2019 Coaching Thread

Discussion in 'Coach' started by stphnsn, Mar 11, 2019.

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  1. danielpeebles2

    Dec 3, 2013
    In the spring league we usually attend, it got so bad one year that players from other teams had to fill in so that one of the teams could play their game. Only 2 players showed up for that 4v4. In my opinion, that's the problem when you offer scholarships for a rec league, if the parents aren't paying for it, they don't feel committed.
     
  2. danielpeebles2

    Dec 3, 2013
    They should at least be apprised to the amount of playing time she will get being low. she would be playing around 70% of the game on a rec team. The rest could be considered personal information.
     
    elessar78 repped this.
  3. DaBurg

    DaBurg Member

    Apr 18, 2019
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I've run into a couple parents like this. I'd be fine if the parent just sees rec soccer as recreational and not taking it too seriously, but when they are yelling on the sidelines like it's their family honor at stake, at least show up to practice and to games on time. Pick one. It either matters, or it doesn't. That's the one benefit I can see to pay to play, it weeds out the families that don't respect the time the coaches are putting in.
     
  4. Malabranca

    Malabranca Member

    Oct 6, 2016
    Well, after a tough couple of seasons my U15 boys team bounced back and finished the season with one loss and only three goals conceded. A couple of observations:
    • With the age change, we were a very young 2004 team. 90% of our team was born between September and December with another 8% born in 05. This matters as puberty starts to hit.
    • I have become much more zen about kids attending practice and games. We play with the people who show up. At the beginning of the season I had 13 kids rostered. At the end, I had 17. I only had all 17 players come to one game.
    • Speaking of puberty, I think it is really important that coaches at this age are mindful of the changes their players' bodies are undergoing and attempt to add some appropriate exercises (plyometric or otherwise) to their practices to help prevent injuries and promote general well-being. I am not even talking about conditioning - though there is that aspect to it. The number of kids with growth-related ailments is higher than I expected.
    • The early tryout season kills the spring season. I saw 5 teams blow up/disappear a third of the way into the season because the kids/coaches gave up based on what is happening the next season.
    • Kids need to watch/experience more soccer.The kids who play a lot of soccer or the kids who watch soccer on TV have such a big advantage over the kids who don't because they have much better ideation as to what they are supposed to do. I am not sure we are going to be able to pry them away from youtube, but you have to get kids watching and thinking about the game off of the field.
    • Video of games and practices really helps. I think particularly in my case, where I am a long-time coach of many of these kids, my act may have gotten a little stale for some of them. Being able to show the kids what the did right as well as what they are doing wrong was huge.
    • You can never have too many kids that can play goalie.
     
  5. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    This was my biggest frustration this spring, and I don't know how to get over it. Kids don't show up for training so we don't have the players to work on the team-size problems we see in games. Then at games the kids get frustrated because we aren't improving and beating teams we should beat based on skill. That leads to kids skipping training because they know we're not getting better as a team and we won't be able to do the work we need to do to get better because we don't have enough players. It's a terrible cycle. I had a core group of 9 or so players who were there for almost everything. Then we'd have a rotating cast of the other 10 players who had a lot of issues getting to training and games. We didn't have our full 18 for a single game or training session.
     
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  6. DaBurg

    DaBurg Member

    Apr 18, 2019
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'd wonder if just disbanding is the appropriate option. Just telling them we're going to prefer to play who shows up to practice and if not enough of a field-able team shows up to practice then we will forfeit the next game. Practices will continue without games until we get enough people showing up to practice. If nothing changes then we disband as a team. At some point there needs to be a respect for the process of being on a team. If they can't get that far, then there is no team.
     
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  7. Rekyrts

    Rekyrts Member

    Sep 7, 2018
    I know I'm gonna sound holier-than-thou, but it bugs the heck out of me that folks like this keep jobs in youth soccer.
     
