"It's really good for young players because it takes so much more technique to keep the ball coming in when it's a smaller ball," he said. "You can play the targets. It can teach you to turn, play different angles. It's cool."

So cool the Galaxy have ordered two of TOCA's ball launchers for use at their training center.

"Anything that gets more repetition and touches on the ball — I don't care if it's playing against a wall or using a TOCA machine — to just keep getting reps is the most important thing," Kljestan said. "But TOCA is special and it adds a little bit more uniqueness in terms of trying to do different angles or different spins or different variations."

Although TOCA draws some Division I college players and professionals, such as the Thompson sisters, to its training centers, the largest demographic is players between the ages of 8 and 12.

"Within this center alone I think there's about 4,000 kids doing TOCA training," Lewis said of the Costa Mesa site.

Lewis started TOCA with his own money, but the company has grown so fast — it now has 1,100 employees in the U.S. and the U.K. — it raised more than $100 million from half a dozen investors, including WestRiver Group; Jared Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics, a Utah cloud computing company; and Harry Kane, captain of the English national team. Its nine-member board includes World Cup champion Abby Wambach.

Lewis expects that growth to continue.

"We're setting our sights on between 200 and 300 centers across the U.S.," he said.

Looks like his second career is going to work out just fine.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.