The Carlow & District Juveniles League Academy's have gone from strength to strength in the last number of years. When the new committee was elected in the Autumn of 2009, Carlow were ranked 31^st out of the 32 Schoolboy Leagues around the country. The committee made a decision that we needed to put more effort into enhancing the skills that we undoubtedly had at the disposal of the League. Firstly it was decided that we should appoint an Academy Director whose sole responsibility was to improve the performances of the squad and set up an Academy structure to help the players within our league. With the prestigious Kennedy Cup fast approaching for the then under 13 squad at the time, we devoted all our time and energy into getting them ready for this tournament with an Easter training camp in Johnstown House followed by a tough schedule of coaching sessions and friendly matches to get them ready for the Kennedy Cup. This preparation saw the squad excel in the tournament by finishing 10^th, the best ever finish to date by a Carlow Academy Team at the Kennedy Cup.

It was then agreed at a meeting held in IT Carlow, between the League representatives, Academy Director, FAI Regional Co-ordinator and the Head of the FAI in IT Carlow, that we would work in tandem with the students who are attending the IT course run by the FAI. These students are studying to achieve their UEFA B coaching badge and this link-up has greatly helped advance our Academy's. Our Academy Director was also working very hard to identify and recruit suitable league coaching staff to form dedicated coaching teams to cater for each age-group in order to put in place a proper coaching structure to build towards the future. This has worked very well due in no small way to the expertise, dedication and hard work of these coaching teams with our Academy's now up and running from Under 12 to Under 16's. Thanks to everyone involved we now have an Academy structure in place that has seen us progress over the last 4 years to rise from the depths of a ranking of 31 to our current ranking of 14 out of the 32 Schoolboy leagues.

This progression has also been noticed at National Level with the Ireland Under 15's visiting Carlow to play a selection of our 16's and 15's Academy squad in a friendly match which will take place on Monday 20^th January 2014 in IT Carlow on the All Weather pitch with a 7pm KO. This is a great honour for our league and gives our players the opportunity to showcase how far they have progressed. Everyone is welcome to come and support the boys on the night.

The next step for our League is the development of our own league facilities. At present we rely on the use of the excellent facilities in IT Carlow on Monday nights for our Academy's from under 12 to under 14. All the squads also use St Patrick’s Boys all weather facilities to train. For Academy matches we need to call upon the goodwill of our affiliated league clubs for the use of their facilities as we have no league pitch of our own to host matches against other League Academy squads. Meetings have taken place between the League Committee, Pat Deering our local TD, local councillors and the Carlow Town & County Councils to try and procure a suitable long-term home for the Carlow & District Juveniles League and the thousands of soccer-playing children of county Carlow and surrounding areas . To date these meetings have not been able to secure the lease of land to develop our own pitch and training facilities. We will keep trying to identify possible land with the council but if there is anyone who would like to donate the use of their land, we would be only too happy to engage with them in this regard.