Soccer Trainer Near Me in Orange County, CA: Private Training with a USSF B Licensed Coach
This page is about finding a soccer trainer in Orange County, California, with on-field private and small-group training based in Irvine and the surrounding county. When you search “soccer trainer near me” from Irvine, Tustin, Newport Beach, or anywhere else in OC, screen by two things before you look at the map: which U.S. Soccer license the trainer holds, by name, and what team they are coaching right now. Distance should be the last filter, not the first. A trainer fifteen minutes farther across the county who can watch your player for ten minutes and name the actual fault will do more than a closer one running a generic session. Proximity is not a quality signal. It is only what a map is built to sort by.
- Ask which U.S. Soccer license the trainer holds, by name, not just “licensed.”
- Read the license ladder below so the answer means something instead of just sounding impressive.
- Ask what team the trainer is coaching right now, and at what level.
- Judge a first session by whether the trainer named a fault, not by how tired your player was.
- Let drive time break the tie between two qualified candidates. Nothing more.
Why “near me” is the wrong first filter
Map results are ranked by geography because geography is all a map knows. Nothing in that ranking has any information about whether a person can teach a 12-year-old to fix a plant foot.
Most parents draw a five-mile radius, pick from inside it, then spend a season watching a rotating menu of cone drills with no through-line. The quiet fear underneath the search is not that your player is bad. It is that a year of Saturdays will pass and nothing will have changed.
Before you shortlist individuals, it helps to see how the local landscape fits together. Our guide to Orange County youth soccer leagues, clubs, AYSO, and training maps where club, rec, high school, and supplemental training each sit, so you know what a private trainer is meant to add and what they are not there to replace.
The belief worth putting down: more touches is not the product
Families usually arrive assuming private training is interchangeable. Someone who knows soccer, a bag of balls, a park fifteen minutes away, an hourly rate.
Extra touches without direction just make an existing habit permanent. A player who plants the wrong foot on every strike does not need 300 more reps of that strike. They need someone who sees it early, explains why it happens, and rebuilds it in a sequence the player can feel.
You are not buying an hour of field time. You are buying a diagnosis. The same logic sits behind sorting a list of local soccer coaches by license and current coaching role instead of by miles.
What a diagnosis actually looks like
Here is the shape of it, in plain terms. A 13-year-old comes in because the ball “bounces off” her under pressure. The parent thinks it is strength. Ten minutes of watching shows something else: her first touch travels across her body, into the defender, instead of away into space.
The fix is not more touches. It is one cue she can hold on a Saturday: touch to the far side, decided before the ball arrives. Then the session is built so she has to pick that side under a little pressure, over and over, until it stops being a thought. That same named fault and cue structure is laid out in more detail in our breakdown of first touch training for Irvine and Orange County players, including the 15-minute wall routine that holds it between sessions.
What changes in a game is small and obvious at the same time. She still gets pressed. She just comes out the other side of it with the ball more often. That is what a working session produces, and it is the only outcome any trainer should be selling.
The number of sessions it takes varies by player and by habit. What does not vary is the order: name the fault, give one cue, then build the pressure back up around it.
That order is the through-line for everything below.
Question one: which U.S. Soccer license, by name?
“Licensed” and “certified” are words, not credentials. Ask for the specific license and write down the answer. Here is what the ladder means, bottom to top, so the answer is readable instead of just impressive.
| License | What it generally signals for youth work |
|---|---|
| Grassroots / E | Entry level. Common among volunteer and rec-team coaches. |
| D | The usual step for competitive club coaches building a session plan. |
| C | Serious commitment, assessed on the field, typical of experienced club staff. |
| B | Fourth-highest certification in U.S. Soccer, two levels below what is required to coach in MLS. Rare among private trainers. |
| A | The top tier of the pathway, oriented toward senior and professional environments. |
A license is not a promise that someone is good with your 9-year-old. It does tell you the person has been assessed by someone other than themselves, on a field, against a standard. Do not stop at the answer, though. Verify it, using the steps below.
