The Washington DC metro area prides itself as one of the best areas in the country for youth soccer in terms of opportunities, organizations, and facilities. Yet there is still much to do, especially in terms of opportunities and facilities for children living in the inner city.

Youth soccer can essentially be broken down into two main categories: Club Soccer and School Soccer. Club Soccer can also be divided into sub-categories depending on the level of competition: recreational, classic, developmental, and select (also know as travel).

Kids as young as 4 years old can join recreational leagues. Boys and girls often play together, and players can change teams from week to week. The emphasis is solely on skill building, friendship, and fun.

Around the age of 8 (Under 9) players and parents begin to choose whether they want to continue playing in a strictly non-competitive league, or if they want to join a select team. At such a young age, there is still a great emphasis on skill building, friendship and fun in these teams. The difference in the level of play may not be so noticeable at this age but the gap will surely increase with time; a more noticeable difference could be that the coach has a greater knowledge of the game, and/or that there are more practices to attend during the week! Another important difference is that players will now have to tryout to make these teams.

As the player grows, the opportunity for different levels of competition grows with them. The lowest level of competition is found in Recreational leagues.  An Under 9 (age group) league that conducts tryouts is considered a Developmental league. By Under 12, there are recreational leagues, developmental leagues, and travel leagues. Travel leagues consist of “travel” teams that get the name because it is expected there will be longer travel distances at times to play against stronger teams. Travel leagues can also range in level of competition (which will be explained later in the article), but in general a child who is playing on a team in a travel league can expect to have tryouts before making the team, a coach with advanced coaching methods, playing seasons in both the fall and spring and even winter, and a greater emphasis on winning than in other leagues.

After travel soccer, there are essentially only three more levels of higher competition that a player can play in. The next level is the Olympic Development Program (ODP) team, or the State team. ODP teams are made up of players all throughout a state (all players living in Maryland are eligible to play for the Maryland ODP team, while all players living in Virginia and Washington DC are eligible to play for the Virginia ODP team (Washington DC does not have their own ODP program). Players are selected for ODP following tryouts that are conducted once every year and attract the best players from the different travel teams in the state. For more information on ODP, visit the Maryland State Youth Soccer Association ODP website, and the Virginia Youth Soccer Association ODP website

The natural progression from a State team is the Regional team. US Soccer is broken up into different regions, of which each has their own team. Naturally, the Regional team is made up of the best players from each state in the region. Players that have the opportunity to play for the Regional team are selected by their State coach to attend a weeklong Regional camp, in which the coaches of the Regional team select from. For information on the region in which Washington DC is in visit http://www.region1.com/

The highest level of competition in the US is the US Youth National Team, which competes in international tournaments starting at the U15 age group. For more information visit both http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/ and http://www.ussoccer.com

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