To provide an environment for every player interested in enhancing their skills and developing a LOVE for the beautiful game. We believe that every player with determination and effort can become a skillful player and coached appropriately can develop into a lifelong player. To meet that goal, the club endeavors to provide age appropriate programs to develop the mind and the body of our players. The program focuses on attitude and the core values of effort, discipline and respect as well as foundational soccer skills to enable success at any level.

We strive to give all players the best experience and build player pools to create teams that keep kids playing at varied levels. At the youngest ages we focus on individual skills and small- sided tactics over position-based play and team-centric training. We also aim to stay local. As players progress in development, we have teams that play at higher levels, with higher expectations on training, tournaments, and commitment.

For our players we aim to provide:

• Age-appropriate training and game formats
• Personalized attention for the developing soccer player
• High training-to-game ratio for better skill development
• Competition at the state and regional level
• Qualified youth soccer coaches

We place tremendous emphasis on basic skill acquisition and ball mastery. These technical skills are the building blocks every player needs in order to have long term success and enjoyment in soccer. During the “golden learning years” (ages 6-12), we believe it is critical to emphasize foundation skills and playing style over results – technical skills are the foundation of ALL great players and the building blocks of positive self-esteem. Hampshire United SC seeks to develop players who demonstrate:

ABILITY: The technical foundation and skills to creatively solve problems and achieve at the next levels.

DESIRE: A love of learning and the passion to work hard and improve themselves every day — in every training session and in every game.

GRIT: Character to deal with adversity and overcome setbacks, losses and failure because they understand this is the path to real success in anything.

Our curriculum is based on the United States Soccer Curriculum (the governing body of soccer in the USA) with additional ideas, input and concepts to meet the specific needs Hampshire United SC. Combined, this shapes our community soccer culture and coaching philosophy and helps to formulate the Hampshire United SC style of play.

• We place skills acquisition before competition, development ahead of winning, and believe training sessions are more important than games. — We are a player focused program and tailor our training sessions and our approach to games to maximize development. Our long-term focus is on the growth of the player, and players pools before team results. We develop our programs on the sequential stages of development and realize that skipping stages is detrimental. We do not rush our players into team tactics and positions before providing a solid foundation of technical skills.

• We value and respect our families. – We respect the commitment sports take for players and families and recognize that other aspects of life are also important (academics, religion, etc.). We work hard to keep our players and families energized and avoid burnout. We are a volunteer-based organization with paid professional coaches. We are club, not a service, and recognize that our families are the basis of our soccer community.

• We want kids to play soccer today and for the rest of their lives. — We focus on player assessments and not try-outs for our younger players because we believe all players can develop into soccer players and it is impossible to predict later success at an early age. We try to create rosters that match like skilled players to create a team and seek to place them in an appropriate league/division. In some cases, we even offer training spots for players that are seeking to work into a roster spot.