THE S.I.P’s PHILOSOPHY The overarching goal of the SIP School of Excellence program is to maximize each student’s potential to become priority recruits for professional and academic institutions. Here’s a Breakdown of How This Works At SIP School Of Excellence, the student-athlete will receive 4-plus hours of intensive high-level coaching contact daily over the entire course of each 10-month calendar period. This is in addition to the regular club training hours our students participate in with their competitive club teams. The following numbers tell the story best and point to the simple truth – the level of coaching combined with the amount of training are the key differentiating factors when it comes to the huge, ongoing gap between the level of play in the U.S. versus other key soccer nations. The numbers speak for themselves. Who can realistically expect to advance and compete at any level practicing two to three nights a week for 90 minutes and playing a game on the weekends? And not all coaching is created equal – while youth players throughout the rest of the world can expect top level coaching, unfortunately, that is far from the truth. Safe to say the old maxim “practice makes perfect” is spot on. There are no short cuts and simply no substitution for the number of hours and level of training with top flight coaches that it takes for a youth player to develop into a truly elite player anywhere in the world. The rest of the world has grasped this concept for many years and provided elite youth players the opportunity to attend full-time academies where they can fully develop to the best of their ability.