superdave
21 Jan 2003, 10:48 AM
In another thread, Bill Archer wrote this:
One season I decided that, come hell or high water, that every kid was going to be able to mark up and stay goalside of another player, no matter what. So we worked on it, just a little, every practice. I talked about it at halftime every game.
Another season we focused on transition: how fast can we recover a defensive shape after losing the ball. Once I spent a whole season not caring what the score was, but insisting that we string three passes together one more time than the previous game.
And it made me think.
To me, a very logical approach for CASL (for example) to take would go like this.
1. 6-8 years old, teach a love for the game and the rules.
2. 9s, emphasize passing and trapping. Every practice, X minutes on these skills. Also, each "match" would be preceded by a 10 minute mini-match with different rules...you get points for completing passes.
3. 10s, emphasize finishing. Again, X minutes each practice, and some kind of competition preceding normal matches.
4. 11s, emphasize dribbling and close control. Mini-matches of keepaway.
5. 12s, teach basic defensive tactics...marking, pressuring, defending set pieces.
Maybe I don't have all the details right, but you get the point. Does any league give direction like this to its youth coaches? I would think it would be very popular, so long as it wasn't like a Bela Karolyi gymnastics club. Every coach of 9s would be instilling in his players the same building blocks. Players would feel confident that they're learning the game.
I came to this, in part, from Bill's comment, but also in part from little league baseball. I played for a very serious team, and we had very frequent practices, plus we tended to have 4-6 dad/coaches at practice. And that's how we did things. My dad's role was "bunting school." He'd take the first year players off to the side and teach them our way of bunting. Part of the thinking was that practicing bunting would hone the hand-eye coordination needed to hit. Working on a proper swing was separate from working on hand-eye.
It was a 9-12 league, and the pitchers were usually the 12s with sometimes 11s pitching. If the team thought a 10 might become a pitcher, he'd spend time with off to the side working on that. Another coach would fit fungoes to the young kids so they could learn how to shag flies. The older kids who had already mastered that would field the hits from batting practice.
Our team learned the necessary skills, let me tell ya. We did within the team what I'm proposing a league do leaguewide.
Thoughts?
One season I decided that, come hell or high water, that every kid was going to be able to mark up and stay goalside of another player, no matter what. So we worked on it, just a little, every practice. I talked about it at halftime every game.
Another season we focused on transition: how fast can we recover a defensive shape after losing the ball. Once I spent a whole season not caring what the score was, but insisting that we string three passes together one more time than the previous game.
And it made me think.
To me, a very logical approach for CASL (for example) to take would go like this.
1. 6-8 years old, teach a love for the game and the rules.
2. 9s, emphasize passing and trapping. Every practice, X minutes on these skills. Also, each "match" would be preceded by a 10 minute mini-match with different rules...you get points for completing passes.
3. 10s, emphasize finishing. Again, X minutes each practice, and some kind of competition preceding normal matches.
4. 11s, emphasize dribbling and close control. Mini-matches of keepaway.
5. 12s, teach basic defensive tactics...marking, pressuring, defending set pieces.
Maybe I don't have all the details right, but you get the point. Does any league give direction like this to its youth coaches? I would think it would be very popular, so long as it wasn't like a Bela Karolyi gymnastics club. Every coach of 9s would be instilling in his players the same building blocks. Players would feel confident that they're learning the game.
I came to this, in part, from Bill's comment, but also in part from little league baseball. I played for a very serious team, and we had very frequent practices, plus we tended to have 4-6 dad/coaches at practice. And that's how we did things. My dad's role was "bunting school." He'd take the first year players off to the side and teach them our way of bunting. Part of the thinking was that practicing bunting would hone the hand-eye coordination needed to hit. Working on a proper swing was separate from working on hand-eye.
It was a 9-12 league, and the pitchers were usually the 12s with sometimes 11s pitching. If the team thought a 10 might become a pitcher, he'd spend time with off to the side working on that. Another coach would fit fungoes to the young kids so they could learn how to shag flies. The older kids who had already mastered that would field the hits from batting practice.
Our team learned the necessary skills, let me tell ya. We did within the team what I'm proposing a league do leaguewide.
Thoughts?