When I started one of my clubs I wanted to get a unique shirt as a home team shirt that nobody had. It was long sleeve it was the home shirt of Argentina. It was the more expensive shirt. The away shirt was a far less expensive shirt with short sleeves. During the whole season friendly and league matches and tournament play we never wore the away shirt, but you always had to bring both just in case. In cold weather we had them wear a turtle neck under the shirt.
Yeah, you should have done this a few weeks ago. Winter came early for my U16G team. This is a shot from our last game of the season on Nov. 10:
1st session is coming to a close. After a great outdoor season, we were 0-6 indoors (50x 30 field turf fields, one less player on the field). Got a nice 6-6 tie vs. one of the big pay clubs today. Kids were awesome. They had a bad practice on Thursday, an attacking practice where they were rushing and not thinking. We had a good talk before the game today about slowing down the attack. A very hard concept, but it really helped. That and really good team defense high pressure. Debating to do a tournament next Saturday.
Well, my U9 boys team will be limping into spring. We've gone from 14 players (too many) down to 10 (borderline not enough for 8v8). Three kids don't want to play soccer anymore. Two of those I could see that they didn't really enjoy it, but third I'm kind of bummed about. And the fourth--our best player and only girl and 75% of our goals--made the premier girls team in the state, so she's gone. Thrilled for her though, amazing opportunity for her and she has the natural inclination for this sport to become someone special. Problem Child is not one of the ones who left, so it looks like I'll be dealing with him for one more season. One last seaons to have this group together before the go into our club's tryout/tiering process at for fall of 2013. And I suppose I won't hear complaing about PT with only 10 kids. On a positive note, we did win our little fall indoor league that ended last week. We avenged a 10-2 loss from the regular season with a 3-1 win in the finals. And my son been working like mad on his juggling this fall/winter and has gone from a record of 8 to 38 since November. I sent all the kids juggling charts at the end of the season and promised prizes for anyone who kept a record and put in at least 3 x 15 minutes of juggling each week though the winter. He pasted his in the garage and is constantly begging me to come count for him. On a negative note, I think he is only one on the team doing the juggling. And I think all 38 touches were right foot/leg. He's doing a 3 day Coerver holiday camp at the end of this week....three days of four hours each. He loves the Coerver stuff, so he is excited. Happy Holidays.
It was normally marked painted--the snow started about an hour before kickoff. We just did the best we could.
I guess after the coaching argument we had in the first winter indoor session, Coach Joystick asked if I wanted to coach in Winter 2 and I said sure. To be fair he is a good guy off the field, and it was a nice gesture to offer. We breezed through the U8 division with our 7YO academy boys, so this session we asked to move up to U10 Rec. They needed to be challenged more heading into spring. The first game was last weekend. I keep it simple: three backs, three forwards; parents side/middle/coaches side. I tell the middle back before kickoff to go wherever he needs to, knowing he would attack and come back to help on the defending end. A de facto 3-3 morphs into a 2-1-3, 2-3-1 or 2-1-2-1 as the game goes on. The shape got out of whack a few times but recovered naturally, and it was fairly compact the entire game. Not once was a "spread out" required. After a quick talk with three items: 1.) Talk 2) Away 3) Help, I send them back out. The kids win easily, 8-0 over a good sized, older team. Afterward, Coach Joystick told me he really liked the coaches side/parents side language. I told him at this age left and right are fine when you start, but during play when a U8 might be turned sideways or facing his or her own goal, left and right have different meanings. With the other way they can glance up and quickly get their bearings. He mentioned the midfielders and I told him I never told anyone to play midfield...just backs and forwards. Their natural tendencies fill the roles from there. His son had the best game he's played yet this winter...as a "midfielder".
Here is a question to pose. I've dislocated my ankle. I am on crutches and in a cast for the foreseeable future (find out if I need surgery from the ortho tomorrow). When I coach, I am a very hands-on coach, demonstrating (best of my abilities) - now, I am really quite useless. Best way to run a practice (U-12)? You Tube clips? Parents? Ideally is to get a couple HS players to help out.
