I've been asked by our town's soccer association to come up with a competitive philosophy and action plan to help the quality of soccer improve. I'm a college coach who has only recently been involved in the youth game, and I feel very ill prepared for this. I've done camps ever since I started coaching with U5-U19, and I have my National Y, but day in and day out working with real young teams is not something I've been involved in. This is why I joined the forum, and I've gotten some great stuff from a lot of you regarding the youth game. Any suggestions would be great! Here's some background: Our city has one soccer organization, and two high schools. In a city of 15,000 we have about 500 youth players in K-6 soccer that is currently run by our city's park and rec department. The older kids are organized by the association (approx. 70 boys and girls). My college players coach the city youth players during the rec season, and my assistant coach and I have been involved in coaching the older players. The association has asked me to reorganize our approach to soccer. Right now we have volunteer coaches at all levels, and to my knowledge none of our coaches ever played. The two U12 coaches have an E license and I help them develop their trainings. The U14/U16/U19 teams have been coached by my assistant and I for the past year and a half. The basic problem is that our level of soccer is probably the worse in the state for a city our size (in South Dakota if you're over 10,000 your considered a big city). The two high school teams regularly finish at the bottom of the state standings for their two divisions, and they get murdered like 10-0, or 14-0 regularly. Here's what I've thought so far: Develop coaches, get the association to start fundraising and send some of the lower level coaches to coaching courses. Get my assistant and I to work with every team U12-U19 at least once a week and work with the parent coaches to develop a training philosophy that is appropriate for each age group. Start to have our teams U12 and up join a traveling league to get better competition outside of town (right now they stay in town and play each other and a few tournaments). What do you think?
My suggestion, simplify things. Desolve the teams and build a player development culture for the K-6 kids. You have a set of quality coaches at your disposal, but not enough for each team. So instead, create an academy approach to practices where you have a designated night each week for each age group. Have your quality coaches run these practices with some help from volunteers. For game days, rotate the rosters for each team so that kids get a chance to play with everyone. Kids essentially get a schedule that they know when they are practicing and when/where they play. You can have 2 uniforms (shirts) for each kid and all they need to know is whether they are dark or light. As for coaching the games, the parent volunteers jobs are to manage substitutions in order to insure that all kids get equal playing time. Don't intruduce keepers until the U9 level. Keep game to either 3v3 or 4v4 on small fields. Limit the number of subs for each team so that kids get to play at least half the game (more if possible). The reasons I'm suggesting this is because you have a small program. These young kids are your feeder players to the next level and you have a vested interest in their development first. It is extremely difficult to control the actions of unqualified, inexperienced coaches. If some parents are interested and able to help out, then you can get them involved in the practices and helping run game days. I seriously doubt you will be able to significantly improve the quality of development by leaving things continue to follow the current approach and only adding a little education for the volunteer coaches. Very few of them will have the time or interest to do enough to become quality coaches - it's hard enough to get enough parent volunteers to do it in the first place. On the flip side, by limiting the volunteer duties you can make it a requirement for parents to volunteer some of their time toward helping at practices and games.
You feel that we should do an Academy style even with players older than U10? I think fith and sixth graders are U12. So parent volunteers would be assigned to an age group and told to monitor players on field A or field D to make sure they are getting equal playing time, right? And we would rotate players playing together in the same age groups, or between age groups?
It kind of depends on your resources, but I suggested the cut-off based on what you said regarding U12 moving to a travel level. If you think you have enough competent coaches and players for U10 and U11 age groups, then this might be a good time to form teams. If you only have enough kids though for say 3 teams, it's hard to form decent competition with a team approach. As for the second part, my suggestion is to assign 2 parent volunteers to each field (coordinating them being on the field with their child so they can watch them play). These parent volunteers would act as the 'coaches' for the kids by organizing the subs for matches. 1-2 subs for each game day team for each age group, where you rotate the players within the age group. If you have some stand-out players in a particular age group, then you should consider allowing them to move up an age group the next session. This is a pretty radical suggestion, but based on the limited information you provided you could take this approach to create a fun, competitive, development focused environment for the kids. You likely will have a difficult time convincing some of the parents though. Also, you will have to do a lot more work when it comes to organizing practices in order to make them effective. The practices are the critical piece to this whole approach and they must be organized, fast paced with little time wasted in lines. The key would be to maximize touches on the ball for every kid in many various situations.