Coach Elmer Chacon holds a USSF B License, currently coaches at the MLSNext level with Strikers FC Irvine, and has spent nearly 20 years developing West Coast players.
How to verify a coaching license
You should not have to take a credential on faith. Verifying one takes a couple of minutes.
- Ask for the license by name, plus the license number and the year it was issued. A coach who holds one knows both without checking.
- U.S. Soccer licenses are earned and tracked through the U.S. Soccer Learning Center, which is where coaches manage their own coaching records. Ask the trainer to pull up their license record there and show you, or to send you a screenshot of it.
- Cross-check the second question the same way: ask which club and team they are coaching right now, then confirm the name appears on that club’s staff or team page.
- If a trainer will not give a license name, a number, or an issue year, treat the refusal as the answer and move to the next name on your list. There is no version of this where the credential is real and the details are secret.
Write the answers down next to each candidate. Two verified names is when drive time finally gets a vote.
Question two: what team are you coaching right now?
This is the question most parents skip, and it may be the most useful one on the list. A trainer who only runs private sessions has no live feedback loop on what today’s game demands.
Someone actively working at a competitive club, a high school program, or the MLSNext tier, the highest tier of youth competition in the country, sees weekly what earns a starting spot and what gets a player subbed off. That knowledge decays fast once a coach stops managing a team.
For your player, it means the feedback is calibrated to the next rung, whether that rung is a stronger club team, a high school starting spot, or a college roster.
Where to source names before you search at all
Search results are a starting list, not a shortlist. Better names come from people who watch coaching for a living.
- Ask your club’s Director of Coaching who they trust for individual work.
- Ask high school program staff who their players train with in the offseason.
- Ask AYSO Extra coaches, who often see the same kids across several years.
- Ask parents of players two age groups above yours, not your own team’s sideline.
- Run every name through the two screening questions above.
Price and cadence: what to expect
Here is the anchor most pages leave out. As of August 2026, private 1-on-1 soccer training in Orange County generally runs somewhere in the range of about $75 to $150 per hour, small-group sessions commonly land near $25 to $60 per player per session because the coach’s time is shared, and camps and multi-day breaks tend to work out lowest per hour, often in the $50 to $125 per day range, because the ratio is widest. Those are wide bands on purpose, and they are a snapshot of the local market rather than a quote. For reference, Top Notch Training’s own rates sit inside them: $95 per hour for private 1-on-1, and $70 per player for two players, $60 for three, and $50 for four through six, with weekly group sessions at $45 (ages 9 to 12) and $55 (ages 12 to 17). Request a session and Coach Elmer confirms the exact price for your format.
What pushes a session toward the top of the band: a licensed coach who is still coaching competitively at a high tier, 1-on-1 attention rather than shared time, longer sessions, permitted or turf field costs, travel to your field, and peak demand windows like preseason and school breaks. What pulls it toward the bottom: shared small-group formats, a wider camp ratio, a coach earlier on the license ladder, a public park close to the coach’s base, off-peak scheduling, and packages or a steady weekly cadence rather than one-off bookings.
Our own rates depend on format and cadence, so still ask for the current number in writing rather than trusting any published range, including this one. Current pricing for private, small-group, and camp options is listed with each format on the programs page, and the weekday and seasonal calendar sits on the training schedule.
Cadence is where families overspend. Private sessions run 1 to 2 hours, weekly or bi-weekly, in Orange County. During a heavy club season, bi-weekly work with homework between sessions often holds up better than adding a third field day to a tired player’s week.
- Led by Coach Elmer Chacon: USSF B Licensed, MLS Next coach, Head Coach at Fairmont Preparatory Academy
- CIF Coach of the Year for his division and area, leading Fairmont boys soccer to the first semi-final in school history
- Nearly two decades coaching winning teams and athletes at every level of West Coast soccer
- More than 800 youth, club, and high school players trained
Trainer, group, or camp: which format fits
Once you have a qualified name, the next question is format. The three solve different problems, and the wrong format wastes good coaching.
