The Guam Football Association hosted a five-day FIFA Elite Youth Coaches Workshop from Feb. 18–22 at the GFA National Training Center, bringing together youth national team, academy and club coaches for an intensive development program.
The workshop was led by FIFA High Performance Specialist Eric Abrams and Stewart Hall, a FIFA technical expert. The program focused on strengthening coaching standards and aligning Guam’s youth development system with modern, globally recognized methodologies.
Ross Awa, GFA technical director, said the initiative aims to enhance the quality and consistency of coaching across the island.
“The main objective is to upscale our coaches that are working with our national academy and youth national teams,” Awa said. “The overall goal is to ensure that our coaches have the modern ways of developing sessions, by providing them the tools that are being provided within the modern game.”
Awa added that bringing together academy, national team and club coaches promotes collaboration and a unified development approach.
“Creating the best environments through new tools provided globally within the global game is critical,” he said. “Having our youth national coaches, national academy and even youth coaches within our football clubs together really affords our players the best opportunity.”
Hall praised the association’s progress and infrastructure.
“Some really good things happening here,” Hall said. “The new academy setup starts on Monday night, and we’re really excited to incorporating that into the workshop visit. Everything is going great, and a big congratulations to the MA for the way that they’ve got everything in working order here now. It’s all set up to succeed.”
The workshop marks another step in GFA’s efforts to build a sustainable high-performance pathway for Guam’s youth footballers through continued investment in coach education and long-term player development.
