I mentioned a while back I was looking forward to writing about a U13 Boys team I had met while covering the Dallas Cup. The Alaska Rush team coached by Shannon Orr was a fun group to be around and a promising soccer team as well.

I was intrigued by the concept of competitive soccer in Alaska, given that you really can’t play outside there more than 3-4 months out of the year.

Along with being good, this team has some ambition. While most of the players are involved in other sports as well, they are interested in making it to the ranks of college soccer. One of the parents, Mike Bates, father of midfielder David, explains that the team wanted something more and has gotten a taste of it from Orr.

“Not just the players but the parents, really understand now what the measuring rod is for success,” Mike Bates said. “They can see the ‘wow’ and what the difference is. It really turns a lightbulb on inside.”

His son David has a similar perspective.

“The difference was that he was way better than other coaches. He wouldn’t let everybody mess around in soccer, tackling each other,” David said. “When Shannon came everybody got more serious. He makes us do a lot of juggles and really improved everybody’s touch. Before we were beating teams 2-0 and 3-0 and now we’re beating everybody in Alaska more like 15-0.”

David’s sister Morgan also credited Orr with teaching and motivating players effectively.

“He teaches us a lot about the game and makes everybody try their best,” she said. “We’re all learning better skills because of him.”

Nancy Dimmick, whose son Trask is another standout on the team, concurred.

“His coaching is something we’ve never seen before. Most people up here are more laid back, not an aggressive kind of coaching where you compete.,” she said. “We’d win state and go to regionals and it was always just a given we’d not be able to do anything there. When he came and really emphasized the passing and quick play, it was really something we hadn’t seen. It was refreshing. When we went to Dallas Cup (earlier this month) and hung with those teams, it was just amazing. The boys turn into different people when he walks out there.”

But Orr was let go by the club less than three months after being hired last year. I won’t get into the back and forth of the details, but the team itself is enthusiastic about staying under his direction, and have voted to become inaugural members of a new organization called Street Soccer Academy.

“We’re kind of at a crossroads now,” Mike Bates said. “Most of the team voted to leave Rush and they are going to join Street Soccer Academy (Orr’s new venture). We’ll travel during the winter to some tournaments outside the state, do the Street soccer and not play in the regionals anymore.”

Shannon Orr is 38. He grew up in the Dallas region and played professional soccer for a time before getting into coaching. He went to Alaska after a stint as director of Albuquerque United. He has developed a distaste for the same old ways of doing things and wants to establish this academy to promote open play and true player development rather than the win-emphasis present in so many programs.

“In one sense it went bad (the time with Rush) but in another sense it was a complete blessing,” Orr said. “Tim Schultz had gotten me up there to change the club and I loved that atmosphere, but then here I am in Alaska without a job. I decided to come back to Dallas and start what I knew in my heart was the right thing to do, to create a unique environment focusing strictly on development. I want to give players what I do best and pass on to them a desire to get better and reach another level. If I can pass a player on to any coach or school, I’ve done my job.”

Orr plans to couple his efforts as a trainer with Texas Titans and Sting Dallas with the new Alaskan academy.

“For Alaska, the academy solves a lot of the problems with the weather, where they only play outdoors 3-4 months out of year,” Orr said. “In the last few years, the community in Anchorage has done an incredible job of building soccer-specific indoor facilities and indoor turf fields for the high school season. They’re playing 2-3 times more soccer than they have been able to in the past.”

“Now the market there is demanding more,” he continued. "They want better coaching, more structure and something better than a recreational environment. There are 700,000 people in the state, and half of them live in Anchorage. It’s not a viable size for a competitive league, so you have elite players playing in basically a recreational league. So it creates this false sense of success for coaches and players who can be highly dominant. A team with 5-6 quality players can win the league handily because there’s no real competition."

Orr said player development will be the key to his venture.

“The academy is designed similar to the Dutch system. Players will be tracked individually, and we’ll create a weekly game from a pool of 24-32 players. Every week we’ll work to show what we’re doing, be it flank play or keeping possession or whatever it is,” he said. “I don’t want to seem like I’m plucking kids and I don’t want to tell kids they can’t play in other sports. I’ll encourage them to be in hockey and wrestling and will only charge them for the time they are actually training and competing with us. The pricing is built on a monthly basis.”

For more information on the site you can go to www.streetsocceracademy.org.

Nancy Dimmick summed up the attitude of a lot of parents about what they’re expecting.

“It’s a new thing. We’re not quite sure how it’s going to work,” she said. “It’s a little weird, but we are excited about paying for what we actually are involved in, and that you have to show 100 percent commitment as a player or  you are not going to play. The boys want to be pushed and this will do that.”