Sitting down Seriously, what do you need to personally demonstrate? I suspect that you don't have to introduce any new techniques. So that means correction rather than demonstration. If somebody is new, use one of the other players to demonstrate the technique. Small group tactical points can be made by "catching them being good." With older kids, you might be playing 11v11 and trying to introduce team tactics. That can be done with shadow play. Large groups and spread out 1v1 contests will be very difficult for you because you will find it difficult to see everything. But if you keep your lack of mobility in mind when planning your practices and laying out the areas, you should be able to minimize that problem. Circuit training is one possible solution. Rotate the players rather than you. I interpret "hands on" to mean you primarily use the direct method of coaching. This will be an opportunity to explore alternative coaching methods. You might want to review the Methods of Coaching memo that is part of the required reading for the C license. You can download it here: http://www.ussoccer.com/Coaches/Licenses/National-C.aspx One area you for sure will need help with is managing the equipment. You shouldn't be carrying things with a bad leg. Another area is dealing with potential injuries. You may never have an injured player, but for sure you will have a difficult time dealing with emergencies.
actually its the little nuances, such as proper shielding, receiving passes properly to save time/space etc. To 11-yo's it is new stuff. Amazing how useful that old material could be after the class. Not that I've taken the C, but I have some old stuff. I've got my own son on the team to carry the equipment. 'Bout freakin' time he carried his weight.
Equipment and field set up are the biggest issues I had when I was on crutches after knee surgery last year. Luckily I had an injured player so she carried a lot of stuff for me and helped set up the drills. I pretty much gave her diagrams and she put out the cones. If they waited on me we might still be out there! Even on crutches they can still get the idea of where to go. You just won't be going at it full speed if you demonstrate.
I just love coaching sometimes. We've been emailing parents for over a month, telling them that they need to let as know immediately if their kid is not playing in the spring so we can find other players if needed. 4 families still are not signed up today, the last day of registration. Finally we get responses and 2 of them tell us today that they're out. One email simply says "________ has decided not to play this spring." No sorry for the late notice, no nothing. Fortunately for us some other team imploded and we had two families begging us to take their boys. And we're adding a kid whose family is moving to town from one MLS job to another, so I figure the boy must at least have a clue about soccer. But the rudeness of parents waiting until the last second to tell us they are out is somewhat shocking.
I share your frustration. It seems to happen more and more lately, too. In the last couple years I've had two teams implode, the most recent due to players pulling out after they'd already committed to the team--ordering uniforms and everything. Editorializing a bit, maybe our instant-gratification society is leading to more of this behavior. Common courtesy seems to be on the wane. Sigh.
I Hear ya. I've thought about going on the offensive in these situations. Set the commit deadline about a month prior to the actual deadline to give yourself time to find replacements.
Also money talks. Verbal commitment is great but don't count it until money is in. It's also yet another reason for club passes vs team passes.
Our academy U8 team moved up to U10 rec for the second winter indoor session to be challenged more and they have responded well with just three games left. Coach Joystick has ramped up the volume level since the first game as we haven't been beaten yet and he can taste that "championship". I ignore him and keep things positive; I'm just subbing players in and out to get touches and to find a combo that will click that particular day. That's the fun and challenging part for me, reading the game and trying to come up with subs and roles that work. Lately I've been purposely vague with positions to see how they maintain shape and take up space on their own. It gets crowded at times but overall they're starting to recognize the space better, maintain shape and combine more on their own. Coach Joystick's constantly telling my son, "You must pass the ball more," every chance he gets, even when my son really is doing a pretty good job distributing. I tell my son to be respectful when he says that, but basically play your game as you see it out there. My son told me after the game last weekend when he was subbed out, he was getting a drink when Coach Joystick said it to him again. The kid told me he looked up and told him nicely, "I make decisions out there. Sometimes the decision is to pass, and sometimes the decision is to beat the guy."
So we got crushed 12-3 last night in our final regular season game of this winter session. And the playoff brackets have us playing this same team first round next week, where we will summarily be crushed again. There are two teams in this league of 5 that are head and shoulders above the rest, and we aren't one of them. So question: my inclination is to ask the director to simply let these two best teams play each other in the finals and let the bottom 3 teams play each other in a little round robin. The bottom 3 teams are pretty close in ability but all three of us have been and will again get destroyed by the top two. Do you think it is more valuable/beneficial for the kids to play against teams of similar ability, or is it equally valuable to play teams of a much higher ability? My thought is that both are valuable in different ways, but we've already experienced three of the beatdowns this season and I'd like the kids to end the season with a more balanced game.
We do something similar in ours. The top two teams play a final, then it's 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6, 7 vs.8, etc. If all the coaches agreed to it and it can be scheduled without a lot of trouble on the facility's part I don't see why not.