America's Got Talent, Not Time

Let's take a dive into the talent pool.

  America’s got talent. A lot of talent. What it doesn’t have though is time and a cohesive system to identify and develop that talent to maturity. The short timeline for the development of talent undermines the country's ability to succeed at the highest level. A multitude of factors play a role, yet the most influential is the win now mentality driven by the demands of college and youth sport. This mentality  - and the money behind it - dominates the American sport landscape; it leads to early selection and deselection, myopic views of talent, and the narrowing of the playing pool before most athletes have time to emerge and fully develop.

Recruiting accelerates the timeline. We expect more from athletes at an earlier age. We evaluate them at an earlier age. We select and deselect them at an earlier age. The consequence is that an abundance of talent drops out of the pathway, or goes unidentified and undeveloped. A number of factors contribute to drop out from the high performance pathway including cost, perceived bias, early selection, time, travel and limited opportunity. The national high performance pathway rather than creating a system that accounts for the bias of the college model, has actually reinforced its bias by promoting a pay-to-play, national rather than regional high performance pathway that emphasizes early talent selection rather than talent identification, quality coaching and development.  

What Does a Healthy Talent Pool Look Like?

    Talent is the number one requisite for success in my opinion. Top teams and national programs have talent. Not a few talents, but a large, diverse pool of talent that seems to replenish itself year after year. A healthy talent pool has a blend of mature, emerging, and raw talent. Put talent in the right environment with the right coaching and provide it with enough opportunity to mature, and the likelihood of success improves drastically. That is why recruiting is such big business. Programs need talent to deliver results. Specifically, programs need talent that fits its philosophy and timeline for winning.

When I reflect back on my career with the USA Women’s National Team, I recognize that my longevity was in part due to a strategically created high performance talent development pathway from 2005 - 2013*. Some of the key characteristics of that system were:

• The pool of athletes was kept relatively large, competitive, and mature through the existence of regional high performance centers that emphasized quality coaching, player commitment, and competitive cultures infused with regional pride.
• The type of talent within the pool was diverse, especially in the later stages of my career. There was positional talent, leadership talent, skill talent, physical talent, grit talent and tactical talent. One type of talent was not celebrated or ‘showcased’ over another. It was recognized that different types of talent were needed for team success.
• The talent was at different stages of development - there was a blend of mature talent, emerging talent, and raw talent. The mature talent often nurtured the raw talent and introduced them to the standards of high performance. Talent was given the opportunity to learn and mature through the system and national competition.
• The talent was nurtured through the pathway and selected when it was ready for high performance; talent wasn’t pushed through the pathway too soon. In some cases, the ones who were pushed too early dropped out.
• The talent remained in the pathway at the regional level even when not selected for the WNT. This improved the maturity of competition at the national tournament.

    When I look at the current high performance talent pool, a few things stand out to me. 

• There is an abundance of emerging and raw talent; and a lack of mature talent
• There is a steady rate of drop-out at an early age because of constant selection and deselection. This means the playing pool is kept relatively small and young, and leans upon a few talents to deliver results over a long period of time.
• There is a lack of diversity within the playing pool. A very specific type of early-developed, wealth-backed talent enters and survives the system due to the cost of the pathway
• There is not consistent, high quality coaching at all levels within the pathway

*The system was reformatted in 2013. National Team members were removed from the competition. Athletes competed as individuals on randomly appointed teams rather than regional teams. 

The Talent Timeline: Identification vs. Selection

The timeline for winning has a huge impact on how we identify and select talent. It also effects the amount of pressure we put on talent to perform. I don’t think we talk about talent timelines enough. What I mean by a talent timeline is the time between when talent is identified and when we need or expect it to be able to deliver results on a specific level. The talent timeline in the USA is expedited because of the demands of the college game. College coaches are expected to win now, and if not now, then soon. So logically, college coaches select talent that they think is best suited to win now (or soon) on the college level. 

    This ethos has a huge impact on the high performance talent pool. First, it impacts the type of talent that is identified and selected. Second, it creates a motivational structure that emphasizes selection/recruiting over developing.  The type of talent identified typically comes in two forms: international recruits and dominant show-case performers.  

