The idea to bring our team to Germany grew aleady in our early Academy years (U9-U12).
In Gabrielle Patterson we had a team manager with German background and our coach Juergen Mauer is also from Germany.
He had still plenty of connections in Germany from his former career and knew ways how to make this project inexpensive enough to be feasible for all Thunder 96 players. We just fancied how great it might be to see how our boys would match up to teams in a country where soccer is the absolute number one sport and the quality of youth soccer is very high. (Currently Germany holds the European title for the U17, U19 and U21.)
When the idea was first discussed in our community, we thought it was a bit too early for the boys but we kept it in in our minds. When we entered the Select stage as U13s, the plans became more concrete.
We did not want to go to as a U13, as in Germany there are 2-year age brackets as opposed to our 1-year brackets here. (U13 and U14 e.g. are bracketed together as "C-Jugend".) Ultimately it would have meant, that we would have had to play against mainly U14 opposition. We did not want to go over there just to be "cannon fodder", we wanted to have at least a chance to be competitive. Therefore we decided to go in Spring 2010 as a U14, to play against teams of the same age.
We thought that the trip to Germany would be a great and fitting reward for the boys' passion and commitment over the years at a an important milestone in their lifes - before they enter highschool.
During summer vacation 2009 our coach spend some time in Germany. He worked his network over there and started to make the first steps to turn the plan into something concrete - our project "Germany 2010".
THUNDER 96
Elite
