Pinball!! or using parents as goals and cones

When I observe a practice, the most common thing I witness is the coach working hard, the players sometimes working hard and the parents relaxing in chairs or milling about watching the action. Obviously, the first improvement in this scenario is for the players to be working or playing hard. However, the next improvement is to get the parents involved as well.

While we have seen a tremendous growth in the number of players whose parents also played soccer, we always get lots of parents who have little or no experience in soccer or even in sports. Even those parents who do have experience playing soccer probably didn't have a very good developmental environment when they did play (lots of standing in lines, huge numbers of players on the field, inexperienced coaches). It is very accurate to say that we should be teaching our parents about the game as much as we are teaching the children.

That is very hard to do when the parents aren't paying attention or are absent from the practice. Just like you will never be 100% successful with your players, you cannot hope to train all of your parents. However, for those parents that can attend practice are not physically limited, drawing them into the practice is one of your best strategies. Not only do the parents provide an extra set of eyes and ears, they can also help ramp up the intensity of any activity. Especially in our u6/u8 target audience, the kids love to have their parents participate with them.

There are other benefits to having parents participate. You can use them to set up your grid. Parents make excellent cones that can adjust the size of your activity grid rapidly. They can help keep kids in bounds who would otherwise run out of bounds every time you started an activity. Parents can keep balls from running into unsafe areas or getting too far from the practice. Parents can also serve easily as goals, just put two of them near each other and you have goal posts. If they put their arms up, then you also have a crossbar. If you need a smaller goal, you can have a parent stand with legs spread to make the goal easy to see.

The activity I describe below has parents as both cones and goals. It also has them do something that no other equipment can do, talk. In the activity, parents make sounds like a pinball machine every time a ball hits their leg or passes through ("Ding" is a good one). I'll talk more about the activity after we discuss a few caveats regarding parents.

The first caveat is that parents are much larger than their children. From a simple physics perspective, parents who are moving carry a far greater mass and higher inertia than their children. When a child falls, it is fun. When a parent falls, you should be concerned about injury to bones and joints. When a parent falls on a child or steps on a child, that can be very dangerous. So please first remind your parents to put safety first and try not to get too into the action.

The second caveat is that the parents follow our "cheer don't steer" philosophy. We want the parents to participate, but we want the children to make the decisions. Parents can't solve the problems for the children. It is OK for them to help keep the kids in bounds, but not to tell them how to shoot or where to go to get the highest score.

Now that we have that out of the way, on to the activity.
Progression:
1. For U6 have the parents set the corners of the grid. You probably need up to 8 parents.
2. instruct players to dribble as fast as possible and stay in bounds.
3. instruct players to dribble fast, slow and medium on your call.
4. Try to tag players on the shoulder so that they dribble to avoid you and 1-2 parents.
5. Play Pinball. Have 3-6 parents stand inside the grid with legs spread. Instruct parents to shout "ding" each time a player scores a goal by passing the ball between their legs. Encourage the players to get as many "dings" as possible in a fixed time (30-60 seconds). Repeat 2-3 times and encourage players to get more dings each time. Ask them how they could get more "dings." Encourage them to try to shoot from farther away.

Image 1: Pinball


Let me know how it goes. Suggestions and Modifications are appreciated. 

John

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