ISSUE 019: 30+ years shaping youth players + coaches

3,000 subscribers strong! 💪

IN THIS ISSUE

  • 👋 Introduction: 3,000 strong!

  • 👨‍🎓 Soccer Thought Leader: Bryan Scales, Executive Academy Director at Charlotte FC

  • ⚽️ Soccer Jobs: New + interesting jobs

  • ⭐️ Featured Job: VP, People & Culture - San Diego Wave FC

  • 🫵 Do This Now: Must-follow accounts to track NWSL

INTRODUCTION

Hello, Pathwayers! 👋

We’re thrilled to share the news that we recently passed 3,000 subscribers for this newsletter!

One of the best parts of launching Pathway has been the community that has developed around the newsletter and our social channels. We love hearing from you and we appreciate your willingness to join us on this journey.

Thanks to all 3,000+ of you who have signed up, read, clicked, and sent us emails, DMs, and replies to share your feedback. We’re so grateful you’re here!

-Nolan Sheldon, Co-Founder & Chief Experience Officer

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SOCCER THOUGHT LEADER: BRYAN SCALES OF CHARLOTTE FC

I’ve had the good pleasure of calling Bryan Scales my friend for many years; we first met as fellow students on MLS’ Elite Formation Coaching course in 2013, but have been able to reconnect often as youth coaches and academy directors over the years.

With 30+ years of coaching, management, and technical leadership experience at the collegiate, youth national team, and MLS Academy level, Bryan has been a pillar of the American soccer coaching community for decades.

Bryan is a steady and reliable leader, who has a unique and special gift to understand how the entire youth development puzzle comes together in order to create an environment that will not only produce top players and coaches, but also high-level people.

Within our conversation, we tackle topics on leadership, culture, high-performance environments, and player and coach development, but also tie in ambition and legacy. Among all of his wonderful insights, his response on “visible standards” and “culture architects” were especially interesting to me.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

-Nolan Sheldon, Co-Founder & Chief Experience Officer

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity (and any emphasis below is ours).

PATHWAY: What was it about soccer that captured your imagination and made you want to build a career in it?

BRYAN: I grew up in the middle of the NASL heyday in the late 70s, early 80s. So that was my introduction to the game – specifically,  with the New England Tea Men up in Boston, which is where I grew up. So that got me into the game and kind of fell in love with it. It was a new game for many of us at that time in the United States.

I then decided to go to a small Division I school up in New York, Hartwick College, where I played for a couple of guys that were pretty influential in U.S. soccer, Glenn Myernick and Jim Lennox, especially in the coaching education space.

At this time, MLS was still about five years away, so after college, I decided to jump straight into coaching. I moved from Hartwick to be an Assistant Coach at Plattsburgh State and then Harvard. At 29, I became the Head Coach at Cornell and was there for 11 years - I spent time with US Soccer youth national teams for a few years and then got into MLS to help build the New England Revolution Academy when the league started their youth development initiative in the late 2000’s. I am now with with Charlotte FC in a similar capacity helping to build our academy project. 

PATHWAY: What was the reason you made the jump from college soccer to youth development within MLS?

BRYAN: I felt like as a college coach, I wasn't coaching enough. I went from a three month season in college, playing games every three or four days to coaching in the academy and having 150 to 160 training sessions over the course of 10 months. So, that was enticing for me as a coach - to be on the field that many times a year and have the games spread out, you really could start to look and see how players are developed, and you could actually be a practitioner.

PATHWAY: When you went from coaching into a leadership role as an academy director, what were your immediate areas of growth and development?

BRYAN: During my time with New England, I was the head coach of an age group and I was the director of youth development, so I had a couple hats I had to wear. There were days when I was probably a pretty good coach and not a great manager. And there were days when I was a good manager and not a great coach just because of the amount of time that it took to invest in either the players or the coaches. So when I came here to Charlotte, the best part of my job became managing the staff that we have. We have 20 full-time staff in our academy. So being a good leader, being a good mentor, being someone that people want to work for became really, really important for me - it was about defining my leadership style and giving our coaches and staff autonomy to try things and make mistakes and learn and to grow because I think that's the best environment for them to be successful in.

PATHWAY: You've built youth development departments and hired coaches, performance staff, and support staff - when you go to build a team, what are the key ingredients?

BRYAN: First and foremost, I look specifically for cultural architects - of course those who are good on the field, but importantly those that can interact with players, can interact with coaches in the right way - those that value the standards.

I think we all want to develop people and players that can be successful in life and on the field. Now it might sound a little hokey, but for me, the technical part, the tactical part, the methodology, all of that stuff is important to understand and to know as a coach and as a director, but for me it is second fiddle to the cultural part of the club and the academy. 

So, when I look at coaches, when I look at staff, when we're hiring people, they’ve got to fit in. It doesn't mean they can't be ambitious. You know, we're all ambitious, but they need to have good self-awareness. They need to have good emotional intelligence. They need to know how to have conversations, easy ones and hard ones. They need to know how to take feedback and they need to be able to really self-assess and reflect on their work on the field and their interactions in the office - it all matters.

