Welcome to Summit Valley United and Summit Valley United Youth Academy.
What started as an opportunity to provide competitive adult soccer in the Winchester area is gradually becoming something much bigger. Summit Valley United is building a complete soccer club with competitive adult teams, a growing Youth Academy, and a long-term pathway designed to give players opportunities to develop and continue playing the game from youth through adulthood.
Our footprint continues to grow across Winchester, Northern Virginia, the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and surrounding communities. We are still building, still learning, and certainly nowhere near where we ultimately want to be, but the direction of the club is becoming clearer with every season.
Our goal is to create something sustainable that provides players with quality coaching, structured training, competitive opportunities, and somewhere to continue progressing as their game develops. Whether that player is taking their first steps into organized soccer, competing within our Academy, playing at a higher youth level, or looking for competitive adult soccer, we want Summit Valley United to provide a pathway for them.
Where It Started: Adult Soccer
The adult side of Summit Valley United came first and has been an important part of establishing the club. Since beginning as Berryville FC in 2024, our men's teams have competed in different levels of adult soccer, including the United Premier Soccer League (UPSL) and Washington Premier League (WPL).
Those experiences taught us a tremendous amount about what it actually takes to build and sustain an adult soccer program. Competitive soccer requires much more than finding enough players to fill a roster. It requires consistent training, committed players, coaches, facilities, league fees, officials, equipment, sponsors, administration, and a structure capable of supporting the team beyond a single season.
For Fall 2026, Summit Valley United begins its next chapter in the American Premier Soccer League (APSL) as part of the Old Dominion Conference. The APSL gives us another opportunity to establish a serious first-team environment while continuing to build the core group of players that we believe can take the club forward.
The goal is not simply to play another season. We want to build an adult program where players train consistently, compete for positions, earn opportunities, and understand what it means to represent the club.
Read more about Summit Valley United joining the APSL →
Alongside the men's program, we are continuing to work toward establishing a competitive women's team. We have already begun holding women's training opportunities and bringing players together, with the longer-term goal of creating a sustainable team capable of entering competitive league play.
Building the Youth Pathway
While the adult program represents where players can eventually go, Summit Valley United Youth Academy represents where that journey can begin.
Our Youth Academy is being built around structured development rather than simply creating teams. We want players to have an environment appropriate to their age and ability, while also being able to see what the next stage of their development could look like.
The Academy pathway currently consists of three levels:
- First Touch provides an introduction to soccer for our youngest and developing players, focusing on confidence, coordination, ball familiarity, and enjoyment of the game.
- Rising XI provides the next stage of development, introducing greater structure, technical development, tactical understanding, and competitive opportunities.
- APEX XI represents the highest competitive level within the Academy pathway, preparing players for increasingly demanding soccer and creating a bridge toward the opportunities that exist beyond youth soccer.
These programs are designed to work together. A player should be able to enter the Academy at an appropriate level, develop at their own pace, and understand what they need to do to progress.
The long-term objective is for that pathway to eventually connect directly with our adult programs. We want Academy players to grow up seeing Summit Valley United's adult teams as something they can work toward rather than reaching the end of youth soccer and wondering what comes next.
Eight Teams Representing the West Virginia Academy
The West Virginia Youth Academy is currently the largest part of our youth program and provides a great example of how quickly the vision is beginning to take shape. For the current season, we have eight teams representing Summit Valley United:
- Werewolves – U15
- Alpha – U13
- Peak – U13
- Lobos – U12
- Stealth – U12
- Sabre Wolves – U11
- Rising Wolves – U10
- Elite Wolves – U10
Our teams are competing through EDP and EDP Futures, giving players the opportunity to develop through regular training while testing themselves against teams from across the region. Rising Wolves and Elite Wolves compete at U10 through EDP Futures, while our older Academy teams compete through EDP.
Going from the idea of creating an Academy to having eight teams representing the club is something we are incredibly proud of, but we also recognize that this is only the beginning. The challenge now is not simply to add more teams, but to continue improving the experience, coaching, structure, and opportunities available to the players and families already part of the Academy.
Growing the West Virginia Academy
There is significant opportunity for the Academy to continue growing throughout the Eastern Panhandle and surrounding communities. We want to add players and teams where it makes sense, continue recruiting and developing coaches, improve the quality of our training environment, and create additional opportunities for players looking for competitive soccer.
One of the biggest areas we want to develop next is girls' soccer. The Academy needs to provide meaningful opportunities for both boys and girls, and creating dedicated girls' teams is an important part of our next stage of growth.
We do not want to create teams simply so we can say we have them. We want to make sure we have the players, coaching, facilities, competition, and structure necessary to give those teams a genuine opportunity to succeed. Building that properly takes time, but expanding opportunities for girls within the West Virginia Academy is absolutely part of where we are heading.
Bringing the Academy to Virginia
The Academy vision has never been limited to West Virginia. We are now beginning to work toward establishing our first Summit Valley United Youth Academy teams in Virginia, with the goal of having an initial group of teams ready for Spring 2027.