Private 1-on-1
Best when there is one clear technical or decision-making fault to rebuild with full attention.
Small group
Best when your player needs repetition under light pressure and a competitive edge, with individual correction still possible.
Camps and school breaks
Best for volume and confidence during gaps in the club calendar, especially for Youngers still learning to compete.
If you are unsure which one your player needs right now, our breakdown of youth soccer development formats in Irvine walks through the tradeoffs by age band and goal.
How to judge the first session
A hard session is not automatically a good session. A player can sweat for an hour and learn nothing. Sweat is easy to produce. Diagnosis is not, which is the standard behind how parents should judge soccer coaching in Irvine and Orange County.
Afterward, ask your player one thing: what did the coach tell you to fix? A specific fault plus a cue they can repeat back is a real signal. “We did a lot of dribbling” tells you something too.
Across 800+ youth, club, and high school players trained, the pattern is consistent: the sessions that change a player start by naming one fault, not by stacking more drills on top of it.
What it sounds like when it goes wrong
Every example above works, which is not how 800+ players actually go. Here are three failure cases, because they are more useful for screening than the wins.
A bad first session sounds vague when you ask your player about it
The tell is not exhaustion. It is the answer to “what did the coach tell you to fix?” A bad first session comes back as “we did a lot of dribbling,” or “cones, then we shot,” or “he said I need to be more confident.” None of those is a fault and none of those is a cue. A player who cannot name the thing they are working on was not given one, and stacking more drills on top the following week does not create one. If that is the answer you get, treat the session as information about the trainer, not about your child.
What parents said when the trainer had no current team
The most common version we hear from families arriving after a stretch elsewhere: the sessions looked organized and the feedback still did not match what their player’s coach was asking for on Saturday. The teaching drifts from what the next level actually asks for. Parents describe it as a season of decent hours that never moved anything, or a player who kept getting subbed off for reasons the training never touched. That is exactly why question two on the list is what team the trainer is coaching right now, and at what level.
One time the first read was wrong
The shape of the wrong diagnosis looks a lot like the shape of the right one, which is the problem. A player whose first touch kept dying under pressure got the obvious read: a technical touch fault, so the first session was built around the touch. It held up in the drill and fell apart in the game. Watching again, the touch was fine when she had already decided where the ball was going. What was missing was the decision before the ball arrived, not the surface it came off. The plan changed to scanning and choosing a side early, and the touch cleaned itself up as a byproduct. The lesson we keep from it: if the cue does not transfer to Saturday, the fault was named wrong and it is the trainer’s job to say so and start again.
What geography actually decides
Drive time still matters, for one reason: consistency. A trainer you can reach reliably every week beats a better trainer you cancel on twice a month.
So use distance as a tiebreaker between two candidates who both passed the license and current-role questions. Parent guidance meetings can be held in person locally or by phone or Zoom from anywhere in the world.
Where we train across Orange County
On-field training is based in Irvine, and the county is small enough that most families are within a short drive of a session. Below is where sessions typically happen and roughly how far it is from Irvine, so you can see where drive time actually becomes a factor. Field choice depends on permits and season, so the specific park is confirmed when you book.
- Irvine (home base): Great Park Sports Complex, Las Lomas Community Park, Northwood Community Park, and other city fields. 0 to 10 minutes.
- Tustin: Columbus Tustin Park and Tustin Sports Park. Roughly 10 minutes.
- Lake Forest: Lake Forest Sports Park and Etnies Skate Park area fields. Roughly 10 to 15 minutes.
- Santa Ana: Centennial Regional Park and Jerome Park. Roughly 15 minutes.
- Costa Mesa: Jack R. Hammett Sports Complex and TeWinkle Park. Roughly 15 to 20 minutes.
- Newport Beach: Bonita Canyon Sports Park and Grant Howald Park. Roughly 15 to 20 minutes.