  8. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Me and the mom were texting. She kinda broached the subject of “recommended”paid private training sessions. So I spilled everything. Turns out she knew about the arrests, not about the affair. didn’t know about the private training$$ and playing time issues.

    They are staying because they feel they really have no alternative. Their rec soccer is bad, travel soccer is political (according to them), and pay to play is the best of what’s left. But at least they know what’s up.
     
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  9. Soccer Dad & Ref

    Oct 19, 2017
    San Diego
    What is the difference between travel ball and pay to play?
     
  10. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    I've thought about just not doing it next spring, but I don't want to do that. We're a small club with only my 19U team and a 12U team in our travel program. We only have a few kids who grew up playing with our club. The rest I recruit from surrounding area high school teams. I think that's part of the problem, having very few long-term ties to our club. We're also cheap, even for rural Indiana so there isn't much sunk cost to drive commitment. Ultimately, I want to give local players a local club to play with. Most of my players won't drive the 40 minutes east or west to get to another travel club, and they probably couldn't afford the more expensive fees at those clubs either.

    My policy is that if you don't go to training before a game, you don't start. If you no call and no show for training, you're suspended for a half. I get lots of calls with excuses and very few no call/no shows. Like I said, I have the 9 or so who are committed so I don't want to cancel games on those guys if we have enough to play. It's a double edged sword. Also, if we forfeit games, the club gets fined by the league, and I suspect if you forfeit too many, they won't let you register a team again next season.

    Yes, and I made it clear that I expected commitment at tryouts and throughout the winter during our registration period. I asked players and parents for conflict dates so I could schedule around dates when we'd be missing a ton of players. I guess I need to think of a way to get the parents more involved so they understand the commitment, scheduling, etc. I just don't know what's going to be effective and what's not.
     
  11. danielpeebles2

    Dec 3, 2013
    Lesson from this season.

    I had a girl on my boys co-ed rec team this season who was limping into the first practice. It was 5v5 on a relatively short field, so at least we don't have to run 100 yards several times a game. Since she appeared to be hurt I just had her play defense during the scrimmage. When the time for the first game came around, I saw that she was limping and I said something to the effect of "you're still hurt? Maybe you should start at in the back. you kids are rough on your bodies."

    The dad over heard me and sent me a text during the game:

    "Hey Coach Dan, this is <father>,
    <player's dad>. Just something we forgot to talk about. <player> was born without a left hip socket. She's had numerous reconstructive hip and knee surgeries. She does limp considerably at times, but it's not due to pain it's because one leg is shorter than the other. She has no restrictions from her doctor and was cleared to player soccer.

    A few minutes later I rotated the defensive and offensive players and she scored her first goal of the season. She did pretty good overall (the whole team did)
     
  12. Malabranca

    Malabranca Member

    Oct 6, 2016
    #162 Malabranca, Jun 19, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2019
    My two cents (for what is worth) is that at the older ages - say u15/16 and up, you almost have to have a club approach to teams as opposed to a team approach. Meaning, that you have affiliated teams at younger and older ages, if possible, so that you can share players, combine for practices, etc.

    I was in a similar situation, in that my team was a unicorn, a u15 team playing at a decent level in a very small club that is mostly township travel, with no other same gender teams within 2 age levels. I figured out early on this wasn't going to work and spent the last two years trying to find another club (and more importantly teams) to affiliate with. One of the reasons I was able to be zen this year was that even though I still only had my nine to practices, we had 18 at the training sessions because I had partnered with a U14 team and we held one joint practice a week and were able to share the occasional player or three if needed.

    I think you have to be creative - whether it is partnering with another club, as I did, rostering more players, being very flexible with practices/games - whatever, if you are going to coach this age group. I am sure this is a problem specific to a certain tier of clubs/teams. Likely, the more prestigious clubs have less of an attendance problem. That being said, if you have high school kids on the team that play sports, or are active in any extracurriculars - or even want to do well on the SAT, you are going to have kids with hectic schedules and there are going to be problems.

