OKLAHOMA CITY – In just a few short years, OKC Energy FC has not only arguably become the best professional club in the state of Oklahoma, but has also spearheaded youth and professional development in the Sooner State.

Last week, in an effort to progress and grow the game not only in Oklahoma City, but across the state, Energy FC signed a partnership with the most successful youth club in the state, Oklahoma FC. The affiliation is another step the advancement of the game within Oklahoma, and the evolution of Energy FC as the premier professional outlet in the area.

“One of the owners of Energy FC, Tim McLaughlin, his daughter, and both of his sons both play for OFC in the club,” OFC’s Co-Coaching Director Stephen Phillips said this week. “Many years ago a club that I was running merged with another club. OKC and EFC (Edmond FC) merged because we were fed up with not having success at the regional or national level, so we merged together, the two clubs.

“Tim had said to me, ‘Look, we would really, really like to be part of the future of the state and be a main leader in the sport,’ so we got together, and they were visiting with some other clubs in the local are to try and see about little partnerships, et cetera, and we said to them, ‘Look, we would love to be your partner, adopt your colors, adopt your logos,’ and by doing that there’s a couple of hopes. One of them, obviously, is to raise the standard of soccer in this area.”

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For Energy FC, the club identified closely with Oklahoma FC’s mission, and the core values that led to its establishment.

“There had been a lot of face time between their leadership and our leadership, and so we finally sat down and really spent some time talking about what the common values and common mission was for both organizations, and there was a lot of overlap there,” said Energy FC General Manager Jason Hawkins. “They liked a lot of what we were doing on a statewide level, and we liked a lot of what they were doing.

“They have the largest number of ‘A’ licensed coaches and ‘B’ licensed coaches, cumulative, of any youth club, so they are obviously big supporters and pushers of continuing on education and continuing to grow. We saw it really as an opportunity to continue to try and advise, and bring together the various soccer communities to do bigger and better things.”

The partnership between Energy FC and OFC builds on the affiliation the USL club firmly established earlier in the year with the Oklahoma Soccer Association (OSA). The affiliation with OSA gave Energy FC the platform to spread coaching education and player development throughout the state.

Energy FC’s newly minted relationship with OFC is an extension of the USL club’s association with the state’s governing body, and will allow Energy FC to further the development of the game in Oklahoma. In turn, that will also furnish Energy FC with a potential player pool that will allow the USL club to develop a proper, progressive system that will include youth, PDL and professional teams.

“Energy FC is obviously trying to get some homegrown talent, and by partnering up with us they’ve already got a ready base of players that they can start to work with,” said Phillips. “Instead of starting over from scratch, they’ve got a big pool of players. Now the hope of it is that by partnering up with them, that the other good players in the area are going to want to come in and play, not only with the best players, but with the best staff, and be at the best events, and be seen by the national team staff, and hopefully get themselves a professional contract out of it.”

“Rather than just right from the beginning going out and saying, ‘Ok we’re just going to go to the low-hanging fruit and try and start a youth club,’ we’re going to continue to try and fill in the links of the chain along the way,” said Hawkins.

“As we build down from the top from the pro team to the PDL team to the U-21 team we’ve got to reach the ceiling where that elite group development will go.”

Energy FC’s desire to grow the game through youth club partnerships is nothing new in the USL, where clubs have sought to develop partnerships with youth clubs and developed academies for many years. Teams like the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and Richmond Kickers both have firmly established academies, while more recently Sacramento Republic FC established an academy setup that has quickly achieved success both in sending its Boys U18 and U16 teams to the USSF Development Academy Playoffs, set to be held later this month, and also in placing players on U.S. Youth National Teams.

What makes OKC’s vision unique is the sheer scale of it. Rather than focusing on the Oklahoma City metro area, the leadership of both Energy FC and OFC intend to develop players throughout the entire state. While players such as former USL All-League selection Bright Dike (Edmond, Okla.), and other current USL players like Shawn McLaws (Harrisburg), Cristian Mata (Tulsa), Boyd Okwuonu (Real Monarchs SLC), and Kalen Ryden (OKC, pictured below) have established professional careers, the hope is their number will grow exponentially in the coming years.

With the partnership between Energy FC and OFC in place, in addition to the dedicated individuals from both entities seeking to improve the fortunes of players throughout the state, the future of soccer in Oklahoma is very promising.

“We have pulled together the resources of many professional people, and people who have done it at a proven level,” said Phillips. “I do honestly feel that what’s going to happen is that the best players are going to say, ‘I want to play in the best pool, with the best coaches, on the best fields,’ and think people are going to drop their egos and want to play with the best that there is around. That is the aim of it.

“We want to try to get teams under that, under the leadership of the Energy, and them telling us how they want us to run it, [where] hopefully we’ll have more homegrown talent coming out of Oklahoma in the next few years than we ever have before.”