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herndon-youth-soccer

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Herndon Youth Soccer

EIN: 51-0248053 · Tax status: 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Overview

Herndon Youth Soccer (HYS) is a community-based nonprofit serving Herndon and the western Fairfax County corridor, founded in 1978 and tax-exempt since May 1980. The club is one of the older established youth soccer organizations in Northern Virginia and serves approximately 1,700 players across 160 teams in recreational, academy, and travel programs.

Herndon sits in the Dulles corridor — between Loudoun Soccer’s Leesburg core and Great Falls Reston’s Reston catchment — making it a structurally squeezed market geographically.

Financials

MetricFY2023 (ending June)
Revenue$1,305,957
Expenses$1,279,287
Net income$26,670
Net assets$422,959

Confidence: HIGH (Form 990, FY2023). Most recent 990 publicly available.

Program services drive 95.4% of revenue ($1.25M). Contributions add 4.6%. Net assets of $423K provide approximately 4 months of operating reserves — a thinner cushion than peers like FC Richmond ($3.7M reserves) or Stafford ($1.7M reserves).

Teams & Players

Approximately 1,700 players across 160 teams (recreational, academy, travel). The recreational program is the dominant volume driver; competitive travel teams are a smaller subset.

League Affiliations

The 2022 VDA partnership is structurally significant: it gave HYS travel families access to ECNL-tier programming through VDA without HYS having to build that infrastructure independently. This is similar to the partnership models that Loudoun Soccer and Great Falls Reston use through NVA.

Facilities

  • Bready Park Turf Field — primary travel/competitive home
  • Hutchison Park — additional rec and youth development field

Both are public Fairfax County / Town of Herndon facilities. HYS does not own dedicated fields, which is the standard model for NOVA community clubs of this size.

Leadership

The $35K executive comp on $1.3M revenue indicates a lean executive structure, with the bulk of payroll going to coaches. Board officers serve uncompensated.

Fees

  • $2,145 / year (U9–U10 travel)
  • $2,255 / year (U11–U12 travel)

Fee levels are mid-pack for the NOVA market — below FVU/ECNL clubs ($2,500–$3,500) but above pure-recreational rates.

Competitive Position

HYS occupies a community-club tier in the NOVA pathway hierarchy: it offers an entry-to-mid-competitive travel pathway through ECNL-RL and a VDA feeder relationship for elite-tier players. Its catchment is geographically squeezed between Loudoun Soccer (north), Vienna Youth Soccer (east), and Great Falls Reston (north-east), all of which now hold partnerships into MLS Next / Girls Academy tiers via NVA or direct franchise.

Industry Context

Herndon Youth Soccer represents the prototypical NOVA community travel club: ~1,700 players, ~$1.3M revenue, modest reserves, lean executive overhead, and mid-tier league affiliations. The 2022 VDA partnership and VPSL entry kept HYS competitively viable as the local pathway landscape escalated, but the club lacks the in-house ECNL / MLS Next franchise rights or the dedicated facility footprint that distinguish the upper-tier NOVA clubs. The financial profile ($423K net assets, 4 months runway) is workable but offers limited capacity for facility investment or upmarket expansion without external partnership.

Open Questions

  • Travel/competitive player count vs recreational
  • Long-term security of Bready Park / Hutchison Park field access
  • Status of the VDA partnership — formal alliance or informal feeder?
  • Whether HYS is exploring a formal merger or alliance with FVU or NVA members
  • Why HYS retained CCL participation alongside VPSL (typically a one-or-the-other choice)

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