PATHWAY: Think of a great youth coach that you’ve had the pleasure to work with - what were his or her qualities that made them a top developer of talent?

BRYAN: Well, I had the pleasure of working pretty closely with Manfred Schellscheidt - Manny was very influential in Region 1 ODP and with the youth national teams for a long time. He influenced and helped develop a lot of players and coaches in the Northeast. He was just really, really good at boiling a lot of complex things down into simple terms. Very empathetic, really good at having conversations with coaches and players, really challenging in the right way, but he developed the relationships first. 

And then I'd say another guy is Jean-Claude Giuntini [lead instructor of the Elite Formation Coaching License]. He’s a guy that really looks at youth development with a keen set of eyes, very calm, very measured. That was somebody that I really took a lot from and still do to this day - and that experience happened later in my career. That was a really, really important interaction for me in that space and time.

PATHWAY: How do you create and maintain a high-performance environment while also keeping player and coach development at the core?

BRYAN: I think there needs to be very visible standards. And so for me, my management style is more about management by being present, watching the sessions and watching the games and having conversations with all the staff - I do think that you have to constantly remind everybody and make very visible, the level of professionalism that is required. We have these standards pretty clearly listed in our academy offices and we have them for the players in the locker room. We define and state what amateur, professional and elite standards look like - so there shouldn't be any ambiguity on what's a professional standard, or what's an elite standard for our coaches and our players. They see that stuff every single day and eventually those habits drive your culture and that's your performance environment.

PATHWAY: At this juncture of your career, how do you approach and view professional growth, ambition, and legacy?

BRYAN: My ambition right now is solely focused on developing our academy here in Charlotte into one of the best in North America. That's the goal.

I enjoy working in high-performance environments. I really love developing coaches, developing players, pulling together systems and processes to connect all the dots on the player development side - technical, performance, medical - all connected to the development of the players. Those are areas that I really enjoy.

What gets me up in the morning is coming in here, knowing that you have influence and you can help players and coaches, whether that's as an academy director, a technical director, a president of a club, or a sporting director - that is where my ambition is, building an organization and a structure that elicits development of high quality people - that is the legacy.

PATHWAY: What do you love most about working in soccer?

BRYAN: Being around the players every day is the best part of the day, right? Having conversations with the players and coaches - what worked, what didn't work, getting their feedback on sessions, giving them my feedback.

You know, I just love the fact that this is something that can take you around the world - you and I have been around the world - all because of this game and it's taken us to a lot of really cool places. That's the constant - the game is all over the planet and there's a million different ways to play it. There's a million different ways to develop players. It gives you the autonomy to do all these different things. And it's fascinating that something so complex can, at the end of the day, still be very simple. 

Ed. note: You can connect with Bryan on LinkedIn.

PATHWAY MENTORSHIP OPPORTUNITY: 1-ON-1 WITH BRYAN SCALES

Bryan has kindly offered to conduct two (2) 1-on-1 mentorship sessions. If you’re interested in speaking with Bryan directly, click below to raise your hand for the opportunity. 🙋

  • PATHWAY MENTORSHIP APPLICATION: Bryan Scales, Charlotte FC [apply here!]

SOCCER JOBS: THE MOST INTERESTING NEW JOBS IN SOCCER

New soccer jobs get posted every week and we like to highlight a few of the roles that standout to us. We’ll do that… now. ⬇️

Want to see all the soccer jobs in one place? Sign up for our weekly “Pathway Jobs Newsletter” where we aggregate as many as 100 new soccer job listings - and drop it into your inbox every Friday.

FEATURED JOB: VICE PRESIDENT, PEOPLE & CULTURE, SAN DEIGO WAVE FC

San Diego Wave FC are the reigning NWSL Shield winners and home to USWNT players Alex Morgan, Naomi Girma, and Abby Dahlkemper (to name a few) - and the club kicks off its third season of play this weekend against the reigning NWSL champions, NJ/NY Gotham FC. That’s going to be a fun one.

The club is seeking to add a key member to the leadership team: Vice President of People & Culture. This individual will be responsible for developing and implementing HR strategies, policies, and programs that support the club’s mission, drive employee engagement, and promote a positive work culture.

You can read the full job description and apply here.

[If you want to have your job featured in a future issue, you can book it now]

DO THIS NOW: FOLLOW THESE ACCOUNTS [NWSL EDITION]

The NWSL is back, baby!

The 2024 regular season kicks off this Saturday with a slate of intriguing matchups (we’ve got our eyes on that inaugural Bay FC match vs. Angel City!).

Whether you’re an NWSL diehard or are just getting into tracking one of the top leagues in the world, we’re here to help (with an assist from our soccer friends, too) with some advice to get you fully up to speed ahead of the new season.

DO THIS NOW: Follow these accounts to stay up to date on all things NWSL

As always, there are a ton of other accounts outside of this group worth following but this will give you a great start. If you want to go even deeper, you can look to see who the above individuals are following to find others. 👍

-Kyle Sheldon, Founder & CEO

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