Virginian Elite Showcase in focus: U-19s show depth, breadth of DMV-area talent

ARLINGTON, Va. – The 17-year-old is tall for his age, but lanky – skinny as a rail, in fact. Yet he latches on to loose balls in the midfield over and over again, moving his slight figure into proper position between the ball and his opponent before pulling one move after another from his bag of tricks to keep possession.

Dragbacks, shoulder feints, quick cuts in any direction: His opponents can’t get to the ball, and they can’t stop him from transitioning his team into attack and loping forward in search of a return pass – not until the ball is well away from the midfielder with the short, spiky dreadlocks, at least.

With the score tied in the second half of a much-anticipated showcase tournament game, the intensity is already high. And having lost their 2-0 first-half lead – thanks in part to a goal from the dreadlocked playmaker – the frustration builds for his adversaries until one of them lashes out as he shields them off, scything through his ankles with a clumsy, nasty tackle from behind that had no chance of reaching the ball.

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Wincing in obvious pain, the lanky midfielder has to be subbed out as his mugger receives a richly-deserved booking. But he’ll be back on in a few minutes.

This isn’t a U.S. Soccer Development Academy match, or US Youth Soccer National League, or even a US Club Soccer id2 camp. It’s the opening day of the 2015 Virginian Elite Showcase.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that the most talented youth soccer players are being identified and pulled in to elite programs earlier and more efficiently than ever before, that ID camps, national leagues and development academies are siphoning off the cream of the crop and leaving the incumbent “travel” scene shorn of its best.

There are many aspects of truth to these statements. But spending the day at a tournament event like the Virginian – a Mid-Atlantic Memorial Day tradition which draws college scouts, but maybe not by the hundreds from every state like some nationally-oriented events do nowadays – provides a useful reminder that plenty of quality can be found outside the brightest spotlights.

The dreadlocked midfielder described above is a boy named Taylor Gray from little Hughesville, Maryland, running the show for an Under-17 team called Waldorf 97 Orange. They’re a new team – formed just this year – from a small club in an intensely competitive area, and that’s part of why GotSoccer.com’s admittedly unreliably ranking system places them 32nd in their state, and 359th in Region 1. They finished in the middle of the table in the third division of the National Capital Soccer League this spring, a level that generally sees only a handful of players earn opportunities to continue their careers at the college level.

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But Gray, like many of the two-dozen or so players he shared the field with in 97 Orange’s match vs. D.C.-based Stoddert Red Storm at Long Bridge Park on Saturday, which ended in a 2-2 draw, can flat-out play. And it was reflected in the quality of soccer all weekend – while there were some rough touches and scrappy moments where fluidity went missing, just about every single team in the VES’s showcase divisions worked to connect passing strings, move their opponents out of position and create good scoring chances.

“What worked for them was the balls over the top in the first half, that’s how they got their two goals,” said Waldorf coach Gary Knight, who calls Gray “one of our main strengths,” postgame. “So we made a good adjustment with the defense there. But we were doing a good job trying to get the ball to the outside to start our counterattacks, doing our switches – switching the ball and creating space on the wing.

“We just want good competition, to gauge our players so we can figure out how we’re going to move forward and where we’re going to go after this.”

Knight’s team just wrapped up tryouts for their fall season, and might soon get a chance to move up to a higher division, or even try out a higher-intensity league. But for the players with ambitions of reaching the next level, the clock is ticking – and every competitive game, every single training session (especially given that many of these teams only train once or twice a week) matters.

+READ: Our Biggest Mistake: Talent selection instead of talent identification

Gray is part of the Maryland Olympic Development Program and was a D.C. United pre-academy player, and he might still earn a place on their U-18 academy squad. But would he be further along if talent identifiers had seen him sooner, or if he had more muscle on his frame, or if he simply lived somewhere more centrally located than Hughesville?

Would he shine brighter if the rest of his team’s starting XI had the same tools he does? Were his skills just not sufficiently effective – or appreciated – on the given days that he had influential sets of eyes watching him?

In recent years the U.S. Soccer Federation has worked hard, and spent big, to build out its scouting network and cast a wider net in its hunt for the nation’s most promising teenagers. But the country remains vast, and the net can only be so effective given the current financial and staffing realities.

So diamonds in the rough, whether ignored, unnoticed or underappreciated, will continue to litter the grassroots scene. They want to be found. And the smartest clubs and coaches will never stop trying to find them.