Virginia Valor FC’s goal is to develop and attract top goalkeeping talent. It starts with keepers who have the desire to be the best version of themselves.  Our investment in training and developing top talent starts with our foundational goalkeeper program, which gives young players the tools and environment to excel at their craft.  We do this through an age and level-specific training curriculum focused on building the technical, tactical, physical and psychological aptitude of our keepers.  
 
Our Director of Goalkeeping has a wide breadth of coaching success working with youth, collegiate and professional goalkeepers.  Training young goalkeepers is about their longer-term development. They need to be fundamentally strong and have the keen desire to achieve their desired level of success. Regardless of a goalkeeper’s aspirations, we work with them to be the best keepers that they can be.

 









Drew Leonard - Director of Goalkeeping
dleonard@virginiavalorfc.org 

As a young goalkeeper growing up in Southern CA, I had some success at the club level having no formal goalkeeper training until I was in high school.  The summer before my senior year I attended Dr. Joe Machnick’s #1 Keeper’s Camp.  That intensive instruction changed my goalkeeping life.  The success I had my senior year opened up doors for me that would never have existed.  Today, there are many more options for goalkeeper specific training.  Here at Valor, I want our keepers to experience something unique and get out of their experience everything they put into their experience.
 
Bio: After competing as a goalkeeper at UCLA (1983-’87), Drew began a Semi-Pro career playing with various top Men’s Open teams in the LA area (1988 – 1994).  In 1989 he started his own goalkeeping school in the Pasadena area.  Leonard returned to the Bruins in 1990 as their goalkeeper coach for the Men’s, and eventually, Women’s programs.  While there, he trained some of the most successful US-spawned keepers that have played at the professional and international levels. A career changing injury sidelined him from coaching and playing until 2002 when he stepped in as the goalkeeper coach at UC Berkeley for two years.  Drew has spent the last 20 years in the data center industry in Marketing and Operations.  He comes to Valor with a desire to help the club develop as a source to top keepers in the area.  

Drew and his wife Gretchen live in Leesburg.  They have 2 boys.  Coen attends Virginia Tech and Austin a Junior at Loudoun County HS.