Q&A: Soccer Club at FoCo
The Fort Collins Soccer Club, which is known as ‘Arsenal Colorado’ has been very popular in the last decade. Dave Shaffer, the technical director of this club has been on track to keep children soccer players in their best postition.
What’s your name? And how do you spell it?
Dave Shaffer.
The Fort Collins Soccer Club, which is known as ‘Arsenal Colorado’ is very popular in Fort Collins… When was this club established?
It was established in 1978.
And for how many years have you been the technical director for this club?
26 years.
Wow… 26 years! How confident do you feel about this club in the past 26 years?
In terms of it continuing to move forward or in terms of the service we’re providing to the community?
In both…
It’s provided the youth of the community the opportunity to play the game… and the landscape of youth soccer changed dramatically over the years, but I’ve been there. And it continues to provide given competition platforms or recreational programs for the young kids 4-years old up to 19… we have an adult program for men and women.
Cool. And how competitive are the programs?
Competitvie soccer starts at the age of year 11, and goes through year 19. And those families who are looking for a more competitive environment, we provide that. Umm… we’re also were a member of the ‘Development Academy,’ which was a U.S. soccer platform that lasted for a few years, and we were part of the ‘Elite Clubs National League (ECNL)’, which is just another competition platform.
So, in terms of soccer we’ve provided a lot of different competition platforms for all ages, both genders, as well as adults. We’ll continue to provide best for the membership for the community for years to come.
So, the club has been very competitive, you have been competing for years, what clubs are you competing with in Fort Collins?
There is only one other youth club in Fort Collins, they’ve been around for about 10 years, and it’s called ‘Colorado Rapids.’ Initially it was bunch of people 10 or 12 years ago, it was a bunch of coaches who coach for us and work for us, they wanted more money. So, they took their soccer ball and they went to try to form their own club. They sought membership to Colorado soccer association, that application was declined, and so at the time there was a club called ‘Colorado Storm’ and Storm got them under their umbrella. And then when Storm went under, the Rapids kinda took over Storm.
What equipment does the club use?
Obviously, we have balls and we have mannequins that we use for walls… we have just normal equipments they use to train teams. We have 103 acres field.
Great. Yeah cause I played for a soccer academy in Kuwait, which is my home country. And when I came to Fort Collins and did research about the resources here, I really got interested from the way they develop the skills and bring out the best version of the kids! I like the tournaments you do every year, how many times do you create each year?
We have one tournament a year, and it is called ‘The Arsenal Cup.’ It’s for competitive players. It’s actually for out first teams, the players on our first teams. It is a club invitational event, and so we can pick a total of 700 clubs, and they bring their cup teams. And it crosses over competition platforms, which is unique. So, for what I mentioned ‘Elite Clubs National Leagues (ECNL)’ brings many soccer clubs to compete with each other. And there’s another competition platform called ‘Girls Acadmey’ and that came out of ‘The Development Academy.’
There is a couple of clubs in ‘Girls Academy’ and then there are clubs that are in state league. So, we have eight best clubs in the state, sending our top teams to our tournament ‘Arsenal Cup’ and that happened in August. Our tournament ‘Girls Academy’ teams never play in ‘ECNL’ teams, and ‘ECNL’ teams never play in state teams, but our tournament provides or allows for these cross competition games to occur. Is it possible? Yes, we do it to generate revenue and keep these down for a membership, so that’s the one tournament that we host. Our team attends tournaments all over the country.
And what do you recommend soccer clubs in Fort Collins to bring to their community?
From my soccer experience with the kids, it’s about developing young people. It’s not about wanting to make them better soccer players, but more of wanting to make them better people. And so, a lot of life lessons can be learned from participating in sports, how to be a member of a team, how to overcome adversity, how to be good sportsman from winning and losing, so there are a ton of life lessons, time management that goes along with the game itself.
We don’t have the luxury that a lot of clubs in Denver have, there’s a huge player migration that occurs every year of try-outs where the best players from different clubs jumping around and trying to find the best fit possible for them, and those clubs are recipients of that talent. It’s not hard to be successful when the best players in the state or in the metropolitan region want to come to your club. In Fort Collins we’re little more unique where we have a finite number of players and they maybe good athletes, but not necessarily good soccer players. And so we have to develop our players and develop our teams to be successful, and that’s what the club needs to bring to the community.
What about competition?
Competition is healthy in some respect but it’s damaging and killing the sport or the teams because again we have a finite number of players and however you slice that up or divide that up, you’re putting a less of product on the field. I think in our situation with a small community with a finite number of players, i think it damages the quality of the team.
Alright, thank you very much, it was nice knowing you and having an interview with you.
You too, welcome!