These teams would initially serve Winchester, Northern Virginia, and surrounding communities while operating under the same overall development philosophy and club structure as our West Virginia Academy. We expect to start small and grow responsibly rather than trying to create a large number of teams immediately.
There is still work to do around age groups, coaches, facilities, training schedules, tryouts, and competition, so more details will be announced as those plans develop. The important part is that Virginia represents another significant step toward building the regional club structure we originally envisioned.
One Club, One Pathway
Perhaps the most important part of everything we are building is that these are not separate projects.
The men's team, future women's team, West Virginia Youth Academy, and developing Virginia Youth Academy are all part of Summit Valley United. Each serves a different group of players and may compete in different leagues, but ultimately they should all contribute toward the same club and the same pathway.
We want a young player joining the Academy to be able to look ahead and see where the journey could take them. As they grow, the training becomes more demanding, the competition becomes stronger, and the expectations increase. Eventually, there should be opportunities to progress toward our adult programs and continue representing the same club.
Likewise, our adult players have an important role in that pathway. They are helping establish the level that younger players can eventually aspire to reach. The stronger and more established our adult programs become, the more meaningful that pathway becomes for the players developing underneath them.
Help Us Build What Comes Next
As the club grows, so does what is required to support it. More players and more teams mean more coaches, more training space, more match facilities, more equipment, and greater operating costs. If we want to continue growing responsibly across our adult teams and Youth Academy, we need to continue building the community around the players as well.
We are actively looking for people and organizations that share what we are trying to build and can help us in several areas:
- Sponsors and community partners who want to support the club, individual teams, Academy programs, kits, equipment, facilities, or other opportunities for our players.
Reach out if you are interested in partnering or sponsoring us →
- Fields and facilities for practices, games, scrimmages, camps, and Academy programming in both Virginia and West Virginia.
Reach out if you can provide fields or facilities →
- Youth Academy coaches who believe in player development and want to help us build the right environment for young players.
Reach out if you are interested in coaching our youth teams →
- Adult team coaches and support staff who want to help us continue raising the standard of our competitive men's and future women's programs.
Reach out if you are interested in coaching or supporting our adult teams →
- Volunteers and supporters who have time, experience, resources, or connections that could help the club continue growing.
One of our most immediate needs is additional coaching support for our adult men's teams.
As we continue building the men's program and competing in APSL, we want to expand the group of coaches around the players and provide more structure at practices and games.
If you have coaching experience, share the vision we have for Summit Valley United, and can volunteer some of your time, we would love to hear from you. We are looking for people who want to be involved, help run training sessions, develop players, contribute ideas, provide structure on game days, and become part of the longer-term development of the team.
We are also continually looking for additional field space in both Virginia and West Virginia. Access to affordable, reliable training and match facilities is one of the biggest challenges that comes with growing a soccer club. If you manage a field or facility, know of available space, or represent an organization that might be interested in partnering with us, even limited availability could make a meaningful difference.
The same is true for sponsorship. Every sponsor and partner helps us offset costs that would otherwise have to be passed directly to players and families. Support can help fund fields, league fees, equipment, kits, events, Academy programs, and other parts of the club. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, our goal is to continue finding ways to make competitive soccer more accessible while creating better opportunities for the communities we serve.
Growth is not simply about finding more players. It is about finding more people who believe in what we are building. Whether that means coaching, sponsoring, providing field space, volunteering, or finding another way to contribute, we would love to hear from people who want to become part of the journey.
Reach out if you can support or help us →
Where We Are and Where We Want to Be
Are we there yet? No.
Building a club like this does not happen overnight. There will be good seasons and difficult ones. Teams will change, players will come and go, coaches will change, opportunities will appear, and sometimes plans will have to change completely. That is part of building something from the ground up.
But when we look at where we started and where we are today, there is real progress. Summit Valley United now has:
- A competitive adult men's program competing in the APSL.
- A women's program that we are actively working to build.
- Eight Youth Academy teams competing in West Virginia.
- A structured Academy development pathway.
- Teams competing through EDP and EDP Futures.
- Plans to expand girls' soccer within the West Virginia Academy.
- Plans to establish our first Virginia Academy teams beginning in Spring 2027.
- A growing regional footprint across Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and surrounding communities.
- A growing network of coaches, sponsors, volunteers, families, and community partners helping us build what comes next.
The next challenge is turning all of those individual pieces into something that lasts. We want Summit Valley United to become a club known throughout the region for developing players, creating competitive opportunities, building strong teams, and providing somewhere for players to continue progressing through the game.
We want a child to be able to take their first touches with Summit Valley United, develop through the Academy, compete at increasingly higher levels, and eventually look toward an adult team wearing the same crest. We also want coaches to have somewhere they can contribute and develop, sponsors and community partners to see an organization worth supporting, and families to feel that they are part of something being built for the future.
That is the pathway we are trying to build.
There is still a long way to go, but perhaps more than at any point since Summit Valley United began, you can now see that pathway taking shape.
If you want to play, coach, sponsor, volunteer, provide field space, or find another way to help us grow, reach out and become part of what comes next.
WORK HARD. PLAY LOUD. BUILD TOGETHER.