This fall, a new era is set to begin in the Development Academy.

After six seasons focused on running U18 and U16 age groups, the Dev. Academy is adding another age group in the fall of 2013, with U13/U14 teams joining in major regions across the country.

A futsal court set up at Academy Playoffs.

A major initiative of the younger age group addition will be a futsal element to take place for the new age group.

“We’re really excited about the implementations of futsal, because we think it has tremendous value,” U.S. Soccer Director of Scouting Tony Lepore told TopDrawerSoccer.com. “All of our clubs will incorporate a heavy emphasis on futsal in January and February with a culminating event.”

With one eye on the new initiative, Lepore and the U.S. Soccer Technical Staff used the recent Development Academy Playoffs as an opportunity to not just evaluate its clubs, but to also educate and inform them about how the new age group and program will be implemented.

“We brought Keith Tozer in, he’s our Men’s National Team futsal coach, and we did a futsal coaching seminar/workshop with all the clubs,” Lepore explained. “He did a great workshop, sort of helping the coaches in how to prepare to coach futsal. That will be the first of many – he’ll be a really big part of everything we do, he’s a great resource for us, he’s really excited about this because nobody knows the value of futsal better. He’s one of two FIFA licensed futsal instructors.”

It’s obviously new territory for the Development Academy, and according to Lepore, it won’t quite be a straight duplicate as the older age groups. The same travel models won’t be employed, as the Federation seeks to cut costs in that regard.

There will only be one national event for the teams at that age, with most competitions reduced to those of the regional variety.

And while this is all going to be a different change of pace for those clubs already in the Academy, Lepore indicated that the teams were looking forward to it.

“I think this is where we have to give a really great compliment to our clubs,” he said. “We always came into this saying we need to change outdated thinking, embrace change. They’re really excited about it.”

Lepore is hopeful that dipping down even lower into the age group will improve development and the quality of player being produced in the United States, as the program continues to take another big step forward.

“I think we’re ready to keep raising the bar and I think we’re now in a good position where we can really look at training environments, and style of play, and positional training and how these things translate into the match,” he said. “One of the areas where we see progress is within style of play. I’m sure you noticed that this week [at the Academy Playoffs] that there’s a lot more teams playing out of the back, for example.

“But I think we need to get better with it, clubs need to get better with it. And I think 14s will help, because I think in many cases you can say 16s is too late. Because really what we’re talking about is helping players develop habits. And again, that’s why we’re so excited about the 13s/14s. I think some of these things are hard to ask because we haven’t been doing it then, and now they’ll have the structure in place at 13s and 14s as well and everything will be connected for the player pool from 2000s to maybe special 2001s, all the way to the 95s.”