A Look Inside FC Dallas’ Academy and Frisco ISD’s Collaborative Success
By Stephen Hunt
FC Dallas’ origin story began in 1996 when the Dallas Burn was one of ten original members of Major League Soccer (MLS). Before rebranding as FC Dallas (FCD) to coincide with the August 2005 opening of Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, now Toyota Stadium, the Burn played at The Cotton Bowl at Dallas Fair Park and at Southlake’s Dragon Stadium. Since opening, Toyota Stadium has hosted many high-profile events, soccer and otherwise, including college and high school football games, concerts, and the like.
One method that soccer clubs from around the world employ in getting players is developing them in their youth academies. Under such arrangements, players play for the club and often start at a young age hoping to one day join the first team (the club’s professional team) and realize their childhood dream of playing professional soccer. At many of these clubs, these academy players live on the club’s training grounds and are fully immersed in soccer to give them the best chance of success.
In 2008, FCD decided to start its own academy, creating a platform to promote talented youth players into professional soccer players. The FCD Academy has never been a resident program where players live on-site, but 35 Academy players, the most in MLS, have been signed as Homegrown Players with the FCD first team since 2009, when midfielder Bryan Leyva was the first Dallas Academy player signed to a pro contract. There have also been numerous successes on the girls’ youth side, including Monica Alvarado, an Academy product who played for Mexico in two different Women’s World Cups and countless players who have played in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the current women’s pro league here in the States.
Chris Hayden is Vice President of FC Dallas Youth Soccer & Academy Director and has been on the job since day one. Both he and FCD owners Clark and Dan Hunt remain ecstatic over the quantity and quality of talent the Academy has produced and continues to produce. “I’ve been here a long time – enough to see the launch of the Academy and some of the evolution. In that short period, it’s hard to imagine where we are [now],” Hayden said. “When you stand back and look at what we launched and what we’re doing today, it’s [a] completely different scale with a larger number of players and it’s more challenging now than it was then when it was smaller. Obviously, when we launched, our goal was to produce professional players, but we hadn’t done it before. It was a plan on paper essentially.”
And the numbers continue speaking for themselves. FCD currently has seven players: Justin Che, Jesus Ferreira, whose father, David also played for FCD and was 2010 MLS MVP, Antonio Carrera, Nolan Norris, Paxton Pomykal, Tarik Scott, and Dante Sealy, whose father, Scott, also played in MLS, on its first-team roster who played in the Academy. In the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Academy products Kellyn Acosta, Jesus Ferreira, Weston McKennie, and Shaq Moore all represented the United States, while fellow Academy alum Tanner Tessman served as Captain for the US Olympic team at the 2024 Paris Summer Games. Former Academy teammate of Tessman’s, Johan Gomez, served as an alternate for the Olympic Soccer team, and another academy product, Jaedyn Shaw, was an alternate in Paris for the US Women’s Olympic Soccer Team.
When FCD started the academy, the organization envisioned several pathways for players in the system: they could either go directly from the academy to the first team as Homegrown Players, play well enough in tournaments to catch the eye of college coaches, and earn scholarships to play collegiate soccer and then return to FCD as a professional, or even get drafted by another MLS club. Seeing so many academy players go on to experience success in MLS, with national teams, or in other leagues abroad gives Hayden and everyone affiliated with the academy an enormous sense of pride.
A True Gamechanger
Not only was FCD looking to develop great players through its on-field academy programs at various ages and levels of play, but the organization also prioritized developing their character and making them well-rounded individuals. One way the club accomplished this was to partner with the Frisco Independent School District (FISD) on an abbreviated academic schedule for its players so they could focus on soccer while simultaneously keeping up with their studies.
Initial talks on how this partnership would work started in 2008 and were implemented two years later, something which Hayden calls one of two landmark moments for the FCD Academy. The other was the 2018 founding of North Texas SC, basically the FCD reserve team which plays at Choctaw Stadium in Arlington, former home of the Texas Rangers, in MLS Next Pro, a second-tier league which gives players from the Academy and first team additional opportunity to receive game experience.
“We had worked with [former FISD superintendent] Dr. [Rick] Reedy, who was retiring, and Dr. [Jeremy] Lyon after that. At launch, we were at Liberty High School, but we moved to Lone Star in year two and beyond,” Hayden said. “The district was much different back then. There were a lot fewer schools. They were continuing to build schools.”