    International recruits are perceived as being more prepared to deliver results now for a multitude of reasons. In my opinion, these include: 

• In general, international athletes possess an overall better understanding of the game tactically and strategically developed through game play and watching the game at a higher level. (international league structures provide very different competitive experiences than American showcase tournaments)
• In general, international athletes tend to be more mature and responsible because there is less parental hand-holding in sport. I remember the Dutch kids I coached were responsible for riding their bikes to practice and getting there on time.
• In general, international athletes possess more deliberate and precise technical skills appropriately applied under pressure. This may have something to do with the surface and the coaching kids receive at early ages. This could be the reason for the dominance of international defenders/backs in the college game. 

Beyond international talent, the other type of talent that is perceived as being more prepared to deliver results comes in the form of what I call dominant showcase performers - the early-developed, observably-skilled athletes who stand out in the showcase environment. The ones who catch your eye when you sit on a sideline watching game after game of hockey in the hot sun or freezing cold. The showcase environment has a few definitive features - multiple games in a short period of time, random team placements, games played in random formats (not 4x15), games played on random surfaces.  

    In the show-case style environment, the motivation isn’t necessarily to develop important competitive habits, or execute team plans but to be ‘seen and selected’ by potential recruiters. This incentivizes an individualistic style of play (everyone is a center midfielder mentality) that may not be successful in the team environment or correlate to longterm high performance success. This type of athlete may be successful at the college level, yet does not always translate to the international game. 

How We Identify Talent

Identifying talent is tough. When we watch a player perform at their peak, the talent is clear and obvious; it shines because it fits its role within the style of play. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen examples of when talent does not fit the philosophy or role and rather than shining, it becomes stagnant. The challenge is to be able to identify talent in the peaks and the valleys. By valley, literally, the low area between the peaks, when the athlete isn’t dominant, on the ball, ripping backhands, standing out, or in the best-resourced environment. Catching a glimpse of an elite behavior in an otherwise ordinary moment is what talent identification at an early age is all about. Talent identification, especially at an early age, is about catching a glimpse, and asking the question if this ordinary something can be transformed into something extra-ordinary over the long term within a positive environment. 

The problem in this country is that we don’t linger in the question of identification and development very long. We go directly from identification to selection. There is little time, space and opportunity for development.  We make a bet on an athlete and jump directly from talent identification - that glimpse of something - to talent selection and deselection. 

    The environment in which these national selections are made is less than ideal. Selections occur during the course of a 3-day tournament in which players are randomly assigned to teams, playing in random positions, with coaches who have limited prior experience with the athletes. The margin of error for deselection is huge. Deselection narrows your playing pool too early, too often, and leads to an overemphasis on early-developed talent, or talent that can win now. There isn't a holding space for the athletes who may have the potential to win later. 

    For instance, at the 2022 Nexus Jr. Championship, the elite athlete playing pool was narrowed by 80% on average per age group (u14, u16, u19). Out of 216 athletes at the u14 and u19 age groups, 38 and 40 athletes were respectively selected to the Stars and Stripes Games. Even fewer were invited to Junior National Camp. The problem isn't necessarily selection and who gets picked; it is deselection, who does't get picked and drops out. The next tier talent often drops out of the system. This has a long term impact on the talent pool. 

A System to Account for Bias

  Talent identification is a very difficult business; no one can predict with certainty who will emerge, when, and with what opportunity. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the high performance pathway to account for the short-term bias within the system. Currently, America lacks a cohesive system to account for this bias. Instead, the pathway reinforces the bias by focusing on showcase style events, pay-to-play models, and selection rather than development at an early age. 

    We need to broaden the talent pool at the regional level by identifying athletes with potential elite behaviors in the long run. We need to expose more athletes to consistent quality coaching and steady team competition - more leagues less showcase structures.  By broadening the talent pool on a regional level, we can account for the underlying risk of bias in the talent selection process.  Make the emphasis of these regional sites development and competition rather than selection and recruiting (selection and recruiting should be byproducts of, rather than the primary motivation of the system)

   Critical to success in the years to come will be creating a high performance pathway that:

• Nurtures emerging talent into full maturity
• Identifies and celebrates diverse types of talent 
• Provides more athletes the resources and opportunity to succeed
• Provides opportunity/financial support for athletes from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds
• Provides regional training model to broaden talent pool
• Provides competition that resembles the international game (4x15) and emphasizes team results over individual results

    My biggest fear is that culturally and systemically, we have become so invested in identifying the shiny new talent that we have neglected to develop systems that bring emerging talent into full maturity. We don’t give talent enough time and appropriate opportunity to develop. We demand too much of it too early, and when it doesn’t immediately deliver, we drop it, or it drops out. We need to re-evaluate our model and motivations. Because right now, America's got talent, not time.