Coaching Soccer For Dummies

by Greg Bach

  You may be able to recruit parents to help in this endeavor by putting together some of the text for the pages or laying out the pages with the photos and headlines.

  You can design a newsletter in a newspaper format and include a column about how much fun you had coaching the kids this season and how enjoyable it was to watch them learn and progress in the sport. Be sure to thank the parents for all their hard work and positive support, too.

  Team Photo Album

  A team photo album makes a great end-of-season gift that the children will enjoy looking at, and it’s something that they’ll hold on to and cherish for a lifetime. Before the season starts, designate another parent, or perhaps your spouse, to take photos during games. You can also choose a different parent each game to snap a roll of film of all the kids, which ensures that you have a wide variety of shots to choose among when putting together the albums. After you pick out the prints you want, simply make copies and make each album identical for all the players. If you or another parent has time, you can get really creative and make an album for each player that features a team photo and a variety of shots of that particular child participating in practices or games.

  Crazy Practice

  All season long, your practices have been well organized, efficient, and focused on helping the kids learn and improve a variety of skills. A great reward for the players who have shown up on time all season long and given you their complete attention is to stage a crazy practice during one of your last sessions with the team.

  You can take a number of approaches for the crazy practice. For example, you can have the kids wear mismatched outfits to practice or have them wear their shirts and shorts backward. The younger the players are, the more excited they’ll be to have the chance to be silly together and laugh with one another. Now, don’t forget to join in the fun, too. The kids will probably get the most laughs seeing you and your assistant coaches dressed in strange outfits or wearing your clothes the wrong way.

  Soccer-Ball Photo

  All kids love receiving gifts, especially cool sports gifts related to soccer. A neat present is a soccer ball emblazoned with the team photo. These balls make great collectibles that the youngsters can proudly display on their bedroom shelves at home. The balls are also more eye-catching than the traditional team photo stuck in a frame. To have the balls made, contact well-known chain photography stores found in most cities, or ask the sports photographer your league uses for team photos. If he can’t do it, he can probably steer you to someone who can.

  Team Memento

  If you want to hand out some type of participation memento, you can go with a medal shaped like a soccer ball or even a miniature soccer trophy, because all kids love receiving trophies to display in their rooms. Or you can give them miniature soccer balls that can be purchased at various sporting-goods retail stores. You can jazz up the balls by having the team name written on them or the team’s record, if you coached in a competitive program and the team happened to win the league title or posted a good record.