The Game Within the Child

  The first week of practices can be a little messy. You may not know your kids names and you may be unsure about what you are doing at your session. This can be very stressful. Here are some tips to get started: Get to know your kids Coach Amy worked with us for several years and every time I saw her teams play, they were calling each other by something they liked or their favorite food. So Amy wouldn’t say their name, but their nickname like “Blueberry” or “Potato Chip” or “Butterfly.” It was part of what made it fun to be on the team was to have this secret code that only the players and coaches knew. Establishing the connection between the players and yourself can be a little awkward. Even if you don't do what Coach Amy did, try to find a way to build rapport with your players that builds trust between you and your players. Establish Routines and Boundaries Keep in mind that children appreciate routines and boundaries. If your rules are clear and you are consistent, then they ...

  Back in 2017, Atlanta United played their first season and there was great concern that like past professional teams in hockey and soccer it would burn brightly, taper out and then go away. Growing up in S. Florida, I was a Dolphins and Heat fan and thanks to Ted Turner’s Superstation, I was an Atlanta Braves fan. When I moved to Georgia, I never changed allegiances on any of those. Having said that, I also never owned a jersey, t-shirt or other merch from any of my favorite teams in adulthood. Atlanta United was different. I bought merch before the first season and made it a point to attend games. Once I did attend games, I was hooked and even my daughter and wife are fans as well. The experience is simply fundamentally different than at other events and it’s something that we all enjoy.  Having a background in soccer definitely helped me, but where did all of the other fans come from? It turns out that video games like FIFA were a big source of fans not only for AUFC, but ...

Bottom Line? Cheer like crazy, don't tell them what to do. For years, I have observed this interesting phenomenon with our youngest players, when a goal was scored, everyone cheered except the kids playing the game. They would look around at all the adults shouting and have little idea why they were all shouting. Because they hadn't grown up watching soccer and many have never even touched a ball before their parents took them to the first practice or game, they had no idea what to do. Through my practices and coaching education courses and coaches meetings, I tried to emphasize teaching the kids how to celebrate after they scored a goal so that they would begin to understand why all the parents were cheering. Finally, one season, there was a U6 player who had watched soccer on TV and played with his family. He knew exactly what to do and was able to emulate multiple soccer stars goal celebrations. He was so good that he even helped his teammates celebrate their goals as we...

As both a coach and an educator, I see lots of parallels between my two jobs. For over 30 years, I have been promoting a set of coaching behaviors that include having the coach take a reduced role during the game. While I have been saying for years that "the game is the test," I have never articulated how a coach's behavior can affect the players performance on that test. So let me give you an example. Imagine you are a teacher and you have completed a unit of instruction. You prepare a summative test for your students. You know the level of your students and the difficulty of the material. As a teacher, you will be validated if you give them a challenging test and they are successful. On the day of the test, you hand it out. Once they start taking the test, you immediately begin yelling at them, giving advice to one student about choosing letter C on question 2. You tell another student to read all of question 10 before answering it. Then you tell a third student that ...

I offer group training sessions once a week during the season for U6-U14 age groups in my club. The sessions are open to all players in each of those age groups. Because these are my target age groups and comprise the bulk of the club, it offers me a chance to implement my philosophy more consistently than other approaches I have used in the past. This is the fourth season I have had the pleasure to work with these age groups in this format. I have learned a lot about how to manage a training session for a diverse group of players and keep it fresh for those who have been in attendance for each of the four seasons worth of sessions. For me, it has been a tremendous growth experience and I have had the chance to see players grow in confidence and love of the sport. A couple of weeks ago, I got this hand drawn picture from one of the U6 players and a hug. That experience reinforced my subjective opinion of the program and complemented the objective improvement in skills that I have been ...

I recently watched a practice where a coach had the players passing back and forth in pairs up and down the field. Once they completed this task, they waited for another group to go before repeating the same activity. I watched for a few minutes without interrupting the coach. One reason I didn't interrupt the coach is that he has not reacted positively to me in the past, so I figured I would let him do his thing just in case he had a similar response. What struck me later was that this activity failed to do the two things we most want our activities to do: improve skill and solve problems. The coach was obviously trying to improve the passing skills of the players, but in the time I watched the activity there wasn't a single pass that showed any real attempt by the player to make a skillful, accurate pass. There were defects in body position, foot position and contact point on all of the players involved in the activity. All of the passes were made to players who were less...

So you have decided to enroll your child in our soccer program. If you have no experience with soccer, then this article is for you. First, I wanted to talk to you about the nature of the game. Unlike baseball or football or organized basketball, the game does not have any plays. As a result, the role of the coach during practices and games is different. Instead of the coach controlling the action and the players working hard to run the play the exact same way every time, players get control of the game. If you can imagine, every time the player gets the ball, the situation is different and the player has to come up with a way to solve the problem. The solution to every problem requires ball skills like dribbling, controlling the ball and shielding/turning with the ball. As a result, our practices should include lots of time on the ball. The exercises that the players do should require them to make decisions and use their skills to carry out their decisions. They should also focu...

Way before the concept of hashtags, I developed a set of simple phrases that I used in training to help my players understand some key principles of soccer. In this article I wrote a long time ago, I talk about the top 10 phrases I use in training with my players. I think it will be helpful to you as you work on communicating more effectively with your players. Remember that your goal is to do less talking and have the kids play for longer periods of time. With a few good memes, you can easily accomplish this goal.  Now on to the phrases:  I have noticed that many times I say something and I assume that the people I am speaking to know exactly what I am talking about. Somebody pointed this out to me one time when they asked what “playing good soccer” actually meant. For years, I would say we want out players to play good soccer without ever defining what I thought it meant. It was up to each person to interpret that in whatever way they could. This is not ...

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...

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 ...

I got the opportunity to coach a U10 game this weekend. The coach was out of town and asked me to step in. They were a very good group of kids, especially for this level. We were playing a team that had been together for a long time with a coach who has been in the program for many years. The game went well, it was close throughout and the level of skill exhibited by the players was higher than you would expect to see at a recreational level. Basically, everything I would hope to see from the players was on display in this game. As the coach, with little knowledge of the players abilities prior to the game, I just broke them into two groups and substituted the entire team other than the goalkeeper every 7-8 minutes. As the DOC, I tried to model the behaviors that I want my coaches to use every game. I sat behind the players on the sideline and talked to them about the game. I asked them to help me organize who would be playing what positions when they re-entered the game. I did hig...

If you have ever taken a Meyers-Briggs personality assessment, the first segment is introvert or extrovert. I am clearly an introvert. When given a choice between talking to a person or group of people or reading a book, I would choose reading a book every time. If you see me in the classroom or on the pitch, I don't appear to be uncomfortable. In fact, I look like I am clearly enjoying myself. The reality is that I am enjoying the interactions with players and students and I have discovered over time that I am comfortable with virtually any type of group, regardless of age or experience. So how is that possible? as Jon Lovitz used to say "Acting!!!" (with a flourish). I have mastered a teacher/coach personality that is energetic, excited, jovial and possibly funny as well. I can slip into this personality and modify it to the level of the group quickly. When I am mentoring a coach, I like to demonstrate the activities and behaviors that I want to see the coach use. O...