Empire Training Centers (ETC’s) are supplementary training sessions for players in all of the Empire United districts (Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse) in age groups U11 through U15 for both boys and girls. These Training Centers are taking place once a month throughout the season, ending in April. Schedules for these events will be posted as soon as they are available.  There is no extra fee to participate other than the cost of traveling to the facility (carpooling is suggested). The Training Centers will take place in all three cities when possible and it’s encouraged that players attend the training centers whenever invited.

Goals for the Training Centers:

• To bring together top players from across the state to participate in high level academy-style training sessions at an earlier age
• Start identifying players for our Boys U.S. Soccer Development Academy Program and our Girls State Academy Program
• Educating families about the Empire teams participating in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy Program at the U14, U16 and U18 ages as well as the Girls State Academy teams.

Players are invited to the training centers by nominations from their local coaches and DOC’s at the request of the Academy staff. Based on desired roster sizes, previous performances in other ETC events, and information from our network of coaches, players are selected to participate.  The local Empire coaches will receive feedback on the players they previously recommended and they are encouraged to invite new players to the next training center. These opportunities are not entitled to any player and must be earned through performance in local training and competitions. 
 
On several occasions each season, guest coaches will come in and run the ETC for that month (see schedule link on the left). These ETC’s will then become Regional Training Centers (RTC’s).  This allows the MLS team an opportunity to also begin identifying young players as Empire is now part of the MLS Clubs development system.