Spectrum Families &, Friends,

First of all, I would like to thank every one of you for making our Night at the Races Fundraiser, a huge success. It is amazing what can be accomplished when a group of committed people work together towards a common goal. I think that next year we will be holding it at the IX Center. Thanks again for your hard work and dedication!
them the best of luck in whatever decision they make.

I believe with full conviction that we have the best proven method for successful youth soccer development in our area and some of the best coaches that transfer our philosophy of development into a reality. We are not one of the bigger clubs that have a ton of players in all of their age groups to choose from, and we are not a club that recruits and signs the better players from other clubs to make their club teams stronger. We are a club that is dedicated and committed to developing to their individual potentials, each and every soccer player in our program. We develop our own talent! We don’t always make the best decisions for all of the players, all of the time, but not at the sake of hindering anyone’s development and we are flexible enough to always make positive changes to enhance development when deemed necessary. There is no other club that is more organized and informative as Spectrum and there is no other club that provides the social environment that we offer. We have our own training facility along with the perks that are associated with being members of German Central, and our working relationship with the Excalibur Soccer Club offers our players many needed experiences that we alone may not be able to provide at times because of our numbers. As a family, there is no better soccer program atmosphere that you and your child can learn and grow up together in.


Please remember that overall soccer development does not hinge on one specific incident, one specific game, one specific team, or even one specific session or year. Development is an ongoing process that takes years and years, and it is a roller coaster ride that you do need to hold onto your seats for at times. It is not always a positive thing and it is not an up and up and up thing like the stock market. You do have to hold on with white knuckles at times and you do have to have a lot of patience throughout the whole process of development because there are a lot of pitfalls to overcome. There are many lessons that need to be learned for proper development in each of the (fundamental skills, tactical, physical, and psychological) domains of a soccer player, and they are not all learned from only positive experiences. Most of the time, failure is a better teacher than success…….We do learn from our mistakes, and you do need to know what it feels like to lose before you can learn how to win!

Our U17/18 Girls Team is a perfect example of our successful developmental process and actually the only example since they are the first and oldest team to go through our philosophy of development. We started out with a core group of seven or eight players as U8’,s/9’s/10/s and all throughout their younger years we struggled to have enough players to form a team for them and had to add younger weaker players to their roster just so they would have a team to play on. They also always played on the boys teams which greatly helped their development. We had our glory years winning just about every game and tournament we played in and we had our lean years losing just about every game and tournament we played in, and a lot of times getting blown out, but the core group of girls stuck around through thick and thin and stayed committed to the Spectrum. We added players here and there through the years and lost players here and there throughout the years but could never really get much going for them team wise until we combined them with Excalibur as U15’s. I can’t tell you how many big games and tournaments they won and lost in their younger years, or how many ups and downs we went through in those years, but since becoming U15’s I can tell you that they were runners up at Disney in the 3v3 World Championships losing in the final. They have been back to back National Indoor Champions, winning in Michigan two years ago and in St, Louis this past winter, and they were runners up in the Lodi Tournament this past weekend losing 1-0 to OP in a final that we dominated but couldn’t take advantage of our many chances to score.

Besides the huge successes they are now having as a team in these latter years, the more important fact is that all of these girls are making a big impact on their high school teams. All of these girls made their varsity teams as freshmen and ninety five percent of them were starters. Some of these girls have already won a State Championship and some have already attained All Greater Cleveland Honors for their respective high schools. College will be the next step and test for these girls that I am very proud of, but one point I am trying to make is that you cannot gauge a team’s or player’s latter day successes based on their performances during their early years of development because in the younger years the emphasis is on fundamentals (not winning) and many things do change as the years go on by. The other point I am trying to make is that for the low number of players that we do have at Spectrum and the varying talent levels throughout all of our age groups, we do develop a very high percentage of quality soccer players and will continue to do so. I do want to also mention our U15 Boys and Girls who also made big impacts this past fall on their respective high school teams as freshmen. Both of our U15 Girls started on their varsity teams, one at Normandy and one at Holy Name. On the boys side we had freshmen varsity starters at Normandy and Padua, with the rest of the players playing on freshman and/or JV teams at St. Ignatius, CVCA, North Royalton, Brecksville, and Midpark which are some of the bigger soccer powers in our area. As I have said, small numbers but big percentages.

In general, I believe that some of the most important ingredients for overall development, missing in the nowadays soccer world, are full hearted allegiance, commitment, dedication, conviction and loyalty. These are not only important qualities necessary for soccer development, but these are life long qualities that need to be instilled in our children in order for them to have strong characters as adults. We are very blessed (don’t forget Easter is Sunday) at Spectrum because we do have a great group of parents and children involved in our program who do share in these qualities and that is one thing that does make our program better than the rest.