A ski school, a Wayne office park, and a ‘godfather’ may be the secret to USMNT World Cup success

The school was tucked away in the mountains of northeastern Vermont, far enough from everything that Richie Graham said the only things around were a gas station and a general store.

Burke Mountain Academy — from which Graham graduated in 1987 — might not have had much outside its gates, but it did have a clear mission: produce world-class ski racers while providing a high school education.

“The middle of nowhere,” Graham said. “The school is like a farmhouse. It’s not a fancy kind of place. But it’s kind of the Juilliard of ski racing.”

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It opened in 1970 as the country’s first ski academy, drawing children from all over the world and serving as a feeder system to the U.S. ski team. BMA counts 36 Olympians — including gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin — among its graduates.

Graham, who grew up in York County, left there for Dartmouth, won an Ivy League soccer title, and soon settled in Philadelphia. But he was never quite able to shake those years he spent skiing in the middle of nowhere.

“I thought, ‘Gosh, soccer could use something like this,’ ” Graham said. “That was always in the back of my mind.”

If Burke Mountain looks like a farmhouse, then Youth Soccer Center Academy looks like a strip mall. The one-level building in a Wayne office park — less than two miles from the King of Prussia Mall — may be mistaken for a place to get new eyeglasses or to drop off your taxes.

But inside the nondescript brown building could be the secret to the U.S. one day winning a men’s World Cup.

The school, which opened in 2013, is exclusively attended by elite soccer players, almost all of whom train in the Union’s academy. It is the country’s first soccer-specific high school, opened by Graham after he traveled to study the models used by Europe’s top clubs.

Everything — from the delayed start of classes to allow for morning training to virtual lessons delivered when students are away with various U.S. national teams to even the adjusted schedule this month so students could watch the World Cup — revolves around soccer.

The 80 students train twice a day, meet with a nutritionist and a sports psychologist, have access to a world-class weight room, indoor soccer fields, and attend high school across the hall from the offices of the Union’s academy.

Graham, who is a part owner of the Union, believed a model like Burke Mountain was needed if the U.S. was ever going to become a soccer power.

“As I started to get closer to youth soccer, I recognized the idea that you couldn’t solve player development in our country without solving for education,” Graham said. “In other parts of the world, they would have an academy and the kids would come through and if they didn’t make it as a pro — which 95% don’t make it —they would be like, ‘OK. Well, thanks for trying.’ That wouldn’t work in our culture.

“If you think about the intersection of athletics and academics, you need to create a real environment in both of those areas. It couldn’t be a ‘Yeah, whatever, it’s a pretend school.’ It has to be a real school.”

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Chris Albright had a chance to play for Bayern Munich when he was 17 after an agent identified him, putting him in position to earn $70,000 a year. He turned it down.

“I wanted to run track in the spring at Penn Charter,” he said.

A professional career is the dream of the students at YSC, a goal that feels attainable as many graduates already play for the Union or in Europe’s top leagues. But in the 1990s, that felt like a fever dream for a teenager from Juniata Park. Albright hitched a ride each morning to Penn Charter with a teacher who lived in the neighborhood and played soccer with his friends in the afternoon. That was how the game was developed in Philadelphia for generations.

“I had no role model to look at and say, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s what you do.’ All of these kids now, can look at [the Union’s] Quinn Sullivan or whoever and say, ‘This is what you do.’ You go to the academy. You might not go to college. From there, you get identified for youth national teams. You might then have a pro career. There’s just much more inspiration for these kids to follow,” said Albright, who captained the Penn Charter track team to an Inter-Ac title. “The generation before me was the original trailblazers, but we were still blazing our own trail to get onto the national team.”

Frankie Westfield, a junior at YSC, lives in Morrell Park, a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood not far from where Albright grew up. His school day — which does not start until 12:30 p.m. — is built around his schedule with Union II, the team’s development squad that trains in Chester.

Of YSC’s 121 graduates, 14% have signed a professional contract and all but one of the remaining graduates have gone on to college. Westfield does not yet have a driver’s license, but he already seems positioned to chase his dream of being a pro. And it doesn’t seem as lofty as it did 25 years ago for a soccer player from Northeast Philly.

“I always wanted to be a professional soccer player and the Union Academy and YSC are helping me get there,” Westfield said. “Ever since I was little, I wanted to be a pro. I just think the best route to get there for me is to be in YSC and the academy.”

