Programs Overview

The Hollandia Technical Committee is headed up by the Director of Coaching and Player Development, Percy Hoff, who has over 35 years of coaching experience, including international coaching and coaching at the National Team level. The technical committee is responsible to evaluate into which divisions of the Saskatoon League teams should be entered.

Hollandia offers soccer programs for girls and boys from Under 6 to Under 16 age groups. Beginning at Under 12, players are normally exposed to a non-threatening evaluation environment at the beginning of the season, and are then placed on appropriate teams.

Player evaluation is based on the universally accepted principles of the Four Corners of Development. These are Physical Maturity, Technical/Tactical Maturity, Social Maturity and Psychological Maturity. This method tries to ensure that children are best placed on teams suited to their individual needs rather than being placed purely according to chronological age. For this reason, you will find that at Hollandia, it is unusual for junior (first year in an age group) players to be placed on Premier teams.

Parents often view this policy as their child being in some way degraded, but the science behind this method of team formation is well proven around the world. In addition, it ensures that our junior teams are also competitive in their divisions, rather than having them stripped of players who have progressed a little more. Instead of good or bad players, at Hollandia, we tend to look at players as being “ready” or “not quite ready”.

The Hollandia evaluation process is relaxed and is game-based. We do not spend hours on useless drills and “technical evaluations” that may or may not be used by a player in the game. The application of technique on demand is much more important and is only visible in games.

Often, we receive registrations from players who are still chronologically in the U10 age group. While we accept their registrations for various reasons, our technical experts do not believe that U12 league soccer is the correct learning environment for them. If you are considering registering a U10 player with Hollandia, we ask you first to consider the FUNino program that is offered by our partner, ASTRA Soccer Academy. Details can be found at www.ASTRAsoccer.ca