. Inflexible tactical perspectives can only rob the young person of the creative self-determination that grows from brave and adventurous trial and error. Teamwork is vitally important in life. However, it mustn’t come at the cost of individual development. Too often individual development is sacrificed when the focus is on the outcome, (winning), instead of the process, (brave, creative leadership development).

Even children who focus on the process are initially able to just barely raise their heads and look out on reality. They see some things and miss others because they have to deal with their own challenges. Because the process is more than enough to deal with, they rise and fall at varying times but eventually break through to a higher understanding.

Other children, while straining to win, lose their focus on the process and fail to maximize their own potential. These children gradually discover they are unable to rise much further. Because they are uninitiated and less talented they lack the basis of ability that is only gained from a process focus. Consequently they will struggle to achieve a fulfilled reality. Because their childhood experience is outcome based, where they go after is then dependent on their own opinions and needs, rather than the truth. Any child that truly applies themselves to the process of mastering one true and difficult thing is gifted with other opportunities where more can be achieved. They will have seen the most so will have the platform and capacity for greater vision.

Children who have been judged by outcomes, with all of the fear, guilt, shame and blame outcome based teaching espouses, will have seen and absorbed the least of what truly determines success. It is those adults who focus only on outcomes who tend to be the sophists and tyrants.

Children that have been educated in effective process through the amazing sport of soccer, (coached the Legends way), will be capable of a variety of meaningful and fulfilling human incarnations during their lifetime. This is because they have seen the most and always keep the memory of process based learning as close as possible. Depending on how much they have conquered the process of brave, creative soccer leadership, they will transfer their pioneering sporting character into unique responsive ways to influence the family, philosophy, politics, medicine, business, the arts etc. The positive legacy for society can only be positive and enduring.

Ordinary people may rebuke them for this for they are unaware that the process based student is a lover of wisdom. The "lover of wisdom" with a brave, creative leader’s character, will ultimately possess the desire to give, to do the right things. This is the best sort of leader.

Andy

PLEASE JOIN OUR REC CLUB!

Absolutely blows my mind that intelligent peolple in this town still continue to get sucked into the Legends Club. Some things to think about... Andy Barney, owner of Legends Club, does not even have his own kids in the Legends. Really? If the philospohy and the Club is soooo great and the right way, then why don't your own girls play in the club? That is messed up!! His coaches nor his club are good enough for his own kids....so they play for other clubs. Can you say HYPOCRITE!!!

His employees.. or some of them, don't even have their kids in the Legends Club. They play for other clubs such as KCFC.
Guess they don't believe in the Legends coaches or Barney either. Hmmmm.....?

Barney evades his obligation of taxes. Not only in Legends, but Happy Feet, SuperClubs, and Soccer Excellence.
Anyone wonder why the tournament team entries went up so high last year for the tournaments that Legends and SuperClubs hosts? So they could include the sales tax and then some. Did they ever pay it???? NO!!!! Barney pocketed all of it and still is! Which means he is intentionally committing tax fraud! I can't wait for the day when he gets caught by all the states he has sold in!!!! Just think of all those back taxes he is going to have to pay!!

For anyone travelling on the international tours... buy your own flights. Do your homework... the price is jacked up!! On purpose too. You can get the same flight cheaper on your own... anywhere from 250-300 cheaper!

Save your money and quit giving it to Barney! There are way better clubs out there.