From the Desk of the Georgia State DOC

ODP Integration Project

While attending the US Youth Soccer annual workshop in conjunction with the NSCAA convention in Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to update all of the State DOC's on our ODP Integration Project.

As the Region III boys ODP Technical Director, I was asked to provide a progress report on the ODP Integration Project that we launched in 2013. The objective of the project is to improve the player development component of the ODP (ODP has two components: Player Identification and Player Development). A new training methodology was created to achieve our objective.

The new methodology involves all 55 state associations and 4 Regions training to play the same formation and playing style of possession soccer playing out of the back in a 4-3-3 formation in accordance with the recommendations of US Soccer. To accomplish this, we created a new ODP Coaching Manual and ODP Player Manual and a set of training principles that optimize the effectiveness of ODP. The manuals include the 10 principles of possession soccer that form the guidelines for players and coaches. These 10 principles are used to teach our ODP players the correct behavior and decision making in the game.

We are now in year two of the project and the level of play in ODP has improved noticeably throughout the country. This is an exciting project that impacts 20,000 boys and girls and hundreds of coaches and is of a magnitude never tried before in our country.