The Game Within the Child

One of my favorite coaching school stories involves the freeze technique. This is a technique the coach uses when s/he sees something in a scrimmage or small-sided game. You are supposed to try and stop it as soon as you see it and then make your coaching point and restart the action. One day, at my B license course a coach was running a session and saw something he didn't like, so he shouted "freeze" and ran into the scrimmage. He then promptly forgot what he was going to say. Instead of trying to talk himself into the situation, he just shouted "play" and walked back to the sideline. As coaches, we often try to has as big of an impact on the development of our team as possible. You know, based on some of my previous posts (" helping your child ", " how to enjoy your child's game ") that I am a strong proponent of having the players take control of the game and become responsible for making as many decisions as possible. You also know ...

When I first earned my A license back a really long time ago, I got the pleasure of having the last session and the topic of high pressure defending. The players (and coaches who were playing) were dog tired and it was going to be hard to run a session and play a game that required a high-intensity effort. I gave the team a few visual cues and sent them out to play. They had had a couple of opportunities to go into high pressure mode, but I was following the advice of my instructors and letting the players see if they could identify the opportunity. Then one of my evaluators came up and told me that if my team didn't score in 4 minutes, I was fired. Knowing my success or failure in this course was on the line, I stopped the action at the next opportunity using the freeze technique . Since this was a corrective point, I had a chance to give the players a short breather while we reviewed what I wanted them to do. The breather re-energized the players and they used the cues on the nex...