Oh No!! a change of direction game

-
So one of the most difficult tasks for our U8 and below players is changing directions, especially turning, with the ball. They are amazing at going fast in a straight line, but it takes a lot of coordination and concentration to change direction and go the opposite way. Often, you will see a player dribbling towards their own goal and the parents/ coaches are shouting at them to "turn around." I have already described in an earlier post why this is a counter-productive behavior, but today I wanted to show you how to play a game specifically designed to get players to change directions. It has a nice progression that is appropriate for the U6 and younger crew, but it can also be scaled up to U10 as well with just a few tweaks and can even be scaled up to a small-sided or expanded small-sided activity.

Oh NO!! starts with a grid divided into three sections. The center section is narrow and the two end sections are wider. Have one coach/parent at each end of the grid. You get all the players without a ball into one end of the grid, running around until they hear a call from the coach at the other end of the grid shout Oh NO!! you are supposed to be over here. Players run as fast as they can to the other side of the grid. After a few seconds, the coach at the other end calls Oh NO!! you are supposed to be over here.

Once players are acclimated, then they dribble their balls on the Oh NO!! call across the grid. After a few repetitions, add some parent volunteers into the narrow middle part of the grid to interfere with their movement. They may gently knock a ball back into the grid if a player loses control of it to force the player to go get the ball and turn again. Never make a player go back more than once per round or else the game will get bogged down.

For older players, you can add the following progressions:

  • More defenders in the middle grid
  • Add a target to add a decision into the mix for the players "do I dribble or pass to get past the defenders?"
    • The coach can become a target to pass the ball to instead of dribbling it across the grid, the player can pass it to the coach. This action requires communication. A player cannot pass the ball to the coach unless s/he makes eye and voice contact with the coach before passing. 
    • Add 2 player targets, one at the end for a penetrating pass and one on the side for a combination pass.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

U6 Resources for coaches

-
Image
U6 is the entry level for many players in soccer. Because the level isn't very high, there is an idea prevalent that anybody can coach U6 players. That idea is quickly dispelled when parents go out to coach for the first time. While it may be easy to entertain your 5 year old, when you have a group of 5 year olds, the challenge is much more complex. As a high school teacher during the day, I constantly encounter peers who say that they couldn't deal with a group of children that young. With a spouse who is an elementary school teacher, I hear comments from her peers about how they couldn't handle older children. For some reason, that has never been an issue for me. I don't know why, but I can coach any age and not be intimidated or uncomfortable. For over 20 years, I have taught parent coaches how to work with the U6 player. The past seven years, I have been able to watch these coaches then go out and try to coach. This is not to say that a 4 hour training session or
Read more

How to enjoy your child's game

-
I once had a parent/coach in my program who was an accomplished coach who had a talented child. The child played multiple sports and excelled at each of them. For this reason, he only played in my program every other season. His father was his coach initially, but wasn't able to work coaching into his schedule after the first season, so he had to relinquish coaching to others. I would see him on the parent's side of the field, pacing, fists clenched. He would yell instructions to his son (sometimes other players) and always looked unhappy. Sometimes other parents would report his behavior to me when I wasn't around. When I did talk to him, he was always reasonable, but he was never happy either with his son's play or the coaching that he was receiving. Do you get the picture? I was reminded of this recently when I came across this excellent article from Go Play Better, a website dedicated to improving youth sports by focusing on player development and teamwork. Thei
Read more

Pinball!! or using parents as goals and cones

-
Image
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
Read more