Coaching Soccer For Dummies

by Greg Bach

  Teaching players the essence of teamwork is essential to ensure that no single player monopolizes the ball at the expense of his teammates. When dealing with this lesson, don’t make it a public display. The last thing you want to do is embarrass the player in front of his teammates and, in the process, make him suddenly afraid to take any shots or dribble the ball for any length of time for fear of being reprimanded again. A ball hog doesn’t need to be disciplined; he simply needs coaching and guidance on how to work more effectively as a team. Don’t detract from his aggressive play or drain his passion for playing the game; just make him aware that in order for the team to reach its potential, every child must play an instrumental role.

  The average child

  You’re going to have all types of youngsters on your team — everything from ball hogs and bullies to behavioral challenges and klutzes. Some of these kids are self-motivated; others rely on you for motivation and inspiration. Some are involved to quench their competitive desires, to get a better grasp on some skills of the game, or merely for the social interaction and camaraderie of being part of a team. Some of these kids are going to be extremely coachable and receptive to all your instructions and feedback; others may not be quite as receptive. Some of these kids are skinny, short, and not nearly as physically developed as their teammates, and some may be overweight and taller than others their age.

  For the most part, the majority of your players are going to be your regular, everyday kids who enjoy playing soccer and being with their friends. They’re not super talents destined for college soccer scholarships or disruptive influences creating havoc with the team’s chemistry and your blood pressure. They simply show up with smiles and shin guards to play for you, learn from you, and grow under your guidance. A lot of these kids may be involved just because their friends are playing, and they want to be involved with them. Some of these kids — through their involvement with you this season — will develop a real love of and passion for the game and continue playing it for years to come. Others will be content to try a new sport next season but will have a handle on the basics of the game if they ever choose to return to the sport in the future.

  Chapter 6

  Running a Great Practice

  In This Chapter

  Conducting the season’s first practice

  Preparing for practice sessions

  Choosing the best drills for your practices

  Making the most of practice time

  Leaving the kids wanting more

  Nothing wipes the smiles off the faces of young soccer players quicker than dull practices in which the same tiresome drills are used all season long. As the coach, your job is to keep the interest and excitement level high every time your youngsters step onto the field.

  Creative practices that children eagerly look forward to attending week after week pay big dividends in their skill development, speed the learning process, enhance their overall enjoyment of the sport, and translate into plenty of that all-important fun in the process.

  During your practices, youngsters must be constantly challenged, encouraged, and entertained. Be creative in your planning, enthusiastic in your instruction, and overflowing with your praise. Carefully craft your practices days beforehand rather than at the stoplight on the drive over to the field. Every drill must serve a specific purpose rather than just fill a chunk of practice time, and you must design every practice with the intention of helping youngsters progress in all areas of the game.

  Each practice session you conduct is enormously important in each child’s overall development. These outings, if they’re well constructed and efficiently run, go beyond teaching and developing basic soccer skills. They also promote positive attitudes, efficient practice routines, team chemistry, healthy fitness habits, increased knowledge of the game, and reduced chances of injuries occurring when proper stretching is performed (which we dig into in greater detail in Chapter 18). Now that’s a pretty impressive list!

  Sure, game day is what all kids naturally look forward to the most. The trick is turning your practice sessions into equally fun-filled outings that generate the same type of interest. Sound practice planning that maximizes your time with the kids is the foundation of any successful youth soccer season.

  Kicking Off the Season with a Great First Practice

  Delivering an important presentation to the boss, meeting your future in-laws for the first time, getting a call from the Internal Revenue Service, and conducting your first soccer practice of the season — these situations can all be pretty nerve-wracking experiences, but they don’t have to be. Well, at least running a soccer practice doesn’t have to be.

  If you’ve never coached a youth soccer team before, chances are it seems pretty daunting — and a lot more difficult than you expected — when you arrive at the field for the first time, and you have 15 sets of eyes suddenly staring up at you for guidance, instruction, and motivation. You may bring all the equipment the kids need, and you may have your clipboard at your side and a whistle dangling from your neck, but if you haven’t come armed with a carefully crafted practice plan, you have big problems.

  You have a lot at stake when you take the field for your practice session. The first practice of the season sets the tone and provides kids with an indication of what’s in store.

  Greeting the team for the first time

  Just like in the preseason parents meeting that we discuss in Chapter 4, first impressions are oh-so-important for establishing the proper frame of mind for the first practice. A smile and a friendly pat on the back from you as your young players arrive help build a comfortable foundation and go a long way toward establishing those special coach–player bonds that can make a season so rewarding. When you show up to start a new job, you aren’t left standing off to the side, wondering whether anyone is going to come up and talk to you or welcome you, so don’t leave youngsters stranded or forced to linger on the side of the field when they show up.

