Virginia Development Academy Women

Audrey McKeen signed with Racing Louisville in January 2026, and at VDA she is treated less as a departure than as proof of what the club was built to do. Virginia Development Academy started in 2015, when Prince William Soccer joined forces with the Virginia Soccer Association, later bringing in the Chantilly Youth Association, to organise player development across Northern and Central Virginia. More than 8,000 players now come through the programme. The women's senior side only enters the USL W League in 2026, in the Chesapeake Division of the Eastern Conference, but it arrives with a youth pedigree the league rarely sees in a debutant: the VDA 2006 Girls team held the ECNL Mid-Atlantic Conference title for five straight years, and reached the semifinals of the ECNL National Championships. For the 2024-25 cycle, VDA ranked among the top five youth clubs in the country for producing players who went on to the U.S. Women's Youth National Teams.

Home games are played at Evergreen Sportsplex in Leesburg, which holds 1,500. On the pitch, VDA already counts Charlottesville Blues Women, Annapolis Blues Women and Virginia Beach United Women among its fiercest rivals, sharp local rivalries built up well before the W League kickoff.

Among the players who came through the academy, Y-Lan Nguyen stands out furthest from home: she now plays for Stanford Cardinal and won bronze with the United States at the 2024 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup.