Placer United 2003 Girls Gold – 2017 U14 NPL Champions League Champions

A BIG congratulations to the Placer United 2003 Girls Gold team who finished out their League season in style winning the U14 Girls Champions League title Sunday at the NPL Spring College Showcase held at Davis Legacy over the weekend.

Every year during the Spring, NorCal NPL League, now widely regarded as one of biggest and best run college recruiting programs in the Nation, crowns a Champion in each age group of their Champions League Divisions at the Spring College Showcase. The Champions League Divisions contain the crème de la crème of teams made up of the current top eight teams in the State. Qualifying is tough and to win the league is even tougher.

Since the 2014 introduction of the NPL Champions League, Placer United has won six Champions League titles. Going into this past weekend we were hoping for title number seven as we had five teams qualify to play in 2017 Champions League soccer.

Over 140 men’s and women’s college coaches converged on the Davis soccer fields from all corners of the USA. Our 2003 Placer Girls Gold team stepped up huge and sealed the deal, as well as achieved an automatic qualification to the NPL National Finals by finishing top of a league that contained two ECNL teams and one future USSF Girls Academy team to take home Placer United’s seventh Champions League title.

Congratulations to all the girls and Coach Ron Benjamin for a brilliant achievement! Great job! Go Placer!

In 2016, US Soccer set new standards in an aggressive coaching education program and advanced licensing structure. The new USSF A Youth License course, which launched in August 2016, had 250 applicants and the US Soccer educational department hand-picked thirty coaches to participate in the very first class of this kind. Among those selected to participate was Placer United Director of Soccer Operations Paul O Brien.

“I am very proud to have been one of the first coaches who were selected to attend the revised USSF A Course,” said O Brien. “The curriculum was just over nine months long and was designed and adapted based on a set of tasks each coach had to complete and implement within their own home environment,” explained O’Brien. “The tasks were defined as coaching matches, coaching training sessions, leading the team, leading the player, managing a performance environment, and leadership. We were given plenty of information through lectures, seminars and workshops, and then assessed based on the progression of these tasks relative to our own club and team situations.”

“The course was intense, educational and extremely demanding, consisting of a series of four meetings with USSF staff, three of which were week-long educational and coaching sessions based in Houston,” said O’Brien. “We had three development periods in between each meeting, with a final meeting, including an assessment, carried out in our own club environment. I remember the first day of the first meeting in Houston when the outline of the course curriculum was passed out to the participating coaches. There was a combination of feeling overwhelmed, anxious and challenged. Yet, I was also very excited knowing that this was going to be a completely rewarding experience and an opportunity to do something different than I had ever been exposed to in other coaching courses. I received my final results the week leading into Easter, so needless to say I had a good Easter weekend.”

Congrats to Coach Paul on a job well done. Go Placer!

Kellie Pagador received an invitation to the USSF U15 girls national training camp. Pagador, who plays for Placer United 2003G Gold, was selected by USSF Girls National Team scouting staff to attend the camp in Texas April 22nd to the 29th under Coach April Kater.

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Congratulations and great work, Kellie! Go Placer!

18,000 miles and three states away from the Placer United Indoor Training Center, our Placer United 00 Boys Gold are flying the yellow and black colors as they proudly march into the quarter finals of the world famous Dr. Pepper Dallas Cup youth soccer tournament.

The boys followed up their impressive win Monday against highly rated USSF Development Academy Solar Chelsea team on Tuesday by tying their second game of the tournament 0-0 against a top ranked team from Oklahoma called West Side Alliance. The draw meant a win was a must on day three or they could pack their bags and be home in time for the Easter Bunny.

During the warm up, the boys looked a little nervous as they all knew what was at stake. At the opposite end of the field, the Mana Mana club team from Mexico were feeling loose and happy as they knew they had nothing to lose as they were already knocked out of the tournament. The Mexican team started off the better of the two teams but it didn’t take long before the Placer boys got into their groove with some slick quick passes that led to the first real opportunity of the team which helped settled everybody down.

#25 Zac Wong gave the boys the go ahead goal as he powered himself onto a free kick delivered into the box by Dylan Finley.

Top scorer Benji Kikanovic converted easily from the spot to make it 2-0 and then Manny Cabrera made it 3-0 for the boys in yellow as his shot bounced of a Mana Mana defender to wrong foot their goal keeper and move the boys into the knock out rounds of one off the biggest and best youth soccer events in the country.

Great job boys and good luck in the next round! Go Placer!