    My real fix to this would be to have teams composed of multiple years once high school soccer starts. I don't think the single-year team really serves as much of a broad purpose once logistics and numbers become more pressing issues. Sure, I can see how single-year teams might be useful for identifying talent for higher tiers, but I think we make it really hard to find and field a team right when we should be nurturing the talent and interest we have spent so long developing in youth soccer.

    I've also linked previously to a suggestion by Hugo Perez that kids this age should be starting to play against adults. I think developmentally high school kids are ready to take a bigger jump and even if we don't throw them in with adults and college kids, they should be handle a broader age ranged grouping.
     
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  13. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    I appreciate your response, @Malabranca. I'm in the process of trying to (re)build our travel program from the bottom with a new 10U team to compliment our existing 12U team. The hope is we can get enough buy-in to build the program to the point where we do have a couple high school age teams each spring for the reasons you stated. As we currently stand, we have trouble recruiting the 18 high school boys we want to field one team let alone two. We'd also struggle to find a second head coach who has the required license to coach a second team.

    My team this spring was registered as a 19U team, but we did have a good mix between the four high school grades with seniors, juniors, sophomores, and one freshman.
     
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  14. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    About $3400 per year.

    :ROFLMAO:
     
    rca2 and CoachP365 repped this.
  15. DaBurg

    DaBurg Member

    Apr 18, 2019
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Have you considered dropping one of the worst offenders? Once the team understands there are consequences to missing so many practices then people should begin to fall in line. One of my issues with coaching rec ball is that there's not much recourse should someone start skipping out on practices. There's no guarantee of commitment and no real way of enforcement. But at some point, the stragglers are bringing down the other 9 either way. To me, it's a choice of picking one kind of team you want to be. Either be committed, make most of the practices, or run it as a leisure experience, nothing more than recreational. Problem is unless the entire league is that way you'll run into teams that are more committed and it punishes the ones who want to take it more seriously.

    There's an effect also where the price affects how seriously people take the team. So the unintended consequence of making your team affordable might be affecting attendance. I'm beginning to see how my own child's rec days may be numbered.
     
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  16. DaBurg

    DaBurg Member

    Apr 18, 2019
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    For which one?
     
  17. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    #167 elessar78, Jun 19, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2019
    Travel soccer:$200 to play Fall and Spring. One tournament each season.
    Uniform package (name brand): $100
    Tournaments are local so no/minimal hotel, travel, and related costs.
    This is only for about 5 months, if you add winter programming (2 practices and 2 winter leagues) it's another ~$600

    P2P soccer: $2500 to play Fall, Winter, and Spring. One tournament each season.
    The price I quoted before included travel for tournaments and a uniform cost.
    Uniform package (name brand): $300
    Tournaments: ~$600 each
     
  18. CoachP365

    CoachP365 Member+

    Money Grab FC
    Apr 26, 2012
    Travel is also limited to your local area mostly - no recruiting. Community travel. Its usually same org as your rec option - inhouse vs travel under one name. travel parents lord their “status” over imhouse parents like “club” parents do to travel. Mostly in the “Silantro cant possibly play rec/travel after being in travel/club last year...”
     
  19. danielpeebles2

    Dec 3, 2013
    I filled it out, but I realized at the end the league I usually volunteer in already has an app for coaches.
     
  20. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    My kid just stumped me: can you tickle your opponent?:ROFLMAO:
     
  21. danielpeebles2

    Dec 3, 2013
    I've used that tactic to score on my son's before, one of them flopped on the ground and said I fouled him.
     
  22. jmnva

    jmnva Member

    Feb 10, 2007
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Lots of changes in my coaching gigs for the fall.

    My HS rosters got decimated as kids graduated or decided to try other things. I ended up with 10 kids, so am merging teams with a buddy.

