Naperville Soccer Association
EIN: 36-3457402 · Tax status: 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Overview
Naperville Soccer Association (NSA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit youth soccer organization founded in 1986 by Jeff Bradley, who remains the club’s president nearly four decades later. NSA was the first traveling soccer club formed in Naperville, IL, and operates under the legal name “Naperville Soccer Association Inc” (EIN 36-3457402). The club serves boys and girls ages 4–23 across recreational, academy, travel, and U23 college-summer pathways.
Naperville sits in DuPage County in the western Chicago suburbs — one of the most affluent corners of the metro (median household income above $110K). The club operates alongside several other organizations in the same geography, including Team Chicago (also based in Naperville).
Financials
Per the FY2024 Form 990 filed November 2025 (HIGH confidence):
- Revenue: $553,067
- Expenses: $470,211
- Net assets: $213,766
The organization has filed 990s continuously since 2004. Revenue at this level is consistent with a mid-sized travel-soccer nonprofit operating primarily on participation fees, with a modest reserve cushion. The 2024 surplus (~$83K) supports gradual capital build.
Teams & Players
Total player count is not published on the club website. Program structure spans:
- Junior Training Program (ages 3–10) — entry-level developmental
- Youth Academy — train 3x/week
- Travel Teams competing across NISL, YSSL, IWSL, and IYSA State Premiership
- High School Elite
- U23 Program — college-age summer play
League Affiliations
- Northern Illinois Soccer League (NISL)
- YSSL (Young Sportsmen’s Soccer League)
- IWSL (Illinois Women’s Soccer League)
- IYSA State Premiership
- Midwest Conference / National League (formerly MRL)
- Illinois State Cup and President’s Cup
- Winter indoor leagues
NSA does not hold ECNL or MLS NEXT franchise rights. Its competitive ceiling sits in the NISL / National League tier — one rung below the national-platform pathways held by Chicago FC United and Chicago Fire FC Academy.
Facilities
- Naperville Yard — indoor practices and games
- Multiple outdoor field locations throughout Naperville (use of public park-district fields appears typical)
- Various local indoor facilities used by high-school-age teams
No evidence of club-owned facilities.
Leadership
- Jeff Bradley — President and founder; USSF-licensed coach and referee; led the Naperville park-district travel program in the early 1980s before founding NSA in 1986
- Leslie Jones — Executive Director (Director of Coaching, Naperville Soccer Academy)
- Clare Bradley-Lubek — Administrator and Secretary (10+ year tenure)
- Coach German — Professional trainer affiliated with the University of Granada
Family-anchored leadership structure: the Bradley family has run the organization continuously for 40 years.
Partnerships
NSA participates in a consortium described on its site as United Elite Soccer Club, a partnership of nine Chicago-area clubs offering expanded playing opportunities. The structure suggests a shared player-pool or guest-play arrangement rather than a merged competitive entity. Specific consortium members are not publicly listed.
Competitive Position
NSA is a long-tenured community club in one of Illinois’ wealthiest suburban markets. Its strengths are continuity (40-year operating history, founder still active), a clean nonprofit balance sheet, and broad program range from ages 3 to 23. Its constraints are league-tier — the absence of an ECNL or MLS NEXT franchise caps recruiting reach against higher-tier Chicago-area peers — and a modest revenue base at ~$550K that limits investment in coaching salaries or facilities relative to the metro’s top-flight clubs.
Industry Context
The Chicago suburban club landscape is unusually crowded, with multiple competitive clubs operating within 10–15 miles of each other across DuPage, Lake, and Cook counties. NSA’s NISL-tier positioning places it in the broad middle band — above purely recreational programs but below the ECNL/MLS NEXT franchise tier. The United Elite consortium is one of several informal multi-club arrangements that have emerged in Illinois to pool players for higher-level league play without formal merger. Family-controlled, founder-led nonprofit clubs of this size and tenure typically face succession-planning questions as their founding generation ages.
Open Questions
- Total player count and team count across all programs
- Composition and governance structure of the United Elite Soccer Club consortium (which 9 clubs)
- Facility-use agreements: which fields are park-district, school-district, or other
- Succession plan beyond the Bradley family