I have no experience with this, but I would suggest going to a futsal type approach for the "academy." Meaning all ages play the same format, which has obvious advantages from the coaches' perspective, such as easy combination of age groups and saving the training time to learn different systems and rules every year. At the least it allows kids to play up or down with less confusion. Whether its futsal rules or soccer rules is not my point, although futsal translates well into indoor play. You could think about soccer "seasons" not tied to the weather for the kids until they get older and start playing travel. Skill training wouldn't have to compete directly for time or resources with team training and matches. Calling soccer "futsal" might also help get rid of some of the competitive expectations parents often bring to youth soccer. Edit: I wasn't thinking of how young you have to go (5 year olds!). Obviously futsal won't benefit kids that young. What you could do is have a two tier-ed structure, such as ages 5-7 "related games and activities" and ages 8-11 futsal (or SSG). The lower tier could "graduate" to the higher tier when their (social and soccer) readiness is demonstrated. PS: At these ages you could run the program coed without problem. Split by gender for the travel teams.
This is good. But you're right, the big hurdle is going to be parents. We're a basketball town by nature (one player went to the NBA and they are crazy about it), and not having a "team" for them to rate their kids by is going to be a challenge. But I like the concept, and it would be a better use of our resources with the younger ages.
I've seen this approach done well, but I've also seen it done very poorly. The good approach is the well-organized, fast paced practices that keep the players engaged and moving with the ball throughout. The poor ones are kids standing in lines, performing drills without the ball, focus on improving endurance or speed, too much time wasted in getting the 'right' kids matched up with each other, etc. It's similar situation to running an individual practice, players need to have a high number of touches on the ball in various situations. Players need to be involved in activities that have a specific goal for each one or a group. Keep it moving and fast paced to keep their attention. If the practices are run poorly, then the program will not work. This is not easy and will likely require 1 coach or volunteer per every 5-6 players in order to aid in directing the activities. Don't focus too much on figuring out the players' levels and putting them into a group of similar level players, it can help down the road but isn't necessary up front. Also, organize things so that the practice can run without you -- you be the coordinator. This allows you to deal with parents/kids issues, to observe and take notes the various groups and activities (what's working, what are the issues, etc), watch the clock to make sure the pace isn't lagging, deal with any injuries, etc. In addition, encourage the parents to attend. They can help fill-in for missing coaches or volunteers, can be used as cones or ball shaggers (they work great at that), and can take care of their child in case of an emergency. Plus you can pass soccer homework onto them - such as watching a particular upcoming match. The key to all of this is organization. Organization is key for any coach, but it becomes a larger issue when trying to run something that gets so complicated so quickly.
