Our first trainee played in Spain. Then she played in the UEFA Champions League.

One player, four years, and a route that did not exist in the United States before we built it. Here is the whole timeline — including the eight months it nearly ended.

The record

Sophie Castro — Virginia to the Champions League.

She is the Academy’s first trainee. She is also the founder’s daughter, and we say so on every page, because the first family to take this risk was our own.

14–18

The only one in Virginia

Selected to the top 18 of the ODP East Region Team — the only player in Virginia in her age group to be chosen, four years running.

15

Pulled out of ECNL. Twice.

Withdrawn from ECNL for two six-month periods of private technical training, and training alongside aspiring professionals. Most parents thought it was madness. One year she was named to the ODP East Region Top 18 with no club listed beside her name — the first time that had happened in Virginia ODP.

17

A regional championship — and the first trials in Spain

She led the Virginia 2004 age group to an ODP regional championship. The Academy then arranged her first trials in Spain: Atlético de Madrid, Osasuna, Deportivo Alavés and Getafe.

18

Real Madrid — and a contract offered on the spot

After graduating high school she returned to Spain and trialled with Real Madrid, Madrid CF, Getafe and Levante. The Real Madrid squad she trained with contained eight Spanish under-17 internationals; a two-day trial became two weeks. Levante offered her a contract the moment the session ended.

18

Her legs failed, five weeks into a professional pre-season

Two months of pre-season with Levante. Five weeks in, chronic exertional compartment syndrome — surgery on both calves and both shins, and eight months out, at the exact peak of her career so far.

She had played four years in the United States with that injury undiagnosed. No American doctor caught it. It took Spain to find it.

We put this on the page on purpose. It is the part nobody else would show you.

18–19

Back on the pitch

Placed at Club Mislata to rebuild confidence and sharpen her game, where she scored 15 goals in 7 games while still recovering — then trialled with Atlético de Madrid a second time.

2024

Placed with Deportivo Alavés

Professional soccer in Spain at nineteen — the age most American players are entering a second college season.

2025

UEFA Champions League

Champions League football for KFF Vllaznia, the champions of Albania, at twenty.

Sophie Castro's signing announcement with Deportivo Alavés
Deportivo Alavés · 2024
Sophie Castro in the KFF Vllaznia jersey
KFF Vllaznia · UEFA Champions League 2025

Apply for Evaluation

Four years, side by side

What the same four years looked like on each path.

12
Months · the college path

Three months a season, four times over — finishing eligibility at twenty-two.

44
Months · the pathway she took

Trials at seventeen and eighteen. Alavés at nineteen. Champions League at twenty.

The wider trend

She is not the only American who chose this.

Elite American players have been skipping college for more than a decade. Lindsey Horan went straight to France in 2012. Trinity Rodman and Jaden Shaw turned professional out of high school. The list grows every year.

These players are not O.R.T.A. alumni. We name them because they show the trend is real and did not begin with us — and because our founder predicted it, in writing, in 2018, before most of them had made the choice.

The College-Defection Trend

A term coined by the Academy’s founder in a blog article published in 2018 — still online, still carrying its original date. It was not a description written after the fact. It was a prediction, and then an academy built for it.

Read the original 2018 article

Who does the work

The relationships are not a plan. They already exist.

Coach Fran Escuin

Technical Director, Spain

Holder of the UEFA Pro licence, the highest coaching qualification in European football. Currently with Valencia CF in the women’s game, and formerly a technical director in Arsenal FC’s youth academy. Head coach roles have included the Bolivia women’s national youth teams and Real Unión Tenerife.

Rafael A. Castro III

Founder, President & CEO

A former international corporate and project-finance attorney, and for six years one of the top women’s soccer agents in the United States — placing 87 American players into professional clubs in Europe long before this academy existed. The Spain network is the product of those years, not of a business plan.

Find out where your player actually stands.

The evaluation measures her against European benchmarks and tells you the truth — whether or not she is a fit for this pathway.

Apply for Evaluation

Not ready yet? Watch the free Masterclass first.