The Game Within the Child

 Avoiding the 3L's Sam Snow, former Director of Coaching for Louisiana Youth Soccer Association, introduced me to this term and it clarifies so many things for me that I feel compelled to share it with you. The three L’s are Lines, Laps and Lectures. I will deal with each of these separately, but the basic idea is that the 3L’s will eventually cause your players to look at practice as work and not play. Lines reduce the number of touches a player will get on the ball and will reduce the reality of the game. There is no element of the game where the players line up for anything except a handshake at the end. I once counted the number of touches a player got during a 5 minute period while participating in a shooting activity. There were 12 players on the team and no goalkeeper. During that 5 minutes he got 4 shots and his touch count was 8. The rest of the time was spent holding his ball so that other players wouldn’t knock it away or chasing his errant shot, retrieving it and runnin...

  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 ...

  It’s the pressure, stupid In 1992, President George H.W. Bush was coming off one of his best years ever. Riding high in the polls after assembling an international coalition to retake Kuwait from Iraqi invaders, he was expected to cruise to re-election. While the presence of a third-party candidate from the right most likely did the greatest damage (Clinton won a plurality of the vote), there was also a famous phrase from that campaign that resonated “it’s the economy, stupid” because after the war, the U.S. went into a brief recession and that phrase was meant to imply that Clinton was more in touch with the economic needs of citizens than the President.  I was reminded of that phrase after some of my coaches insisted that they couldn’t adequately coach their inexperienced players without having lines and a full-size goal for their practices. I do empathize with them. When I coached at the HS level, my teams always had access to at least one goal and up to 4 depending on th...

  4/12/23 Key Takeaways from ATLUTD coaches clinic We had a good turnout of coaches for the clinic, but I know all of you couldn’t make it, so here are some key takeaways for you to think about.  Look like you are having fun and your players will too…. All of our coaches are parent volunteers. We have tried in the past to get help from HS and College students who were knowledgeable about soccer, but it rarely works out because they are either not good with the kids or don’t communicate well with the parents. I’d rather have parents who know how they would want to be treated even if their soccer experience isn’t great.  One of the issues that crops up is that our parent volunteers have difficulty getting out of “parent mode” even when they are the coach of the team. What we saw from Leigh and Casey, the coach instructors last night, was an ability to get a little silly with the players. Their enthusiasm for the activities they were doing was infectious and the kids felt it...

  Your tone sets the tone.  I like to think that I am the face of the recreational program here at Impact, but the reality is that besides for a few emails, some practices if you attend the group sessions and the occasional drop by at your games, the real face of the program is you. When our membership thinks about the program, the first thing they will recall is you and how you helped their child grow and develop as a person.  While most of your interactions with the players happen during practice, there is one time when your interactions are apparent to others as well and that is during the game. Not only is the other team there, but also some collection of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends may also be in attendance. While your parents may be accustomed to your behaviors and what you say, others may not be, especially if they are only visiting our club.  As a long-time teacher I am very aware that even though we are ostensibly there to watch the children ...

  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 ...

 When I took my National Youth License back in 1999, one of the big revelations I had was the concept of 100% participation. As a coach, I was comfortable having players wait their turn to participate in an activity. What I learned was that waiting reduces opportunity and breeds misbehavior. Players who are not participating in an activity are losing opportunities to learn and they are far more likely to engage in misbehaviors that distract others or get themselves into trouble. We learned the motto "no lines, no laps, no lectures." While each of these deserves it's own essay, this essay is focused on one area of coaching practice that I have always found particularly disappointing, the dribbling through cones activity.  It is a staple of practices throughout the U.S. and it features rows of beautifully spaced cones and players waiting in line to dribble around the cones and then back. It has so many features that I find disdainful, but I do have to acknowledge that it do...

 Picture a beautiful spring evening, sunny and not too warm. A great game is being played between two evenly matched U12 teams. While this is a game between two recreational teams, many of the players from both teams would be comfortably playing at the academy level. The game is close throughout and late in the second half one team breaks through and scores the only goal. As the director of this program, this is really the best that I can ask for in terms of player development and having an environment where players are challenged to do their best and grow from the experience.  Unfortunately, because of scheduling issues brought on by spring weather and a chronic lack of referees in youth soccer, I am also refereeing this game. In my job description, this falls under "other duties."  Each season, I end up refereeing a few games and usually it is not a problem. My coaches and parents generally understand how they are supposed to behave and even if they don't normally act t...

American Soccer has long been derided as little more than "kickball." We have a large number of players, but produce relatively few truly outstanding players compared to a country like the Netherlands which has a much higher success rate at developing young talent. There are tons of reasons why we lag behind other countries including the lack of infrastructure and the lack of a "soccer culture" where people had grown up with the sport and therefore have parents with prior experience. Our parent coaches are often transplants from other sports that are primarily coach directed like football and baseball. Employing the same coaching strategies in soccer is not very effective due to the player-centered nature of the sport. The problem As the director of coaching for a recreational program, my most persistent problem was finding coaches for U5 and u6 teams. When I did find these coaches, they had little idea of what to do with the kids during a training session o...

In a U10 game, a player is offsides. It happens all the time because 9 year olds, like the rest of us have difficulty understanding (or accurately calling) an offsides infraction. The other team gets a free kick. The coach calls out a player to take the free kick and then has most of the team move up the field. The player taking the free kick gives it a big run up and kicks the ball as hard as possible. Most of the time, it goes directly to someone on the other team and immediately, the team which, moments before had the advantage, is now in scramble mode. They just ran up the field for the free kick and now they run back down the field to chase the other team and try to prevent a goal. Does that sound like a familiar scenario? I see this regularly every week. In addition to free kicks, it happens on throw-ins, goal kicks and almost every time the goalkeeper gets the ball. There is a rush to get the ball down the field as quickly as possible. Next time you watch a game, count how man...

We are wrapping up the season and I wanted to record some of the action so that I could see how players have grown. I have observed a great deal of growth in the players in terms of their skill and attention to the game. Many parents have commented about how their child is starting to "get it" when it comes to game play and how to use the skills we focused on in training. When I started the group training for the U5/6 in the fall of 2017, I did it because I was dissatisfied with the quality of coaching at practices and game play. I thought it would be easy to train a large group of 4/5 year olds and improve the quality of their development. As you can probably expect, it wasn't easy. Activities that are easy to do with 6-10 players on your team are almost impossible to carry out with 40-50 players. Getting 8-10 teams of players to the correct field and have the right color was crazy some weeks. Despite the challenges, I was able to modify the sessions to focus on my p...

I had the chance to observe two U12 games this past weekend. Both games featured some quality play by both teams. One game was close, the other was not close. Even in the game that was not close, the losing team was creating chances to score so it felt more even than the score would indicate. What really differentiated these two games was the behavior of the parents and the coaches. In one game, the majority of the talking was coming from adults on the sidelines in the other game it came from the players in the game. If you have read some of my other articles (the cheer don't steer program, "helping" your players during the game), you probably already know that I prefer the game where the players are talking. I thought it might be helpful for us to consider why parents and coaches feel compelled to speak during the game. You already know that soccer is a player-directed sport where the coach can have little impact on the game because it is moving so fast, there are fe...