The newly founded Sandy Spring Soccer Club was created to close a missing piece in the Olney-North Silver Spring area that the club’s founders thought had been missing for a long time, and that was the ever so often used word in soccer circles, development. The club’s philosophy is based on years of studying the game of soccer from the 2 year old level up to the professional level, where the club’s co-founders have spent many years learning. As we know there is a drastic difference between the levels and not much can be asked for at the younger age groups except to develop an environment of fun, but at the professional level where one of the club’s founders, Justin Reid, worked as an agent, the keyword that tended to bounce around alot was character.
Reid explains, “In my four years working as an agent for the Krahling Sports Agency (now Krahling Consulting), really helped me learn about professional soccer. Without KSA, I don’t think that I was ever thinking about the professional game, but when I saw the posting for the agency position a little over 8 years ago, I knew that this was a once in a lifetime chance to join a company that represented professional athletes. During my four years, the word character was used alot in the professional soccer circles and it was the mantra for our agency. One person who used it alot when we’d meet was current US Men’s National Team Head Coach Gregg Berhalter, who at the time was the head coach for the Columbus Crew. He had signed a couple of our players in the four years, but one player who I presented to him was looking for a move to the U.S. and his team had just been relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in England. Berhalter passed on him because he had heard after doing his research on the player that he had locker room issues. So he passed on him.”
The club’s directors have an experience that is quite frankly unmatched in the DC, MD, VA area when coming to other club directors. The club is open to all players, however, there is an extra desire to attract high character players and parents. There will be times when the club will score a lot of goals vs. teams and other teams will score a lot of goals against SSSC. It is easy for parents and kids to get caught up in scores, but that doesn’t matter, we want the kids to learn how to be competitive. However, most importantly we want their success on the field to translate to success off the field whether in the classroom or in their social lives.