“The district has been fantastic in allowing us to do two things: 1) having a lot more time with our players because we could train daily and 2) be on a path to graduate on time, which is a challenge. We can’t just have kids training on the field and not be on a path to college. We have a lot of kids that are away for national team duty or for travel with the Academy. The district works with us to help them stay caught up on their academics, allowing them to graduate at the normal time.”
The abbreviated schedule has since expanded to Hunt Middle School, named for former FCD owner Lamar Hunt and his wife, Norma, and Hayden estimates that between Lone Star and Hunt there are about 100 kids in the Academy attending classes and receiving top-notch support at both campuses.
“At Lone Star, we have a counselor, Leslie Warstler, that’s assigned to our players. She’s responsible for helping support the academic and social growth of the players there that belong to our program,” Hayden said. “We have great support from the district. The school district is really strong. Those kids are able to get a first-class soccer education and an academic experience that prepares them for college. The vast majority of kids in our program are going to college.”
Tarik Scott is one Academy product currently playing for the FCD first team who fondly remembers his time at both Hunt and Lone Star for how nurturing everyone at those two schools was for him and his fellow students. “It was good. The staff, they obviously held us to a higher standard,” Scott said. “They made it very clear that we have to make sure that we’re doing what we’re supposed to. It’s obviously a privilege to have that because a lot of schools don’t do that.”
“We get to come in a little bit later, miss a period, and the teachers take extra time with us. The teachers were very patient. They were very in touch with us, always making sure that we were on top of our things. The club, the coaching staff and teachers were always working together. Everyone was always in the loop knowing what was going on. Having that accountability, not just from our coaches and teachers, but also for ourselves to say it’s a privilege and we got to take it as such [was great].”
For Lone Star principal Keith Tolleson, the positive impact his teachers and staff continue to have on the FCD Academy kids vividly illustrates just how mutually beneficial this partnership has been and continues to be both for the district and for FC Dallas as an organization. “Soccer is very important to the students, and Frisco ISD can support their pursuit of excellence on the field while helping them pursue academic achievements and knowledge that will be important whatever their future path may be,” Tolleson said.
Principal Tolleson continues,“The partnership with Frisco ISD provides a traditional high school experience while supporting their extracurricular goals, which requires a unique time commitment outside of school compared to other school-associated extracurricular activities. Without this partnership, many of the players would be limited in the type of school environment available to them. Frisco ISD and Lone Star High School get an opportunity to build positive relationships with students in the Academy who come from a variety of backgrounds and watch as they develop into productive young men, and in many cases, elite professionals.”
And for Academy products like Scott, who was born in Brooklyn, New York but moved to the Dallas area at a young age, feeling well cared for is something he’s experienced not only during his time at Hunt and Lone Star, but one he’s felt from day one with FCD. “It’s always a good feeling to know I’m home. A lot of players can go to college and experience different places, but it’s good I got to stay home and continue my pro journey here,” he said.
“I was in the youth system before I joined the Academy and just being able to go all the way through the ranks and really show that it works, that it’s not just something that the Hunts are preaching to the people, it’s something that they’ve put their time into and they’ve invested in me and the rest of the guys that came up with me. It’s made me the player I am today, being able to come through that and having coaches that took the time with me every step of the way to help bring me here [to the first team], which is the goal.”
For Hayden, the goal of the FCD academy remains to prepare its players for the future, whether that means playing pro soccer, attending college or going in a completely different direction, preparing these young players embodies the FCD Way, an organizational philosophy encouraging players to “find the way”, a mantra which goes beyond winning, instead challenging players to find success and fulfillment in endeavors on and off the field.
And Hayden and the entire FC Dallas organization realize that were it not for the ongoing mutually beneficial partnership with FISD, the FCD Academy would not have reached the considerable heights it already has in the soccer world. “None of what we do would be possible without that relationship. It’s hard to replicate the support that we’ve gotten,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of MLS clubs around the country that are jealous of the relationship that we have and how we’ve done in the past is directly tied to their support. Can’t say enough about it.”
Stephen Hunt is a Frisco-based freelance writer.
