The Game Within the Child

If there is one issue that crops up in youth soccer more than any other, it is when games are not competitive. As a young coach, I experienced it first-hand with my U12 boys team when we played the team where the coach was the president of the league. Even though it was AYSO and the teams were supposed to be balanced so that there shouldn't have been any major mismatches, this team dominated every other team including mine. That wasn't such a big problem for me except that every time this team scored, the team mom would hit the play button on the boom box and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" would blast out of the speakers. It really symbolized to me that this coach didn't have any idea how it looked when you played a celebration song for the last goal in a 9-0 win. I have also been on the other side of that scoreline a few times at the HS level. The last time, my team was up 8-0 and I was encouraging my team to pass the ball around and possess it, but we ended...

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...

One of the reasons why I have stayed in this game so long is that I am constantly learning new things and I get excited about trying them out with the teams and coaches in my club. The exercise I am going to describe today was one I learned from a State Instructors Seminar run by my state DOC, Jacob Daniel, back in 2010. From the title, it sounds like a typical 3 v 3 game, but over the years, I have expanded it out to 7 v 7 and even larger. The great thing about it is that it can work with a U10 rec team as well as a high level select team. The setup is simple, 3 players on a 15 x 25 yard grid with a 5 foot goal at each end. Depending on the size of your team, you can have up to 3 grids going at once in the first level. In a typical 3 v 3 setup, all of the players are moving and switching positions. In this game, there is one designated player who is the nominal GK. In a real game setup, this would be your #6 (defensive mid or holding mid), or possibly your #4 or 5 (center backs) pla...