Equus: my daughter played both futsal and indoor soccer this year. The futsal was played with a local club team who was U9 and my daughter turned 8 during the season so she was playing a year up. It was a more relaxed atmosphere as far as MOST of the parents were concerned. There was one team of boys (they played boys v girls for some reason) who were overly aggressive and I even heard one parent get mad at his son for both losing the ball to my daughter (a GIRL! *GASP*) and later being scored on by another GIRL. That team was by far the worst I've ever seen for pushing and jersey pulling. So far the indoor soccer teams have been pretty relaxed on both the field and the bleachers. The teams are pretty much made up from the few rec team players who decided to sign up. There is little to no time to coach (except for maybe the 10-15 minutes between games) so the kids pretty much just play. This has been the one and only time we've heard other parents clapping for good play by opposing teams and we even had a good conversation with some of the kids' grandparents who were talking about our daughter (she was and has been the talk of the town after every game). More about some of the talk of this message board though, I coach U8 now that our daughter's coach has gone to coach for a local academy team. Most of my players have played for someone else who coached them to stay in their half as a defender. I did my best in one season to break them of this habit and there were only a few girls who were happy to hear that they could join the game while defending. The only thing I told the defenders they HAD to do was to try and stay between the ball and our goal. My daughter (I like to use her as an example here because I know her best) would leave a few yards between herself and the ball because she learned that it was the only way she could keep up with attackers. Another girl would get right up to the ball and almost scored while playing defender. She is much quicker than my daughter and gets away with staying closer to the action. Most of the other girls are content with watching the action from the other half of the field. I try to coach them out of it and so far have only managed to get them away from the penaly box. Some of these girls had been told to stay in there as defense. I have lots of work to do with whoever I end up with this spring, but as a rec. coach who never played soccer before, I've done tons of research (I've got about 8 practices planned for the upcoming spring season already which starts in a little over a month) I've spent hours and hours playing with the ball so that I can demonstrate what to do and I watch lots of soccer. In other words, I'm dedicated to this, and I think that's why my daughter hastaken to dribbling the ball wherever she goes; she's seen me with the ball often enough, it just seems like the thing to do. So, everyone keep these awesome threads going because I learn a lot from them. Thanks.