  Arrive at the field early so that as kids climb out of the car, usually with their parents, you’re there with a friendly smile to welcome them.

  Greet older players with a friendly handshake, and welcome them to the field. Talk with them about how long they’ve played soccer, which team and coach they played for last year, and how their season went. If they get a sense of your genuine enthusiasm — and that you’re sincerely interested in them — the seeds of a relationship based on mutual respect will be planted and will grow stronger as the season moves along.

  Until players get to know one another better, they’re often reluctant to go up to one another and just stand around waiting for the start of practice. If you’re coaching a team that has some experience playing soccer, you can help the kids start to become familiar and comfortable with one another by having players pair up as they arrive and loosen up by passing the ball back and forth. This warm-up gives you a nice head start on building some team chemistry. It also gives you a sneak peek at the experience and talent level of your team. By watching the players in these few minutes, you get a sense of how well they pass and receive the ball and how well they handle the ball in general. This method also works well with younger players, although the more inexperienced they are, the more explaining you have to do.

  You may realize that the drills in your practice plan are either too easy or too difficult for this group and that some adjustments are in order. If so, don’t panic. Some quick thinking can remedy the problem. If the drills are too easy, you can always bump up the difficulty by having more players take on defensive roles so that the dribbling, passing, or shooting drill is tougher to complete. For those drills that prove too challenging, you can always tone things down by removing the defensive element. Or when you’re mapping out your practice, put together some drills that are both far more difficult and easier than what you originally planned, just in case you need to alter your practice and resort to the backup drills.

  Making coach and player introductions

  Jus
t like a child’s first day of school, his first soccer practice of the season can be a stressful time, particularly if he’s never played the sport before. After all, he has new kids and coaches to meet, instructions to follow, and skills to learn. He’s in unfamiliar surroundings, so anything you can do to alleviate stress and make him comfortable goes a long way toward getting things off to a smooth start.

  The first step in that direction is to formally introduce yourself (and any assistant coaches, if you’ve already selected them) to the entire team. (In Chapter 4, we discuss the importance of proceeding cautiously before selecting parents to fill the important roles.) When meeting with your team, keep the following in mind:

  Gather the team in an area of the field with the fewest distractions. If you’re standing with your back to another practice or game that’s taking place, some of your players will be more interested in what’s taking place behind you than in your introductions.

  Be mindful of where the sun is when getting the team together. You don’t want a dozen youngsters squinting to see you because they’re staring directly into the sun. Whenever possible, you should be the one facing the sun. Remember, paying close attention to the smallest details can make a giant difference in the impact you have with your team.

  When speaking to the team, particularly children ages 8 and under, get down to their level so you can talk directly to them. Standing up while the team is sitting isn’t conducive for listening and learning, especially if the players have to strain to keep their heads up to focus on you. Your talk is more beneficial when you speak to them at eye level. If your squad is small, your best bet may be to sit cross-legged with your players gathered in front of you. If you have a dozen players or more, consider talking to them while bent down on a knee.

  Let the kids know that they can call you “Coach” or “Coach Jim” or whatever moniker you’re comfortable with. Also, share a few quick tidbits about yourself, and if you have a son or daughter on the team, introduce him or her. That also serves as a good lead-in for the other members of the team to introduce themselves. If you don’t have a child on the team, you can use creative introductions to put the kids at ease. Start by introducing yourself and share with them your favorite television show, for example, and then have them follow suit. Kids are more relaxed chatting about their favorite cartoon or sitcom and can learn interesting tidbits about their teammates in the process.

  Many children are naturally shy, and some may even be afraid to say their names to the group, so make it a fun game by trying to guess the kids’ names. Throwing out crazy guesses gets the kids laughing and puts them at ease when sharing their names.

  With older kids who are more experienced, share a little more detailed information about your coaching background. Kids are naturally going to be interested in who they’re playing for this season, and if they’ve been involved in the sport for years, they may want to know what type of experience you have being on the sidelines.

  As with any team discussion, the shorter, the talk the better. Short attention spans abound at the younger age groups, so the less time the players spend listening to you and the more time they spend running around on the field, the better for everyone involved.

  To help you learn the kids’ names more quickly, and to help the youngsters get to know their teammates, try the following:

  Give everyone a nametag for the first few practices. Put nametags on yourself as well as your assistants to help promote team unity.

  Select a couple of kids to lead warm-ups at each practice. Announce the names of the kids you choose so the rest of the team begins learning players’ names. Rotate the players leading the calisthenics each practice.

  A great way to get young kids to loosen up at the first practice and start getting comfortable with you is to introduce them to “Get the Coach.” Give each of the kids a soccer ball. The idea is for them to touch you while maintaining control of their soccer balls while you do your best to dodge all the youngsters coming your way. The game gets the kids running around, laughing, and having fun right away, which is a great way to start the season on a high note. Plus, the kids build ball-control and ball-handling skills without even realizing it.