- Orange: Grijalva Park and Handy Park. Roughly 15 to 20 minutes.
- Mission Viejo: Mission Viejo Sports Park and Marguerite Recreation Center fields. Roughly 15 to 20 minutes.
- Anaheim: Anaheim Coves and Glover Stadium area fields. Roughly 20 to 25 minutes.
- Huntington Beach: Huntington Central Park Sports Complex and Edison Park. Roughly 20 to 25 minutes.
Drive times are approximate and depend on the hour you pick, which is the real reason to schedule off peak when you can. Use that list the way the rest of this page suggests using a map: as a tiebreaker after the license and current-team questions, not before them.
What no trainer should promise you
Be careful with anyone selling an outcome. Nobody can guarantee a roster spot, a team placement, or a college offer, and a trainer who implies otherwise is telling you something about their judgment.
What a good trainer commits to is a clear read on your player, a plan built around it, and honest feedback on effort and coachability. Those are the levers a player controls. For the full list of questions worth asking, see this parent’s checklist for evaluating a youth soccer coach.
The first call, scripted: five questions, in order
Print this, or keep it open on your phone. Ask the five questions in this order, on the first call, before you talk about scheduling or rates. What you are listening for is specificity, which is the same standard behind what top notch soccer actually means in Irvine and Orange County. A good answer contains a name, a level, or a fault. A bad answer contains an adjective.
1. Which U.S. Soccer license do you hold, by name?
Good: “USSF B License.” Then you check it against the ladder above.
Bad: “I’m fully licensed and certified.” If the answer has no letter in it, ask again, and write down whatever comes back the second time.
2. What team are you coaching right now, and at what level?
Good: “I’m coaching at the MLSNext level with Strikers FC Irvine this season.” A named club and a named tier means there is a live feedback loop on what earns a starting spot right now.
Bad: “I used to coach club, but now I just do privates.”
3. What ages have you worked with beyond my child’s?
Good: “Youngers through Olders, roughly 8 to 11 and 12 to 16, plus club and high school players.” Range means they know what your player is being built toward, not just what this year looks like.
Bad: “Whatever age you’ve got, it’s all the same at that level.” It is not all the same. An 8-year-old and a 15-year-old are being asked to solve different problems.
4. What will you be watching for in the first session, and how will you tell me what you found?
Good: “Give me ten minutes of watching and I’ll name one fault and one cue your player can hold on Saturday.” That is the whole product.
Bad: “We’ll do a full technical assessment and build a customized program.” Ask what the first cue would sound like out loud. If nothing concrete comes back, you are buying field time, not a diagnosis.
5. What is the rate for this format and cadence, in writing?
Good: A specific number for a specific format, sent to you in writing, with what changes it: 1-on-1 versus shared time, session length, field and permit costs, travel, and peak windows.
Bad: A number over the phone that shifts when you ask for it in an email. Also ask what cadence they would recommend during a heavy club season and see whether they are willing to talk you down to bi-weekly.
The one answer that should end the call
“Stick with me and I’ll get your player on that team,” or any version of a promised roster spot, team placement, or college offer. Thank them and hang up.
Two candidates can both pass all five. That is when drive time gets a vote, and only then.
FAQ
How do I find a good soccer trainer near me in Orange County?
Start with credentials, not the map. Ask each candidate which U.S. Soccer license they hold by name, what team they are currently coaching and at what level, and what ages they have worked with beyond your child’s. Club Directors of Coaching, high school staff, and AYSO Extra coaches are all good places to source names. Then let drive time break the tie.
Does a private soccer trainer need to be close to my house?
No. Distance should be the last filter, not the first. Use proximity only to choose between two candidates who already passed the credential and current-role questions.
What certifications should a private soccer trainer have?
Ask for a U.S. Soccer license and ask specifically which one, then read it against the ladder above rather than taking “licensed” at face value. Very few private trainers hold a B License.
How long and how often should private soccer sessions be?
