Black Rock FC expands with Northwood School, prep league and PDL

Black Rock FC players training last spring. New England Soccer Journal

When Black Rock FC launched back in 2013, Jon Moodey, then the head boys soccer coach at the Berkshire School, wanted to provide prep school players with a meaningful mode of offseason development.

With largely isolated campuses, travel to nearby club teams wasn’t always a possibility, so Moodey banded together a motley crew of players from Berkshire, Salisbury, South Kent and Loomis Chaffee. They began entering national showcases, including one at IMG’s Florida campus in Dec. 2014 as a fill-in for a Brazilian club.

Now as the 2017-18 club season is in full swing, Black Rock has transformed into a unique club experience in New England’s relatively crowded soccer scene.

“I feel very excited about the progress that we made,” Moodey said, “but I try very hard with each new step to make sure if we’re addressing our goals and bringing us closer to our driving purpose.”

That driving purpose?

“If it I were to boil this down to a how or a why, we emphasize our goal of working towards personalization of the experience, knowing each player and providing a quality product that sees soccer as a vehicle for helping kids grow into better human beings, students, community members,” Moodey said. “We want to teach them habits in the game in terms of character and leadership that'll ultimately allow them to be successful in life regardless of whether they become a pro or not.”

And those points of emphasis surface, primarily, in four areas of growth for Black Rock, as chronicled below.