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Albright may not have had a road map like the kids at YSC, but he found a way to make his dream a reality. Before becoming FC Cincinnati’s general manager, he played 14 years in MLS and represented the U.S. at both the Olympics and the World Cup. He’s one of the best players to come out of Philadelphia. Albright made it, but now the path to those dreams just seems a bit more tangible.

“Richie is really a godfather in a lot of ways for youth development in our country as far as the structure, the resources, and the vision,” Albright said. “You’re creating a better chance, a bigger pool of talented players.”

The inspiration was found in the mountains of Vermont, but it was a visit to the principal’s office at the Shipley School that helped YSC become a reality. Graham was summoned there after his son, Tiger, fell into trouble.

“I walked into that meeting and was blown away,” Graham said of sitting across from Nooha Ahmed-Lee. “I got the sense that she was an advocate for our child. Every parent, when you walk into the principal’s office, you want the teachers to believe in your kid. She really gave me the sense of having that belief.”

Two years later, Graham asked Ahmed-Lee if she would join the board of directors for YSC as he was finally ready to create the idea that was always in the back of his mind. Ahmed-Lee said she wanted more. She wanted to run it.

“I’ve always joked that getting Nooha into our environment was like signing Messi,” Graham said. “In terms of her love for the kids, her passion for education, and focus on creating an environment that allows the kids to flourish and grow, the school wouldn’t be what it is today without her. She enables the kids to have a voice and have a choice in their education.”

Without YSC, the students likely would have attended some of the area’s best high schools. So it was important that YSC was able to provide a comparable education.

“It’s 100% on par and I would argue that it’s even better,” said Ahmed-Lee, YSC’s head of school. “I’ll tell you why — because when I worked at Shipley, Penn Charter, Episcopal, and all these schools, the reality is that these schools have a legacy of learning and a reputation. Their population is diverse. They’re not all athletes. Their lunchroom doesn’t have to cater to just the varsity team. Their style doesn’t have to just look at athletes. As a niche school, we can specifically look at athletes in the business of learning and incorporate practices that are very specific to how the brain learns.”

The average class size is just nine students with a 7-to-1 teacher-to-student ratio. Through a virtual program, the school also educates 20 players in Atlanta United’s academy.

Most of the teachers worked previously at area schools like Germantown Academy, Penn Charter, and Shipley. The students call teachers by their first names, move from class to class without bells, and choose which teacher they want as their mentor. The school, Ahmed-Lee said, believes in self-directed learning.

YSC — which is a member of the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools — costs $47,500 per year, but nearly all of the students receive financial aid or scholarships. Almost 35% of graduates continue at “highly selective schools” such as Princeton, Penn, Duke, Villanova, and Wake Forest.

“Ninety-five percent of the kids aren’t going to make it as a pro,” Graham said. “But they get a good solid education; they’ll get highly recruited, and we’re sending them to great schools. There are a lot of kids in our school who have been the first in their family to ever go to college. To use their passion, their sport to get an education is a game changer. We can look at the family and say, ‘We can’t guarantee that you’re going to be the next Brenden Aaronson. But we can guarantee we have a Plan A and Plan B for you and the Plan B is a pretty good Plan B.’ That’s the heart of the school.”

The principal’s office is in the middle of the hall at YSC as Ahmed-Lee works each day from a desk that sits inside the center of what the school calls Town Hall.

“I am the only head of school who does not sit in a big, old office,” Ahmed-Lee said. “It’s especially about the idea that the heart of the school is not behind an office, but it’s in the school. It’s with the kids. It’s seeing what’s happening. It’s how kids interact. I’ve never been in an office and it has a significant impact on the culture. You’re present. Teachers, kids see you. You don’t have to be that principal, disciplinarian because you’re part of the culture.”

Brendan Sullivan received a text message last year from a youth soccer coach who helped guide the career of a World Cup player. He was right, the coach told Sullivan. Right about what?

“Remember, years ago we were arguing about this and you said just give it time and it will produce more better players?” the coach responded. “You were right.”

For decades, the soccer path was to play club ball for FC Something while attending a school in the Inter-Ac or Catholic League. So the Union Academy — which trains boys as young as 9 — and YSC weren’t exactly met with open arms.

“This was a great disrupter,” said Sullivan, who played at St. Joseph’s Prep and Penn and now teaches at the school. “A lot of people involved with soccer were like, ‘This is terrible. The specialization, the professionalization for youth is bad.’ But what you’re seeing now is that it was good.”