  Focusing on basic skills first

  Soccer practice can be an overwhelming environment for a young child whose only sports experience up until now consists of playing ball with a sibling or a neighborhood friend down the street. And soccer is truly unique because it requires a wide range of skills that utilize assorted body parts like the head, chest, thighs, shins, and all areas of the feet. These factors mean that you have to ease your players into practice and introduce them to the most basic skills during those first few weeks of the season to give them a sense of what’s required to play this sport. With older kids embarking on a new season, providing them a refresher on the basics is an effective way to begin. In subsequent practices, you can jump to working on more advanced skills.

  Working with younger kids

  If you’re coaching in a beginning-level soccer program, your job description is basically already filled out for you. With kids at this age who are unfamiliar with the sport (and some of them have never kicked a soccer ball in their lives), your initial focus is going to be on the rudimentary skills that every young player needs to acquire. The most important skill to begin teaching them is how to kick the ball in the general direction in which they’re aiming. Clearly, this ability is essential for being able to derive any sense of enjoyment and accomplishment from the sport.

  During early practices with younger children, you also introduce them to some of the other basics of the game: passing, receiving, dribbling, tackling, and goaltending. As they start to get a handle on those skills, you can begin to give them a feel for other areas of the game, such as trapping and heading. We provide you with pointers for correctly teaching these fundamental skills in Chapter 9.

  Working with older kids

  Most times, the older kids are probably going to have a decent handle on many of the basics of the game. Still, devote part of your first practice to going over these skills. A lot of kids probably haven’t played soccer since last season, which could be a year ago, so a little refresher is helpful. From there, focusing on ball movement and retaining possession is usually a good starting point for a new season. Being able to efficiently work the ball down the field as a unit is vital at this juncture in the team’s development.

  Although skills such as throw-ins, corner kicks, penalty kicks, and direct and indirect kicks usually aren’t utilized in leagues at the younger levels, your players need to become versed in these areas as they continue in their development this season. You may be tempted, in your enthusiasm to teach these aspects of the game, to overwhelm them the first time you get together. Refrain from throwing too much information at them at once. During that first practice, consider picking one new skill, such as throw-ins, and introduce the kids to that. In subsequent practices, you can slowly incorporate additional new skills into your sessions.

  Coming to Practice Prepared

  In Chapter 4, we discuss your preseason parents meeting and how you expect your players to arrive at practice properly prepared, with the right equipment and their water bottles. The same goes for you. Besides doing your homework and outlining the drills you want to use and the skills you want to focus on, your responsibilities extend to arriving at the field with not only your practice plan, but also all the equipment needed for a great practice. A part of that preparation includes an area of the game that a lot of coaches fail to give proper consideration to, and that’s having a properly stocked first-aid kit.

  Creating a practice plan

  A well-constructed practice plan may take, dare we say it, a little practice on your part. But after putting together a couple of them, you’ll get the hang of it. Putting together a quality practice plan — and then being able to execute it — is sort of like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. You have all these pieces in front of you in the form of t
he skills you want to teach, and you probably have at least a general idea of some of the drills and techniques you want to use to teach them. Now it’s just a matter of finding the right spot to fit them all in and determining their most useful order during the allotted time you have with the team each week during the season.

  Jotting down what skills you want to work on initially — and what you want to accomplish during those first couple of weeks of the season — helps jump-start your thought process and get you started along the way to mapping out useful practice plans (see the section “Focusing on basic skills first” earlier in the chapter). After you put those skills down on paper, go ahead and break your session down even further into how much time you want to devote to each area. If the league allows you to practice with your team twice a week for an hour at a time, you know you have two hours each week to work with the kids, and you can break down how much time you want to spend on different aspects.

  Devise your practice plans well before your first practice, but don’t outline every aspect of every practice all at once. That’s counterproductive, because as your players develop skills and learn new ones, your practices constantly change to accommodate their improved level of play.

  Also, some initial tweaking of your long-term plan is almost guaranteed after you gauge the skill level of your team (which we discuss in Chapter 5). When selecting drills, avoid using ones that turn out to be too easy for the kids because they won’t learn much from them. You also want to steer clear of drills that are too difficult, because they limit the amount of learning taking place and frustrate youngsters when they’re unable to enjoy any level of success.

  We can’t say it enough: Preparation is vital for a smooth-running and effective practice. Even though you feel prepared because you have your practice all mapped out, you’ll have times when a drill or game that you designed simply falls flat. So now what? Have a couple of back-up drills listed on your practice plan that you can resort to if needed. You’ll get a sense early in a new drill whether the kids like it and whether it accomplishes what you intended. If not, you have to be ready to make the switch and go with something else.