    I will also be coaching 1st grade girls because another one of our neighborhood clubs was desperately needed help.
     
  23. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    Last night I had my first training session with the 12Us I'll be coaching this fall. It's a bit different from coaching 19Us.
     
  24. Timbuck

    Timbuck Member

    Jul 31, 2012
    I've got a Girls 2004 team. About half of the roster is 2005 players.
    Been coaching many of them for 4+ years. I feel they are getting a little to comfortable with me and I need to shake things up a bit. I brought on an assistant/helper who is a bit more of a task-master than I am. Girls get worried when they know he is going to run a session. He's not a jerk - but pushes them in a different way than I do. We are a good mix and he doesn't try to overstep his bounds.

    To further get the girls "out of their comfort zones" at last night's practice I added a new twist. After we warmed up, I told them the plan for the session. Then I asked 3 girls - "What is your goal for today?"
    Being 14/15 year old girls, they giggled a bit and said "I don't know" (just like my kid says when I ask her how her day was).
    Me: Think about why you are here at practice. What do you personally want to improve on today? Let's not just show up, play a little and go home."
    Girl 1: "I want to improve my communication. And I want to give better direction to play the ball to the right foot."
    Me: "Perfect. Let's make sure we are focused on that throughout the entire practice."

    Girl #2: "I want to focus on getting my head up." (See my separate post about "where to play a girl. This is that girl."
    Me: "Why?"
    Girl #2 (after more giggles and nervous uncertainty): "So I don't pass the ball to the wrong team like I did in our game last week. I wanted to reset the play, but I did it without looking and I passed the ball to the other team."
    Me: "Ok. Good. That's a bit of a negative reason/thought. Can we put that into a more positive phrase? You said something bad will happen if you don't get your head up. Tell me what happens that's good when you get your head up."
    Girl #2: "I'll connect a better pass."
    Me: " OK good. Then what happens?"
    Girl #2 "Then I move to get into space so I'm open for the next pass."

    Girl #3 "I want to focus on fitness."
    Me: "Why?"
    Girls #3 "Because that's the 1st thing that popped into my head."
    Me: "Ok. Let's make sure that you are working hard all practice long to improve your fitness" (She's pretty fit, but gets a little tired near the end of a game.)

    Our next activity was a 3v1 rondo. Which then tranistioned into a 6v 1/2/3 transitional rondo.

    I paused a few times and asked each player if they were working on what they said they wanted to improve.
    Girl 1 - wasn't really talking. But after this pause, she got much more vocal and her decision making improved.[
    Girl 2 - She said her head was up. Her teammates in the rondo called her out and said it could be better. It got better after the pause.
    Girl 3- was working hard and breathing heavy.

    Gonna keep this up throughout the season. Will add it to pre-game and post game too.
     
    rustysurf83 repped this.
  25. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    One practice down and my kid is already having fun at soccer again. Could see the fire returning. Today she said, “I can’t wait to go to practice again.” (Practice isn’t until tomorrow).

    It doesn’t seem like much but it’s huge. Last year was a bad year. Bad environment. Gave her the whole summer off from soccer and she seems recharged. She picked Karate and has been doing that-we let it be “her thing”. Last night we were scrambling a bit after work and she said she didn’t want to go to Karate if she was going to have to rush. And that was fine. It was refreshing to just be able to do that and not be forced to rush rush rush.

    It was probably coincidence but the shirt she wore on to practice on Monday said: Radiate Positivity.

    My wife and I decided to take her out of pay to play club that I coached at. Went back to the town club and We will see if it’s the right fit for her. Right now, I think she’s more of a multi-sport athlete and this environment allows her to branch out more into other sports without the year-long commitment of P2P.

    I’m taking a financial hit not getting paid to coach this year but I think we are all happier.

    My team this year has a ton of potential. My co-coach this year has done a great job. I don’t have the athleticism like I did with the P2P team but I can already see them being more idea-driven players than the athletes.
     

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