We were fortunate enough last week to speak with U.S. Soccer Women’s Technical Director April Heinrichs on the status of player development on the girls and women’s side.  Heinrichs, who is now overseas assisting the Women’s National Team at the London Olympics, has an extended history in the women’s game including coaching the USA WNT to an Olympic Gold Medal victory in the 2004 Summer Olympics. One thing I like about April is that she gives detailed answers and avoids fluff and clichés. As a result, we are running this interview in three parts.

April Heinrichs

Question: Thanks for talking with us. It’s been 18 months now since you and (Development Director) Jill Ellis were hired by U.S. Soccer. How do you feel the player development issue is progressing in American women’s soccer?

AH: “A large part of what we have done, primarily Jill, is address needs from a scouting perspective. My point of view, since I left in 2005, is that 6 or 7 years later, the women’s game has grown so much, it is so geographically challenging, that we need more than ever to have a systematic process in place for finding players. They can pop up from everywhere.”

Question: Can you talk a little more about what you found in place when you began, when 9 technical advisers were being asked to set up scouting for both boys and girls?

AH: “We have been hired for youth development. In the first year we spent a majority of our time learning about the technical advisors, learning about a database, talking to club coaches, learning about ECNL, touching base with ODP and seeing where they are and working with respective youth national teams. The first year was much more of a listening and analyzing tour.

“Parallel to that, a lot of time has been spent integrating the youth national team programs. There are six team and we found pretty much six different styles of play being advocated by each of those teams, There were six different head coaches who had little interaction with one another. Jill now provides continuity with the U17, U15 and U14 groups, as I do this with the U18s and up. Jill is an assistant coach for the Women’s National Team and I scout.”

Question: So there have been some good initial steps taken already?

AH: "I feel pretty good about first year and a half. Those six YNTs are very integrated in their style of play, the communication between coaches and how players might progress from one team to the next.”

Question: So how goes the project of building a national scouting network specific to the girls’ side?

AH: "The technical advisors have an administrative role where they oversee the scouts within their region.  Part of that job is to hire per diem scouts. We wanted to have more input on who the scouts were. Jill uses a pool of about 30 scouts on the girls side. They go out and send reports to Jill and I. Having one technical adviser overseeing the men’s and women’s side, well I don’t think anyone can do it well. To do both is an unbelievably daunting task. Regardless of a person’s ambition, you cannot be an expert in both. So we would get scouting reports from an event that would say ‘There wasn’t a good player there the whole weekend.’  We’re building that network on the girls’ side and that has gone well for the past year and a half.”

Question: What do you see as some of the main priorities in the coming years?

AH: "The country is so big. We still don’t have a database that is up and functional. I’m extremely ambitious on modernizing our tracking, so it’s not just based on a coach calling or emailing 'I’ve got a player for you.' Every player recommended needs to be compared to contrast the standards.  Sometimes I’ll ask a coach ‘What birth year is she?’ and he’ll say ‘I don’t know.'  You have to be able to compare each player to other players in the physical, technical, tactical and psychological dimensions of the game.”

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of our interview with April Heinrichs.

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