Vantage Football Club gets started | News, Sports, Jobs

ABOVE: Eli Broomfield explains a drill during the Vantage Football Club Free Soccer Camp at the Jeffery Kot Fields on Sunday. Photo courtesy of Dianna Jennings.

FAIRMONT – Vantage Football Club is a new organization making early impacts on the Fairmont athletic community, proposing to provide affordable, high-quality soccer to individuals of all backgrounds.

The non-profit corporation created by Eli Broomfield looks to change the mentality behind the sport completely.

Broomfield has been involved with soccer ever since he was little, spending a majority of his early days competing in his home country of England.

He moved to Fairmont around 2019 and joined the high school as a sophomore. After playing for the Cardinals a handful of seasons, Broomfield took his soccer skills to the coaching side of the sport, overseeing the Richmond Kickers Soccer Club and the Minnesota Rush in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Spending a majority of his life involved in all aspects of soccer, Broomfield has seen the issues at hand, claiming some talent is held back from playing due to aggressive prices and uneducation in coaches.

“Being around lots of different clubs, I think clubs either don’t offer affordable soccer, where all over the country it’s very, very expensive,” Broomfield said. “When it is affordable, the high quality environment isn’t actually there. The qualifications behind the knowledge isn’t actually brought to the players either.”

In order to counter those problems, Broomfield got to work by putting on a pair of free soccer sessions for any athletes between the ages 5 through 18 on Aug. 3 and 10. Hosting the hour and a half long practices at Jeffery Kot Fields, Broomfield used an assortment of experienced coaches to practice skills and drills for kids of all talents.

“It’s just giving people a free place to play,” Broomfield said. “It’s giving players just a fun time and getting some smiles on their faces.”

Participants were broken down into four age groups: 5-8, 9-12, and 13-18. Groups were accompanied by a specific coach to work through drills, encapsulating every level of talent on the spectrum.

Each practice was structured to give athletes ample time to enhance both individual and team skillsets.

“I normally like my sessions to go from small to big,” Broomfield said. “That means start small with more small minded games like warmups and technical shooting drills. As the session goes on, we go into a 3v2 drill, more for the older ones, and then we scrimmage at the end,”

Practice schedules for the younger age groups weren’t entirely focused on improving skills, but rather, enhancing their experience. At the end of the day, getting these individuals in contact with the sport is what matters the most.

“It’s just about making everything fun,” Broomfield said. “Fun games like Star Wars or Pirates. We know the meaning behind it, where we are just getting players lots of touches on the ball, because that’s all they need at a young age.”

While creating a practice for all ages and talent levels seems great on paper, organizing the specific drills was initially a challenge for Broomfield and his coaches.

Tailoring different workouts that allowed all individuals to participate was difficult, specifically in the company’s first session.

“We found that in the first one,” Broomfield said. “There would be one drill where it was just too confusing. Understanding the level of players and where they are at, cause a lot of these players I’ve never seen. The first one was good for understanding the level of these players.”

Broomfield countered this in the second session. After initially creating the schedule himself, he allowed each coach to curate a practice plan for their own age group.

This helped not only because each coach was already used to the age group, but overall, got used to coaching a youthful level after one session.

“I think the coaches got along with all the kids, especially by the second one[practice],” Broomfield said. “I gave coaches the ability to make their sessions, then I tweaked it to make sure it was the standard of US Soccer.”

So, what’s next for Vantage FC?

With the summer coming to a close, Broomfield has his sights on the continuing growth of his new company. The goal throughout the rest of the year is to spread the word about Vantage FC while also still providing interested athletes with opportunities to play the sport.

For Broomfield, he hopes to dive into the world of indoor soccer this winter. Indoor soccer in Fairmont has been prevalent to some capacity, but Broomfield hopes to enhance that experience, especially at the youth level.

“A big, big thing I want to push is getting players touches on the ball,” Broomfield said. “Young players move onto a bigger field way sooner than they should. But in indoor and small-sided games, everyone’s getting lots and lots of touches.”