Hello! My name is Jordan (Daloisio) Johnson and I am the founder of On the Ball Training PGH. I have over a decade of experience coaching soccer players of all ages, from toddlers to collegiate and amateur athletes. The majority of my time as a team coach was spent working with middle school and high school aged girls in a competitive club setting.

My playing career included four years of collegiate soccer at Clarion University, a stint in the Scottish Women’s Premier League for the Hamilton Academicals F.C., and several seasons in the WPSL with Steel City FC.

In addition to my on-the-field experience, I have also earned a master’s degree in Sports Coaching from the University of the West of Scotland, I am a United States Soccer Federation C-Licensed coach, I have an NASM Speed, Agility and Quickness Training certification and I am currently preparing for an exam to become a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

I started OBT because during my time as a team coach I felt that there were not enough hours in the day to focus on each player’s athletic development in a holistic way. The fitness side of soccer has always been important to me; but now, more than ever, I feel an obligation to educate myself in order to help players prepare their bodies for the demands of the game. Right now, female athletes are 6x more likely than male athletes to tear their ACL. We cannot accept this statistic as normal. Women and girls need training that is designed for the way their body functions, for the way their body plays the game. OBT is committed to giving players every possible physical advantage in order to decrease their chance of injury so that they can continue to play the game they love. Our sessions accomplish this while at the same time helping players improve their technical savviness, soccer IQ, field vision and awareness, creativity and mental toughness.

“The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when nobody else is watching”

-Anson Dorrance

The reason that OBT offers training packages in the form of Memberships is because our goal is to help players reach their goals.  In order to do this, we need to provide players with personalized coaching for every facet of their soccer development, on and off the field. 

The two player-coach meetings per month included in training memberships are there to help players with things like learning what they can do in their own time to improve as a player, navigate to their next level of play, and set short and long term training goals.  

Our ambition is to have the opportunity to work with players over the course of several years, providing totally personalized and holistic soccer coaching that gives each player the space to grow and improve technically, tactically, physically and psychosocially.

Anyone can instruct a player to pass a ball off of a wall a certain number of times, or take them through a workout similar to what you can find for free on YouTube.  OBT is different from other private training options because our objective is to guide girls and young women towards taking ownership of their development by teaching them how to train, how to identify work-on areas, how to take care of their bodies, and how to set realistic goals in order to become more well-rounded athletes and people.

The truth about training is that you don’t need to be with a coach every single day in order to become a great player. The best athletes in the world know how to push themselves, even when no one else is around to see it. They have a game plan and they train deliberately. They don’t only work on the things they like, or the things they’re already good at. They watch the best players in the world and try to emulate what they do. They are focused on finding small ways to improve every aspect of their game– from mental toughness and coachability; to physical fitness, technical prowess and creativity; to becoming a more confident, impactful leader for their team and their community.

I believe that a good coach can help athletes with all of these things, but they can’t do it for them. This is where the concept of owning your training comes into play. We hold regular meetings with players to teach them the skills they need in order to have autonomy over their soccer careers and over their lives. Coaches, teammates, and parents are all necessary components in the web of support that athletes need in order to succeed; but, at the end of the day, the athlete is the only one who can put in the work that is necessary to become a master of their craft.