But why does a soccer player need a specific high school if a Philadelphia teenager can reach the NBA after attending a school like Roman Catholic or an Imhotep Charter graduate can get drafted into the NFL?

Jared Micklos, who became YSC’s chief strategy officer after working in player development for U.S. Soccer, said the sport requires more training and instruction than a typical American sport. The players need individual training along with team training, which they receive every day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — at YSC.

“There’s a lot of players playing it at a youth level, but there are less players playing it at an elite level,” Micklos said. “If you think about high schools, they might have a lot more talented basketball players than they would soccer players. When you think about developing talent, the best players need to play with and against the best players. So putting them in these professional development environments where they can train alongside and compete with other guys who are at their level, it accelerates their development.

“That’s the benefit of pulling them out of the high school model and putting them into the academy model. The one thing that’s completely different from high school and the club environment when you think about the U.S. vs. the world, high school soccer happens over three to four months. There’s no consistency. They’re training with one team for high school and a totally separate team and teammates for another six to seven months. When you can put them together in a 10-, 11-month environment every year, they have much more opportunity to accelerate their development.”

The academy and YSC, Sullivan said, are not necessary for unearthing great players, as locals like Albright, Bobby Convey, and Brenden Aaronson always found their way in the past. But the system, Sullivan said, is identifying kids who may have been overlooked in the past.

“Ty Cobb would still be a great baseball player today because he would figure out a way to be a great baseball player because he was just great,” Sullivan said. “Ted Williams would be great at any point. He might not be the same Ted Williams, but he’d be great because he’s just great. The greats transcend time.

“The kid from Mayfair? No one even knows he exists back in the day unless you have the right coach or you’re at the right club. You’re getting missed. They did the best with what they could back then. Now, we don’t miss. I tell people all the time, ‘We don’t miss.’ You can’t miss. You’re here. We have people watching all the time.”

Graham dreamed when he opened YSC that a graduate would play for the U.S. in the World Cup. That dream became a reality this month when Aaronson, who grew up in Medford and graduated from YSC in 2019, made it to Qatar.

“We can’t take credit for Brenden,” Graham said. “Brenden is an incredible talent and his parents and his environment had a lot to do with what Brenden is today, but he’s a big part of embodying the culture of our school. He’s humble. He’s a hard worker. He’s a kid who comes to practice early and leaves late.”

Four graduates of last year’s class — Quinn Sullivan, Brandan Craig, Paxten Aaronson, and Jack McGlynn — have already played for the Union. Paxten Aaronson, who recently joined Eintracht Frankfurt, will debut soon in Germany. Brenden Aaronson now plays in the English Premier League with Leeds United and Mark McKenzie plays for Genk in Belgium. Cavan Sullivan, Quinn’s brother, and Brendan’s youngest son, is a 13-year-old ninth grader who has already been courted by European powers.

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The one-floor school in the Wayne office park is bubbling with elite talent, just as the farmhouse once did in the snowy mountains of Vermont.

And just as that Vermont ski school became a pipeline to the U.S. team, YSC hopes to do the same for the U.S. men’s national team.

The World Cup is coming to America in 2026 with Philadelphia as a host city. There’s a chance in four years that more than one YSC graduate could be on the team. It’s a model that is being studied by other MLS teams as the soccer-specific high school could become the norm in America. Perhaps that is the secret to the U.S. winning a World Cup.

“If we want to be a world contender, we have to [be] very thoughtful about the learning environments we design,” Graham said. “And the learning environments have to fit our culture. We can’t just copy what they’re doing in Holland or Germany or France. We have to do it in our own American way. From my view, you can’t solve it here in the U.S. without first solving it for education. To have that sports-academy environment, where you can do both, is a massive accelerator for development.”

Next fall, the school will move to Chester, allowing the players to train on the same fields as the Union’s first team. That will provide inspiration on its own. And it’s safe to expect that the framed jerseys — each one representing a graduate who turned pro — that adorn one of the rooms in Wayne will be brought to the new building.

Those jerseys are reminders to the students at YSC that a professional soccer career is possible. The road map, the one a teenager in the 1990s didn’t have, is hanging on the wall.

“We’re creating environments for these kids to learn about who they are,” Graham said. “How well they actually end up doing is kind of irrelevant. I always say that to the boys and they shake their heads. I tell them, ‘How far you go in the game doesn’t matter, it’s who you become in the process of trying to be your best.’ That’s what it’s all about.”