Free Scholarship Program for Promising Young Soccer Players
IQ Soccer, a Sydney-based private academy, is offering young players an opportunity to realize their dreams through the establishment of a scholarship scheme. The scholarship scheme will reward youth players that are prepared to work hard to improve to a level that is required to make it to the professional ranks.
IQ Soccer’s Director of Coaching, Geoff Stanmore, is aiming to provide an environment conducive to the development of junior and youth players from throughout Sydney and the greater NSW. The IQ Soccer program is a technically based program that is delivered in intensive and quality sessions in order to create smarter faster players.
“At IQ Soccer we don’t want to be just another academy. We want to be able to provide an opportunity for young players to progress to the professional level either domestically in the Hyundai A-League or further abroad in the many professional leagues internationally.”
IQ Soccer was established in 2003 to compliment the development programs of the Soccer NSW club system. Clubs exist in a competition environment and as such they must focus on winning. We work in conjunction with clubs in the development of players. It is like getting extra tutoring for children as you would for school subjects.
So far in three years of operation, IQ Soccer has been relatively successful with three program players having traveled overseas to train with professional clubs. “IQ is providing a pathway for players. We have had three players go abroad so far. One has been invited back full-time to an English Premier League Club Academy, one is currently playing as a professional in the UK and the third has been invited back to trial as a professional at the completion of his HSC.”
The most satisfying aspect about the three boys is that the clubs have all reported back that the boys are all not as good as but technically better than the players that they have. This is why the players have been successful.
The establishment of the IQ Soccer Scholarship Scheme will further assist promising young players to parade their talents after following an intensive development program in either professional clubs here or overseas. The scholarship will provide assistance to players to travel to the clubs for this experience. The scholarship is funded with the support of corporate sponsorship.
Geoff Stanmore is currently in his final year of a Masters of Applied Science in Sports Coaching degree. As part of his studies he has developed a screening process that assists in identifying talented athletes that possess the required attributes of an elite player. In March we will be conducting trials for players born 1990 through to 1996 inclusive. If the screening process fails to identify sufficient players, we will simply not conduct a program for that age group. This program is purely about developing players of the future.
