Welcome to the home page of Chicago Fire Football Club PASS, a program that goes beyond the traditional X's and O's of coaching and towards a 'broad based holistic approach' to educating young athletes. PASS is:

-To Perform: to achieve, realize, work or attain;
-To Advise: to consult, help, counsel or recommend;
-To Support: to frame or provide a ground fountain, base or scaffold;
-To Serve: participants of the #cffc grassroots to excellence programs.

PASS is built on the foundation that 'it takes a village to raise a child' and FAMILY, FAITH, FUTBOL and SCHOOL provide four key cornerstones of support.

A household beach ball can contain multiple colored panels.  Picture this… a number of people standing around a beach ball. When stationary, each person will only see one, two or possibly three colors. Although we are all looking at the same ball we will see different colors depending on our standpoint or perspective. Imagine for a moment your child represents that beach ball and adults (family members, friends, teachers, counselors, coaches) in his or her life will often only see one color. You would want a variety of adults with a variety of skills sets from a variety of perspectives looking at your child. More importantly, you would want all of these adults to consult and share information in order to get a more complete view of your child- it takes a village!

#cf97 has designed an initiative known as PASS to gain a greater insight and to develop a more holistic view of young people.

At #cf97, we believe that ethical intelligence plays a key role in developing the WHOLE PLAYER at our academy. We define ethical intelligence as not just the ability ‘to know’ what is right but ‘having the courage to do what is right’. Ethical intelligence is often regarded as the most valuable form of human intelligence- and the most practical as we build young men of high character. 

We define emotional intelligence as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions and to handle interpersonal relationships (player to player, player to coach). EQ-2 is also the ability to use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviors, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goals. 

A key focus of the academy is not only to create a teaching and learning culture amongst the staff, players and wider family network, but ensuring that we put in measures to create effective learning takes place.  The foundation of the clubs ‘teaching and learning’ strategy is the ability to understand a player learning style via standard Learning Style Inventory (LSI). Understanding your preferred learning style is a major step toward increasing your learning power  and getting the most from your learning experiences. 

We are preparing a player for a dual pathway- that of a professional futbol player and a university student-athlete. Regardless of a player's education path, it is of paramount importance. Monitoring academy performance  has become a daily activity for staff, players, parents and teachers at our academy. 

Often, we put too much emphasis on the physical capabilities of an athlete, when the mental skills they may have, or lack, are just as critical to their success.  There are times when we don't acknowledge the fact that mental skills, self-awareness, the ability to understand and work with other people,  and positive thinking, are just as vital to your success as being able to run fast or step off of both feet, or connect a pass. In the modern game Psych/Social is now a permanent feature within the four cornerstones of the game- Technical, Tactical and Physical.