From the Desk of the Georgia State DOC

Coaching Education Gets a Facelift

US Soccer is restructuring the coaching education pathway from the Grassroots to the elite levels and will launch these significant changes in January 2018.

The old pathway consisted of the F, E, D, C, B, and A courses.  In the new structure, the E course disappears and is replaced by a series of modules tentatively called the Grass Roots Modules which will be age/formation specific.  The modules will cover 4 age/formation levels:  the 4v4, 7v7, 9v9, and 11v11 formations.  In each formation, there will be an online module and an in-person module.

The online modules will be 1-2 hours long and the in-person modules will be 4 hours long.  Coaches who want to take the D course will need to meet the following pre-requisite:  They will have to take at least one grassroots online module and at least two in-person modules, one of which must be the 11v11 module.   Of course, coaches who already have the E license will be eligible for the D course and will not have to go through the grassroots modules.

The objectives of the new structure are to make coaching education more accessible and user-friendly, to provide more age-specific information, and to standardize the pathway and add consistency.

The US Soccer coaching department has also added to the pathway the following changes:  The A license has been redesigned into two parallel licenses:  the A Youth Course and the A Senior Course.  As the names suggest, those who work at the youth level must take the A Youth License and those who work at the adult, professional or Collegiate levels can take the A Senior license.

And above all these levels, at the apex of the coaching pyramid stands the Pro License course, which is designed for coaches of professional teams such as the MLS and for National Team coaches.

For more information on the new structure, please contact the Georgia Soccer Coaching Administrator, Tara Daniel at tdaniel@georgiasoccer.org or the Director of Coaching, Jacob Daniel at jdaniel@georgiasoccer.org.