Theodore Kroeten

Ted Kroeten is a visionary leader and pioneering system architect with over 35 years of experience revolutionizing talent development. He is the founder of Joy of the People (JOTP) and Joy Athletic Club, a 501(c)(3) organization and competitive club built from the ground up into a globally recognized model for player development.

Ted’s career is a direct challenge to the status quo, driven by a radical question: "What if we have been developing talent all wrong?" To find the answer, he launched a 15-year public experiment, partnering with the City of St. Paul to create a free-play soccer center. By systematically removing traditional pillars like tryouts, rigid drills, and early competition, he discovered that unstructured, joyful play was the secret ingredient to unlocking astonishing technical skill, tactical intelligence, and creative problem-solving.
 
He has since codified this discovery into the "Powered by Joy" development system, a scalable framework that merges unstructured free play with deliberate programming. This proven methodology is engineered to identify and cultivate undervalued player profiles—creative talents and late bloomers often overlooked by traditional systems—producing a sustainable pipeline of high-value, intelligent players. The model’s success is competitively validated, with Ted leading his teams to a U19 National Futsal Championship (2019, 2021) and a National Futsal Finalist (2022) and Semi-Finalist (2023) status in the National Futsal Premier League, achieving these results on a fraction of the budget of fully-professional opponents.

His work has earned international endorsement, with Canada’s Technical Director formally citing the JOTP model as a potential blueprint for a national player development system. Ted is also a sought-after speaker, having presented at the International Physical Literacy Conference and the NSCAA Convention, and is a featured expert on prominent podcasts like The Talent Equation and The Way of Champions.
 
Ted’s philosophy is built on three transformative pillars: The Play Mindset (mastery as an emergent property of discovery), Kinetic Linguistics (movement as a language of influence and storytelling), and Underloading (winning through elegance and efficiency). He holds an NSCAA Master Coaching Diploma, a Premier Diploma, and has pursued advanced technical development in Brazil, Spain, and with the World Football Academy.
 
His mission is to provide a fully-validated, contrarian approach to future-proof talent pipelines and maximize Return on Development Investment, not just in sports, but in any field where human potential is at stake.