#441: High school Champions' League — how it works, why it matters

Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America

Adam Belz

Men's National Team, Youth National Teams, Yanks Abroad, Sports, U17 National Team, Us Soccer, Mls, Usmnt, American Soccer, U20 National Team, Soccer

4.7 • 922 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's a novel idea that started in Tampa and is now spreading to St. Louis and south Florida, with coaches in several other places considering starting one. When it comes to growing our country's soccer culture from the ground up, it checks a lot of the boxes -- free, local, merit-based, and plugged into something that already exists and resonates in America: high school rivalries. We talk with Jim Harte, the guy who started this off in Tampa. We get into a lot, including U6 soccer, of course. Check it out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about US Soccer. Our guest today is a man who coached high school soccer for 36 years and won six state
0:20.6	championships in Florida. He was an elementary school PE teacher for 39 years and
0:26.1	deeply interested in youth soccer. He's considered one of the great coaches in the history
0:30.0	of Tampa. That's talking like all levels and he founded something called the Tampa Bay
0:35.4	top 10 Champions League which is kind of the main idea we're going to talk about today.
0:40.3	We're going to talk about a lot of other stuff.
0:42.0	It's an intriguing project. It's a high school
0:43.8	soccer, Champions League, local, free, merit-based, and driven by the participants. It's not some
0:51.7	tournament for rich kids and their helicopter parents. It's an idea
0:55.2	that's starting to spread and I think in the spirit of kind of thinking through how to grow the game
1:00.3	of soccer in America from the ground up, It's an idea you'll be interested in.
1:04.8	Four groups of four teams, each were drawn. Last February on both the boys and girls
1:10.3	sides and the first match is November 14th.
1:13.4	This is the seventh year, I believe, of the Champions League.
1:17.1	St Louis, Missouri and Dade County, Florida
1:19.5	are also planning to launch local Champions League
1:22.2	on the same model. And I think we'll get into a few
1:24.8	other things like I said including how to improve U6 soccer coaching I want to talk about
1:28.9	that later but here to tell us more about the Champions League is Jim Hart.
1:35.0	Thanks for joining us, Jim.
1:36.4	Happy to be with you.
1:38.1	Appreciate being invited.
	...

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