Private sessions here run 1 to 2 hours, weekly or bi-weekly, in Orange County. The right cadence depends on your player’s club load and what is being rebuilt.
Is a private trainer better than a small group for my player?
It depends on the problem. Private work is best when there is one clear fault to rebuild with full attention. Small groups add competitive pressure and repetition while still allowing individual correction. Many families fix something specific one-on-one, then move to group work to make it hold up under pressure.
How do I know if the training is working, and how many sessions does it take?
Look for transfer, not fatigue. The number of sessions varies by player and by habit. After a few sessions your player should be able to name what they are working on, and you should see the cue show up in a game, even imperfectly.
Where do sessions take place?
On-field training is based in Irvine and runs on Orange County fields, including the city parks listed above. Field choice depends on permits and season, so the specific park is confirmed when you book.
What ages do you train?
Sessions cover youth players from Youngers through Olders, roughly ages 8 to 11 and 12 to 16, along with club and high school players. Send your player’s age, team, and level with your request so the session is built around the right problem.
Do you train goalkeepers?
Yes. Private 1v1, small-group, and goalkeeping sessions run 1 to 2 hours, weekly or bi-weekly, on Orange County fields, with weekday afternoon and evening slots plus limited weekend mornings and camp blocks during school breaks.
Do you offer small-group or sibling rates?
Small-group sessions are priced per player and cost less per player than 1-on-1 because the coach’s time is shared. Rates depend on format, group size, and cadence, and packages or a steady weekly cadence generally price better than one-off bookings, so ask for your exact rate in writing through the session request form or by calling (714) 248-2592.
Your next step, start to finish
You do not need a perfect decision today. You need one session where somebody names the thing your player has been fighting all season.
What to send in the request
Use the session request form and include your player’s age, current team, and level, the format you think fits (private 1-on-1, small group, or a camp block during a school break), the days and times that actually work in a normal week, and which part of the county you are coming from so field choice makes sense. Most useful of all: one or two sentences on the problem in your own words, the thing you have watched happen on Saturdays. Ask for your exact rate in writing in the same message.
How long until you hear back
Send it through the form and you will get a reply with available slots and your rate in writing before anything is booked. If you would rather talk it through first, call (714) 248-2592. If extra training is your idea rather than your player’s, say so, and start with a parent guidance conversation instead of field time.
What happens in the first session
The first session runs 1 to 2 hours on an Orange County field, with the specific park confirmed when you book based on permits and season. The order does not change: the first stretch is watching, then naming one fault, then giving one cue your player can carry into a game, then rebuilding pressure around it. Judge it the way this page suggests judging any trainer. Ask your player what the coach told them to fix. A specific fault plus a cue they can repeat back is the signal. Fatigue is not. From there, cadence is usually weekly or bi-weekly, with homework between sessions during a heavy club season. When you are ready, request a session or call (714) 248-2592.
Reviewed by Elmer Chacon, USSF B Licensed, MLS Next Coach, CIF Coach of the Year, Head Coach at Fairmont Preparatory Academy - last updated August 15, 2026.
Sources for this article
- Distance should be the last filter, not the first; diagnostic ability is what changes a player (soccer-coaches-near-me and private-soccer-coach-near-me posts).
- USSF B License is the fourth-highest certification in U.S. Soccer, two levels below the MLS requirement.
- Coach Elmer Chacon holds a USSF B License, coaches at MLSNext level with Strikers FC Irvine, nearly 20 years developing West Coast players.
- Private sessions run 1 to 2 hours, weekly or bi-weekly, in Orange County.
- Phone (714) 248-2592 and booking/request-a-session links.
- On-field training based in Southern California; parent guidance meetings in person locally or by phone/Zoom worldwide.
- MLSNext is the highest tier of youth competition in the country; trainers still coaching a team have a live feedback loop.
- Sourcing names via club Directors of Coaching, high school staff, AYSO Extra coaches.
Facts drawn from this site's own documented knowledge and first-hand experience.
