It's not that it's a new direction, so much as it's a direction.

And, the president of the Hamilton and District Soccer Association believes it's the correct one.

Hamilton United Elite and the Burlington Youth Soccer Club kick off a pair of (girls and boys) U-13 matches at the University of Western Ontario in two weeks with Ontario soccer executives hoping the new league they're playing in establishes a blueprint for developing better, more complete, elite players.

The Ontario Player Development League opens its inaugural season May 3, with only one age group for 2014: Under-13. But an older age level will be added each year until the league stretches all the way to Under-17s. Then, the OSA will decide whether to establish a U-20 division or extend the age boundaries to U-23, a concept that is already under discussion.

"The idea is to create a pathway for developing young elite players, to further play at the elite level of soccer, meaning professional or university," says John Gibson, HDSA president.

While soccer has always had among the broadest participation bases - and at times the broadest base - in Canadian sport, the route to the top of that pyramid has traditionally been unclear, gusting up to mystifying. Cultural, regional and unnecessarily petty politics have created roadblocks to a unified effort to develop the best players, using best current practices.

The OPDL hopes to address that. It defines itself as not only high performance but standards based. And the standards are not only for players, but for just about every one, and every thing, involved.

"It's a curriculum for athleticism for the club, the team, the coaches and the players," Gibson says. "It's about athletic development, play development, mental development.

"For want of a better description, it is a cookie-cutter program. What you will get in Hamilton, you will get in Ottawa."

What the players get is an 11-month program with league play that runs on Saturdays only until November, then switches to the off-season focus on skills and overall athletic development.

They'll play for a team that must have a head coach with a provincial B licence (the highest coaching certificate in Ontario), an athletic therapist, a paid administrator and a goalkeeping coach. And there must be remuneration for all the men and women in those positions.

Even the playing grounds will be pegged to certain province-wide standards, including access to both grass and artificial pitches and acceptable locker-rooms. The idea is to create the same travel expectations for all teams.

In each of the West and East divisions, all the games will be played on the same day in the same place. Week 1 in the West, for example, is at Western, Week 2 is at McMaster. City View Park (a Pan Am Games approved practice site) and Norton Park in Burlington will play host to slates of games.

"The motivation for having the games all at one place each week is for scouting by university and provincial teams," Gibson says. "They get to see all the teams in one day."

Gibson says it will cost the H&DSA $75,000 per team per season in the OPDL. So finances were a factor in the association entering an amalgamated team from the many clubs under its umbrella. Limited manpower was an issue too.

The cost to a Hamilton United Elite player will be $3,000 for the season, more expensive than existing soccer programs but less expensive than roughly equivalent year-round programs in minor baseball.

After a call went out to all member clubs, Saltfleet SC, Mount Hamilton SC and Ancaster SC stepped up to collaborate on Hamilton United Elite. Gibson says Hamilton is the only one of the 18 soccer centres involved that has amalgamated club forces for the OPDL.

There will be both girls' and boys' divisions in the new league and Hamilton and Burlington are in the eight-team West along with Aurora, Glen Shields, Kleinburg, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Richmond Hill.

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British Columbia was the first provincial association to implement a development league, a concept accredited by the Canadian Soccer Association, and Quebec is about to become the third province with a defined streaming program.

The development programs aren't going to solve all of Canada's soccer woes. The men are ranked a ridiculous 112th in the world and women's coach John Herdman has repeatedly said, glumly, that, even though his team won Olympic bronze, there was no system in place to find and nurture the next Christine Sinclair or Melissa Tancredi.

It took Canada a long time to sink into this mess, and it will take a while to extricate itself. But an elite youth league which establishes high and consistent standards of instruction and development and eventually attracts the best players in the country's most populous province, has to be a good start.