Aztec U23 Teams

PROGRAM OVERVIEW: Every summer, Aztec runs a U23 men's and women's program structured to offer players a competitive opportunity to train and play in preparation for the upcoming collegiate season. The U23 program offers players in the New England Premiership (men) and United Women's Soccer Two (women) U23 divisions, training twice a week starting in late May. Teams are coached by senior Aztec staff including many collegiate coaches. The season typically runs from late May to late July. Home field (games and training) are located on the North Shore.

PROGRAM HISTORY: Aztec has consistently been at the forefront of amateur soccer development since its inception in 2000. Most notably, Boston Aztec became the reserve team for the Boston Breakers of now-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) in 2009 and just one year later captured the WPSL National Championship. Aztec presently operates a U23 summer program for players exiting high school and currently playing collegiate soccer.

College Preparatory Program

Aztec Soccer Club offers its senior players access to its Aztec College Preparatory Program which is designed to guide and assist senior players as they navigate through high school and into college. The program provides academic and recruiting guidance, information, and resources to better enable them to advance to the next step in their journey as a student-athlete.

https://www.aztecsoccer.com/collegeprepprogram

All Aztec players receive access to the following: Personal College Advising Support, Seminars, Resource Center, College Drop Ins, Team College Prep Meetings, Player Analysis and College Coach Outreach Assistance.

Our Coaching Staff

The Aztec Soccer Club has a 24-year history of providing club soccer and player development programs for players – boys and girls – ages 4 to 23. The rich culture at Aztec has been an ideal and proven training ground for players to improve technical abilities under professional coaching direction and follow a defined developmental pathway from youth to junior to senior to college and even professional levels.

Aztec Soccer Club has a strong and experienced professional coaching staff, many of whom are either current or former high school and collegiate coaches.

Aztec Soccer Directors & Staff

The Aztec Directors work directly with all of our staff coaches to support the needs of our coaching staff and our players and families. The directors are the primary point people for any general questions, concerns or suggestions that you might have. Our directors are on the pulse of all Aztec activities and they are excited to work with each and every Aztec player.

Aztec boasts one of the most robust coaching staffs in all of New England. Our coaches bring a wealth of experience and professionalism to our teams.

Where We Play & Train

Since 2019, Aztec has expanded through the introduction of three new regions – Aztec Boston, Aztec North/New Hampshire, and Aztec Oceanside – and now services players from more than 100 towns across two states.

Central Region - Focused on players throughout Essex County and into parts of Middlesex County including towns such as Peabody, Georgetown, Wenham, Beverly, Middleton, Rowley, Nahant, Swampscott, Boxford, Topsfield, Danvers, Rockport, Essex, Swampscott, Saugus, Marblehead, Stoneham, Lynnfield, Wakefield, North Reading, Ipswich, Newburyport, Salem, etc.

Boston - Training focused on players located throughout Middlesex County and Merrimack Valley and towns north of Boston such as Andover, Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, Wakefield, Winchester, Melrose, Lynn, Reading, Somerville, Stoneham, North Andover, Malden, Saugus, Wakefield, Waltham, Woburn, Wilmington and Winthrop.

North/New Hampshire Region - Training focused on players located throughout Northern Massachusetts and into Southern New Hampshire in towns such as Chelmsford, Lowell, Lawrence, Dunstable, Groton, Methuen, Westford, Pepperell, Tyngsboro, Londonderry (NH), Hooksett (NH), Hudson (NH), Pelham (NH), Windham (NH), Hollis (NH), Merrimack (NH), etc.

Oceanside Region - Training focused on players located throughout Marblehead, Swampscott, Beverly Nahant, and other coastal New England towns etc.

Our Facilities

Aztec Soccer Club is fortunate to have access to a wide range of training facilities which allow our professional staff to provide a comprehensive training curriculum to our players year round. By implementing a variety of training surfaces, our players benefit from a diverse training curriculum that better prepares them for future soccer challenges. From outdoor stadiums, to expansive grass fields to indoor turf to futsal courts, our players have convenient access across all regions.

Additional facilities that are utilized include: Anna Parker Fields (Saugus), Beverly Middle School (Beverly), The Mill Works (Westford), and Massachusetts Youth Soccer Fields (Lancaster).

The Aztec Philosophy

Good on field coaching inspires learning. Every standard discussed below is an attempt to capture some of the choices that coaches make in order to bring about learning of the game. The words “awareness, mindfulness, and purposefulness” are qualities that could be observed in the listening, seeing, speaking, and all other actions of the coach and the players in a session where players are active learners who are growing in their technical skill set, psycho/social development and tactical knowledge. Below are summarized standards in four categories:

• Player’s Practice Experience
• Awareness of the Player
• The Demeanor of the Coach
• Promoting Citizenship and Community

These standards are not an attempt to capture all the aspects of good coaching practice but are restricted to those areas of coaching that an observer(s) can realistically hope to get a sense of in a few on field visits. Therefore, other efforts in service to Aztec such as overall planning for the coaching content over the course of a season/year, use of professional development opportunities, timeliness of returning inquiries to players and their parents, session planning, tournament planning, Aztec club work in general, collaboration with colleagues and other duties are not addressed as they are not accessible to the observer(s).

The club also brings in outside coaches and industry leaders to consult with Aztec coaches and even lead training sessions. This type of collaboration and best-practice learning helps to enhance the training sessions and introduce new concepts.

Club Methodology

“Without a methodology, clubs are really a shopping mall, a collection of loosely affiliated teams, mutually branded and organized around a common location, but independently run based on whatever set of myths, beliefs and philosophies each independent coach ascribes to.”

A club must have a methodology because it is the methodology that is the foundation of the connections between age groups, the link between learning across age groups, and the common bond between coaches at different age groups. A methodology is fundamentally what transforms a group of teams wearing the same jersey at different age groups into a club with a learning trajectory that consistently goes up and to the right from age to age.

The club philosophy and methodology is reinforced through internal and external education programs. Internal coaching seminars are conducted and led by the club's technical directors. Industry experts and specialists are brought in to conduct workshops for directors and coaches. The club has also made a commitment to helping to fund and support advanced educational opportunities and licensing.

In August of 2021, a USSF D License on-field course was held in Massachusetts. The Aztec coaches represented three of the four female coaches who participated that day.