Well, it’s Day One PNC (post new crest) and thankfully everyone appears to have survived. Even though we’ve entered the dawn of a new age, we nonetheless must carry on with the task and duty of talking non-stop about Louisville City and the USL. Plus other nonsense that happens to be on my mind when there’s not much LouCity or USL news to discuss.

Because I’m already exhausted reading through tweets and Reddit and Facebook posts about the crest, I’d like to instead turn your attention to some discussion last week about the Louisville City youth academy.

I wrote a little about it last week, but club president Brad Estes confirmed on Soccer City Radio on Saturday that the news was true. Then, Twitter user @_T0R0_ tweeted me a photo of the club’s U17 team.

I had some personal knowledge beforehand that the club had been inviting promising players from around the region to senior team practices. At least two of those have signed academy deals, however binding those might be, with the club that we know about – Muamer Ugarak and Elijah Wynder. But the news, which I think is great, brings up a lot of questions.

How many teams does the club have? Just one per age group? How many age groups? Who are the players?

Who is coaching them? I would think it’s just the regular technical staff, which to me would mean there aren’t all that many kids participating. That makes sense, but if there’s enough talent out there, it would scream to me that there need to be some full-time academy coaching hires. It would also signal to me that John Hackworth, who is the club’s technical director, too, has a lot more on his plate than we might have thought.

But back to the UX teams. Are they in a national league? They aren’t in the Development Academy; if they were, we’d know it. That would be a big deal in youth soccer circles, and I have kids playing youth soccer.

Do they practice down at Thurman Hutchins, too? Now that the stadium is almost finished, I’m betting that there are two new property development plans in the hopper at the club’s front office: developing a permanent practice facility for the club, and developing a training complex for the area at large. It would be economical, of course, to have both of those things in the same place, but I have a feeling the larger soccer community in the area wouldn’t feel great about LouCity having control of a facility like that. Then again, the larger soccer community in the area has had thirty years to collaborate and build one themselves and haven’t done it, so maybe that’s just too bad. I don’t know.

Brad Estes has mentioned before that the club was building an academy program and was looking toward the future at a training facility. A soccer complex like the one in Elizabethtown, which was supposed to have been built in Louisville, would be a godsend to local clubs who struggle annually to find places to practice and play. If that gets off the ground, it would be a huge boon to the youth soccer community in Louisville, if the club builds it with that use in mind. They might not, but I’d doubt it. The problem, as always, is where to build it and how much political capital they’ll need to make a project like that happen.

The other problem that comes with a complex like that is who pays for it. Arguments against publicly funded sports stadiums are solid, but this wouldn’t necessarily be that if it was made available for public use. The city government is presently in a budget squeeze so any cash contribution would be unlikely, but tax breaks are another option. There’s also the possibility of just donating land to the project and allowing Louisville City to develop and operate the facility, or maybe just part of it.

I have no idea, but it’s fun to think about! In any event, those are the big ticket items on the horizon for the club. Keep your ears to the ground and VAMOS MORADOS.