Caleb Mendez

Caleb Sean Rodgers-Mendez (born May 23, 2003 in Harris County, Texas), an Internet soccer video sensation and Division One American youth soccer player who currently plays for Space City Futbol Club (SCFC), the premier full service soccer club in Houston and South Texas area. SCFC is a member club of the Bay Area Youth Soccer Association (BAYSA), which in turn is a member of the Eastern District of South Texas Youth Soccer Association (STYSA) . STYSA is an affiliate of Region III of United States Youth Soccer (USYS), the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), and the Federation International de Futbol Association (FIFA). SCFC teams playing at the Division 1 (D1) level are members of Eastern District Division One Association (EDDOA).
Career
Recreational
Mendez played three years of recreational soccer at the FC Crush Academy from 2006-09 near the Seattle, Washington area. At the age of only three years old, during his first soccer match, he netted ten goals which sparked his interest in the sport and has at times led to him playing up to four age groups above his default division.
Mendez then moved to the South Houston, Texas area in early 2009 to play for renowned Space City Fútbol Club. Due to registration dates and play-up requirements, Mendez was forced to play at the U6 level amongst players of equal age. The talent he displayed coupled with his domination of the game and excessive goals scored resulted in a professional evaluation by the SCFC staff to determine if Mendez could play in older divisions; professional staff then decided to place him into the U8 division, where he performed equally as well.
During the off season from SCFC, Mendez was requested to play for Pearland United FC. He accepted the offer and began playing for the club as a forward for one season (2009-10), scoring a total of 36 goals in seven games. The goals, assists and moves demonstrated during match play were recorded and developed into single game Youtube videos earning hundreds of thousands of views worldwide via approximately one hundred different websites that chose to display the content of the videos on their sites .
Throughout Mendez's recreational development he has received training by some of the top players in the world including Paul Dalglish, John Davies, experienced and licensed coaches and other professional/ex-professional footballers as well .
Academy
Mendez signed on and played for the U9 Academy division at SCFC from 2010-11. He played as a forward/striker and was the teams leading goal scorer at only seven years old. During the eight game regular season with SCFC he scored twenty-five goals, made nine assists and captured thousands more viewers on Internet with a season highlight video that included a compilation of Maradona's, triple Maradona's, behind the back passes, juggling, headers, spin moves, shots on goal, etc., in addition to the goals and assists of the season . He also played as a guest player upon request for Pearland United FC three times during this season in tournament play.
Throughout Mendez's Academy season he continued to receive top level training by ex-profesional footballer, John Davies, and with USYSA National player and coach, Armando Badillo of SCFC & High Performance Soccer.
Competitive
In 2011 Mendez tried out for the SCFC U11 Competitive Program at only 7 years old . He was selected after try-outs to play as a forward/striker on the Division One U11 Competitive team with the club. SCFC's Competitive Program consists of all players at U11 and above that are selected to play on Premier, Division 1 (D1), Super 2 (S2), or Division 2 (D2) level teams. The competitive program is comprised of approximately 800 players on 55 teams. SCFC provides programs for both recreational and, beginning with the U11s, competitive levels of play. The major difference between the two programs is that the recreational program relies on volunteer team coaches while the competitive program uses professional staff to conduct practices, skills training and game day coaching. In addition, the competitive program has the following attributes:
1. Increased player and parent commitment as the program runs for a full year (August to June) as opposed to having separate Fall and Spring seasons;
2. players often have multiple professional staff coaches in order to develop different skills and be exposed to different techniques, not a single parent coach as in recreational program;
3. in some divisions, use of the player pool concept in which players can move between teams;
4. a total of three nights of practices/training per week, with certain requirements for attendance that may affect game playing time; travel to away games increases beyond that of the SCFC operational area;
5. and team participation in Houston regional tournaments or Texas regional tournaments, depending on the competitive division in which your child participates.
Top teams in the club often travel to national events as well as have overseas opportunities over the summer. Presently, Mendez is still training with Davies & Badillo.
Internet Notoriety
Caleb Mendez appears on approximately half a million pages of the world wide web via hundreds of websites, primarily all soccer oriented . In addition to youtube, some of these sites include: KlikFC.com, Goal.com , Wold News Network, Inc., PlayerProfile.net , Onlinefootballsite.com, Bird's Eye Sports, Youth-Soccer-Futbol.com,Fussball Talente, YLS Soccer Network, BeRecruited.com, Etc.
As of July 2011, Caleb Mendez's videos have received nearly one million views worldwide, "Caleb Mendez youth soccer talent" is listed as the number three all-time most widespread youth soccer video series be anyone under the age of ten on the Internet, pulling 496,000 search results.
The LoneWolf Soccer organization maintains a website on behalf Mendez to serve as his "Official Website". The site is located at CalebMendez.com and it has a 54% first time visitor ratio on a monthly basis which means that more and more people are intrigued by this boy. The website also has an impressive viewer base from countries that cover the globe.

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