For most of the clubs in the Development Academy this fall, this year is uncharted territory.

CASL Chelsea, based in North Carolina, is one of several clubs kicking off the new format of the Academy season under the new ten-month calendar. The new experience designed to increase the amount of training times among elite boys soccer players in the United States.

“We’re excited to venture into the ten-month calendar,” CASL U18 head coach Rusty Scarborough told TopDrawerSoccer.com. “To have our kids early on now, four days a week for training has been awesome. They’ve trained hard for six weeks, just kicked off the season this past week.”

While some clubs in Texas and California have employed this schedule recently, out East for many teams it’s a new experience. First and foremost, as Scarborough indicated, the new schedule allows the players to come in earlier in the year and gives them time to train before the season starts.

“It actually gave us a true preseason, whereas in the past we were training on Sundays throughout the fall and really never had our full team at trainings,” Scarborough said. “We’d go to the showcase games in December, probably never had more than a week at most in training.”

Of course, the demands of the ten-month schedule also create challenges at the club level for CASL, as it does for others. It means a lot of time invested by coaches, players and everyone else involved as players come in four times a week for an even longer part of the year.

And that’s something CASL has dealt with during the early days of its season.

“I think it’s an adjustment for us and I’m sure for most clubs in the Academy league,” Scarborough said. “Coaches, myself included, are now coaching an Academy team, and now all of a sudden I’ve got three teams I’m coaching this fall instead of one or two in the past.

“It puts a little bit of strain on our time constraints as far as being on the field, travel, game schedules, everything, you’ve got to be organized every time and very coordinated within the staff. We’ve done a good job, but it has put little bit of extra stress trying to make sure we can try to put our commitments on the club.”

On the field, the U16 and U18 teams both look very competitive. The U18 team includes Evan Deycaza, Eric O’Brien and Evan Krause, to name a few, while the U16 team has Nicolas Retzlaff, William Ramirez, Donald Mason and Dakota Brinkman.

Last weekend, the season opener provided mixed results, as the U16 team lost 3-2 against the South Carolina United Battery, while the U18s bested the battery by a 2-0 score.

Scarborough isn’t getting carried away, and along with the off-field logistical challenges of the new schedule, it also provides the time to cope with the roller coaster nature of Academy soccer.

“There are going to be highs and lows throughout any season, you want to make sure you’re peaking at the right times, maybe level off and come back, peak again at the end of the season,” he said.

“So that’s going to be critical to our success or any success of any of the league teams. Every game is not the end-all, be-all, it’s just another stepping stone for us to continue to get better. At the end of the day, we want to make sure we’re successful in our league, division and hopefully have a chance to play in the regional environment in June.”

The Academy season continues on September 29 for CASL when they take on Kendall SC.