Youth Soccer Player Development: How WPL Academy Closes the Loop

Erik Oman is the League Technical Director for the Washington Premier League and Executive Director of the WPL Academy, an ODP-style supplemental program serving the top players across Washington state. He has a precise view of what video analysis can do for youth soccer player development when it is built into the structure of the program, not bolted on afterward.

The WPL Academy sees its players once a month. That constraint shapes everything: how the curriculum is designed, how coaches are onboarded, how players are selected for events, and how development is tracked between sessions. It is a program that, by design, has to make limited contact time count.

Video analytics have changed what is possible within that constraint. Oman describes a program that started by using Veo to help high school players build recruiting highlight reels and has evolved into something more systematic: measurable individual development plans, data-driven roster selection, and a feedback loop that keeps players developing between sessions.

How youth soccer player development works at WPL Academy

The Academy runs three events per age group each year, with training sessions once a month for players from U11 through high school seniors. Coaches are mostly club directors or top coaches from around Washington state, most of whom have full-time jobs and carve out weekends for the academy.

The curriculum is structured in three tiers. Juniors are introduced to high-level training. Intermediates learn what it means to be college-ready and to travel independently. High school players are put in front of college coaches with every session designed around showcasing their ability.

"Everything for our high school age groups is putting the players in front of college coaches and trying to showcase for them to take that next step beyond club youth soccer," Oman says.

After twelve years, the program has reached a milestone Oman describes as the sign that something is working: former academy players who graduated, played in college, and returned to Washington are now coming back as assistant coaches.

"We're now developing young coaches who were a part of our academy program. That's when you know you're doing things right, because people want to be part of something they grew up in and want to give back," Oman says.

How video analytics changed the individual development plan

WPL Academy players have always kept notebooks. Individual development plans, journaling, written reflections on coaching points. The habit was built into the program long before analytics were available. What analytics have changed is what goes into those notebooks.

"With the analytics now available, part of the end of the session after the full match is done is: get your notebooks out, let's come in and talk about key coaching points for the session. What did we work on today? What did you get out of it? Now go back and look at your highlights. It'll take you ten minutes. Write what you did well with these coaching points, what you still want to work on, and what your goals are before we see you next month," Oman explains.

The shift from qualitative reflection to measurable targets is what Oman considers the most significant change. A player who completes forty percent of their passes now has a concrete, trackable number. The coaching conversation shifts from general encouragement to a specific goal with a specific metric attached.

"If you are that center back who's only completing forty percent of your passes, your goal when we get film on you next month is to be completing more than fifty percent. Here are the key coaching points. That's your goal, and you have a measurable goal to try to accomplish, and we can keep building those challenges each month," Oman says.

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Roster selection with data instead of instinct

One of the most practical problems in a once-a-month program is roster selection. Coaches see players a limited number of times before they have to name a group for an event. With a pool of forty to sixty players per age group, the process has historically been difficult and, when players are not selected, hard to explain.

"I hear from coaches all the time: I don't know them well enough yet. How do I pick the best roster? We've had two trainings with that group. You've got a pool of fifty players," Oman says. Analytics have changed that conversation.

Now coaches can compare players by pass completion percentage, pressing intensity, and other measurable outputs. When a decision comes down to two players for the same position, the data gives coaches something concrete to work with. And when a player is not selected, the data gives coaches something concrete to give them.

"It gives coaches the ammunition to go back and say to the one who didn't get picked: here's why. You're only completing forty percent of your passes, all your passes are negative, we need you to find targets. Those metrics give coaches concrete information to share with the kids," Oman says.

Filming the right part of training

Not every part of training is worth filming. Oman is clear about where Veo fits in the session structure and where it does not. The cameras go up for the full-sided scrimmage, around forty-five minutes at the end of a training day, when the work built up in small-sided exercises is put into a match context.

"The cameras don't do well with multiple soccer balls and multiple things going on at once. So we aren't filming the beginning of training, but that full-side match is required to be filmed. That's where the analytics are most useful for players to pull stats and look at their involvement," Oman explains.

That architectural decision, building progressively toward a full-sided match that gets recorded, also changes how coaches use training time. The match is not just the application exercise at the end of a session. It is the evidence. It is what gets reviewed, reflected on, and carried forward to the next month.

Video for coaching education, not just player development

Oman uses the footage differently from his coaches. Where they review player performance, he reviews coach behavior. The touchline footage gives him a perspective on how his coaches interact with players, how they communicate in game moments, what their body language signals to a squad.

"I'd watch a key moment in a game and then pan down and watch the coach and their actions. That gave me great information as the director to do some education and follow up with the coaches. It has been very, very useful in the coaching education environment," Oman says.

The college ID camp the Academy hosts each year added another use case. All sessions are recorded and the footage is shared with the visiting college coaches, who can review players after the sessions instead of trying to take notes in real time.

"The college coaches love that because they can go out and run sessions and not worry about scribbling notes on all the players in the moment. They get access to the video so they can go back, review, and confirm a thought they had on a player," Oman says.

Filling the gaps that clubs leave

Part of Oman's role as League Technical Director is identifying what is being systematically undertaught across Washington state and building it into the Academy curriculum. Last year, watching league games around the state, he identified individual and group defending as a significant gap.

"The individual defending and group defending just was absolutely atrocious. The coaches were not doing a good job of teaching principles of defending. So we made that a priority. Starting the year: individual defending, small group defending, principles of play. Make sure the players really understand the principles, because that's the foundation of everything," Oman says.

By the end of the season, one of the Academy teams shut out a team that had been ranked very highly in the region. The opposing coach said they could not figure out how to get through them. Oman describes that as confirmation that the curriculum adjustment worked.

The analytics now allow him to track whether curriculum adjustments are taking hold at the individual level, not just the outcome level. A team can shut out an opponent and still have individual players whose defensive numbers reveal gaps. The data makes that visible in a way that a result alone does not.

How Veo supports ODP-style youth soccer academies

Veo is an AI-powered camera system that records matches and training sessions automatically, without a dedicated camera operator. The camera is positioned on a tripod at the centerline and uses computer vision to track the ball and follow play across the full field.

After a session, footage uploads automatically to the Veo platform, where players and coaches can access clips, analytics, and individual highlight sequences. For programs with once-a-month contact time, the platform creates continuity between sessions: players can review their footage, track their statistics, and set measurable goals before the next training day.

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