Submitted by LMW, May 9, 2007 16:22

I am an EX-State Director of Coaching for a state east of Kansas...there now everyone can start to guess...

I must say that AJ's story is not a new one to me. Every year that I ran our ODP programs there were claims that the process was not fair and upon investigation I found at times the claims were accurate. Guess what happened when I tried to change to a more fair process...you guessed it...I am indeed an EX-State DOC...and thank God for that. I have been much happier and less harried since.

Bad news....ODP will never be fixed at the state level until Directors of Coaching are hired by the National organization as opposed to being appointed by State Association governing boards. DOC's are beholden to local politics for a paycheck, so ODP will remain a political process until this is fixed.

Good news...The above problem is solved by MLS. If you take a look at Men & Women's National team players you will see a smattering of those who made thier State ODP teams and worked thier way up the food chain to the full National Team, but not many. Instead many NATs were identified in college or later.

While that paradigm has hurt us on many fronts it should give us all reason to sleep well at night. Now that MLS is creating youth development programs that are more than glorified camps we will see pro's developing pro's and those players will be identified for our National Teams. Finalley, State Association Boards (power hungry soccer parents) will be removed from the process!

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