The Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL) has announced the addition of NTC Phoenix for the 2012 WPSL season. The team will make its home at the National Training Center in Clermont, Fla., and will join other Florida-based teams, including Tampa Bay Hellenic, Florida Sol FC and South Florida Strikers, in the Sunshine Division. The team is led by Academy Director and Head Coach Henry Moyo, Senior Team Head Coach Mike Dickey and Academy Coach Steve Crane.
The National Training Center (NTC), owned by South Lake Hospital, a part of Orlando Health, is a 300-acre sports, fitness and education facility located in Clermont. The Center runs academies in swim, track and field, lacrosse and now soccer and is home and training facility for national and international Olympians. Unique in that it combines top athletic facilities with medical facilities and a four-year university, NTC provides participating athletes with the latest in scientific and medical diagnostics and support.
Academy Director Moyo, who joined NTC in the spring of 2011, is the former soccer coach at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Under his direction the Center had established a women-only academy for soccer, so the move to join the WPSL was a natural. “We decided that women’s soccer, being a stronger aspect of soccer in America than men’s, was what we wanted to focus on,” Moyo explained.
“We are thrilled to bring a women’s sports team to the Central Florida area,” commented Dr. Dorothy Richardson, NTC Director of Sports and a three-time Olympic medalist with the U.S. National Softball Team. “Not only will the NTC Phoenix provide a platform for women to compete but the home games will provide our community with a family-friendly, inexpensive sporting event to enjoy.”
Moyo, who holds a F.A. Half Badge coaching license and a NSCAA Level 3 Goal Keeper licence, began his own soccer career as a goalkeeper in his native Zimbabwe. He turned pro as a teenager and eventually reached Division 1, the highest level in his homeland. Moyo then moved to Germany where he played until his retirement in 1981. In 1995 he joined Lee University as the women’s soccer coach, building the team into a regional and conference powerhouse. Three years later he was asked to work his magic with the men’s program and led the team to several conference and region championships and four straight trips to the NAIA Championship.
“What we want to do with our academy is to provide the young players with an understanding of what it takes to be a professional,” Moyo said, “because we really train Olympians and professional players. And because we are owned by a hospital we are focusing more on player development in the sense of sports performance and science-based testing, which we offer in the education center. We want to make sure the young ladies understand what it takes to train at the elite level.”
Moyo will be assisted by Dickey, who has worked for and with the U.S. Soccer Federation as a staff member with the U.S. U-17 and U-20 Women’s Teams. Another member of the NTC Phoenix team is Academy Coach Steve Crane, who played at Tusculum College in Tennessee and professionally with Charlton Athletic in England. Both Dickey and Crane hold USSF “A” licences.
The goal of the program is for the Phoenix to become the capstone of the NTC Soccer Academy program for women and girls. Moyo and his team are currently working with several area schools to develop a year-round residency program that would allow girls from U-13 and up to stay and train five days a week. NTC also offers a developmental soccer program for boys and girls up to age eleven.
“With the addition of the NTC Phoenix, the National Training Center is now a premier destination for women’s soccer,” Dr. Richardson said. “Our facilities, sports-specific services and experienced staff, coupled with the desirable location and supportive community, create an exceptional environment for the success of academies and teams for soccer and other sports.”
Members of the new Phoenix team will benefit from NTC’s wide array of diagnostics and support. “The WPSL program will be training five days a week because we are offering the science-based testing for them,” Moyo said. “We will provide things like nutrition, sports psychology, massage therapy and all the battery of science-based testing: VO2 max, motion analysis, video analysis, and more because we have access to that. So we are going to be doing that just like any professional team or professional athlete that trains at the National Training Center.”
Moyo knows that the challenges are greater for a first-year club, but believes that NTC Phoenix can succeed. “We understand that it might be difficult for us as a first-year program to pull the big stars and the big players from college,” he admitted, “but we are not shy about hard work and challenges.”
NTC Phoenix will kick off their season with open tryouts for interested women age 16 and older on Saturday, March 31, and Saturday, April 21, at the NTC Athletic Fields.
