MNUFC: What is your vision for the youth programs and camps put on by the club?
Joe Burger: With the relaunch of our camps program, we tried to add more age-specific programming, which provides a better experience for both the player and the parents. That also hopefully creates Minnesota United fans. We have Future Loons, who are three- and four-year-olds; our Little Loons, who are five- and six-year-olds; our Junior Loons, who are seven- to 12-year-olds; and our High School Loons, who are ages 13 and up.
MNUFC: How did you decide to divide the age groups?
Joe Burger: We put our curriculum together for the ages based on a combination of cognitive development and their attention spans. So we matched up what we did with their attention span, their activity level and different things, based on an educational system that includes soccer. We cover all levels of players. Some of our programming is geared toward the more competitive player, and some of our programming is geared toward the recreational player.
MNUFC: What is the connection between youth soccer, the Academy and the first team?
Joe Burger: Part of the mission of our Academy program — which includes camps — is to identify players that we might want to move to our Development Academy. If we do a good job of identifying players from our camps, our talent ID events, tryouts, our scouting initiatives, you know, hopefully one of these days we will be developing kids that will go into our first team. One day we want to say we have a U19 player or U17 player who’s training with our first team, that will hopefully become a regular player with our First Team. So it’s all kind of a talent identification process.
MNUFC: What is your end goal, and what do you want to accomplish with these camps?
Joe Burger: We want to create fans of the Loons. Give them a positive soccer experience, and make sure that they have come out learning something new at every one of our camps. Part of camps is learning and having fun, and creating an experience that they want to be a part of, and make sure that they feel a part of our organization by their inclusion in some of our programming.
MNUFC: What makes it special to attend a Minnesota United camp?
Joe Burger: The kids, obviously. Their touch will be with the soccer camp and our coaches. The parents. With communication, activity, feeling special. And then hopefully they can feel a part of it, and feel like they’re being taken care of. Most of the kids we’re talking about are not going to drive themselves to things. They’re not reading the emails about what to bring to camp. We want it to be easy for the parents to understand what’s going to happen, and what’s going to go on in our camps. So I think it’s creating fans, not just with the players, but there’s going to be an experience for the parents by communication, registrations, what the kids talk about when they get home. We want it to be a real, almost a family experience. From the kid in the camp, the parent with the communications, and the happiness of the kids.