This is a great comment about parents. At my club, due to a chronic shortage of coaches, we've explored the idea of going to an academy approach, but in floating a few trial balloons, it became clear that a good number parents would be very resistant to the concept, precisely because they want their kids to be on a team and have a coach and have a practice night and have a team party at the end of the season and have a team nickname, and sit next to the same parents for each game, etc. It ties in with the concept of team sports they (we) grew up with (and to which the kids have been or shortly will be exposed through baseball and football). We talked about this at some length in one of the workshops/group discussions when I took my National Y, and in my opinion, no one really had a good solution to the problem. Let me point out one other issue with the academy approach. Presumably, you'll have a small core group of coaches to run the academy. The problem is that as the kids get older, and you transition to teams, you'll have no one to coach, because the parents didn't get involved at the youngest age groups. In other words, you start cultivating coaches at U6, and if you create a system where you don't need coaches at U6 or at U8, you won't have a reservoir of qualified coaches to call on when you do need them. It seems to me that one of the goals of youth soccer associations should be identify and develop coaches, and it might be best that that process begin when the kids are young, so that parent coaches can be instructed, offered training, get "on the job training," and improve with time. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that, while you'll get some coaches who know soccer and know how to coach, or some coaches who know how to coach and are willing to learn about soccer, you'll also get coaches who know soccer but shouldn't be allowed within 100 yards of a youth player and some coaches who know nothing about soccer and little more about how to coach youth. But that may very well be a necessary evil. When I started coaching, I had taken the state "Y" certificate program and could call on my experience as a player as a youth, in high school, in college, and in adult leagues after that, but I'm not sure I was a very good coach. I'm still not sure I'm a very good coach, but I'm confident I'm better than I was, and that's because I've coached a lot of teams and kids since then, and also felt motivated by those experiences to get additional coaching certificates and licenses. Do you lose some of that with an academy approach?
Dakota I was in your same position a year ago. Our local community soccer league (700 - 800 kids) was ran by the YMCA and there was no commitment to teaching the game. I understand that is not what the YMCA is there for. Our parents wanted something more. So I was asked to find another alternative. I came up with the following system: U4 3v3 / 6 kids per team max / no practices U5 - U7 4v4 / 8 kids per team max / 1 practice a week U8 - U12 Academy/U11 and U12 players can try out for Travel (Hired a Coerver Trainer to run the Academy) *Academy Coaches work directly with Academy Dir *Full Season Training syllabus *One practice a week is with the Academy Dir the other is held by the coach *Each coach runs a drill/station on Academy Days *Players rotate stations as a team on Academy Days All of our coaches loved it, especially the inexperienced ones. Providing the syllabus took the pressure of trying to come up with training sessions. Our Academy Dir was at the fields on Sat to answer questions and to just make sure things ran smoothly with the Academy. The parents loved it as well because they were able to see the kids improvement as the season went on. The idea is that as kids move up age groups their training can be scaled up since they all learned the basics at U8. U14, U16 and U18 kids have the option of trying out for Travel or playing Rec. I put major emphasis in coaching the Coaches. We offered 50% discounts for attending Coaching courses. We had club coaching clinics before the season in the middle and at the end. Our Dir of Coaching was available to help them come up with drills and to handle any coaching issues. I put the practice restrictions for the U4 - U7 for two major reasons. One to help new coaches not try to win the U little world Cup. The other reason was to slowly introduce the sport commitment to parents. In the past with having 2 practices a week by the middle of the season teams were not having full participation parents were only attending 1 per week.
Good stuff guys! Please keep it coming. We're in the brain storming phase right now. We're going to leave Spring soccer the way it is right now, and try to implement something new in the Fall with our more serious youth players.
Here's a good link to a thread with advice based on the academy approach: http://andagain.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=4991415
Consider incorporating a Festival format, mix ages and genders, older kids essentially teach the younger ones by being role models. Here's a ppt of how we did it, http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/assets...ng_a_club_wide_free-play_festival_program.pdf It's low cost with a high return. Good luck.
Appreciated the link to the other stream. There were some great ideas on there. A lot of good stuff to take back to my board.
I know it's been awhile since this thread was posted on, but I wanted to get some feedback. We've been making progress with our U5-U11 soccer here in town, and recently I was asked to come in and lay out my ideal format for running soccer with these ages. Here's what I came up with... We will have two academy directors in charge of coming up with practices and organizing volunteers. These two academy directors will have college and high school players at their disposal to help with trainings and coaching during games. They are both E licensed, and will be D licensed by the end of the spring. They will have a set training curriculum that will be approved by the local soccer club (mainly the things USSF put out) to be the key coaching points for each of these age groups so there is a progression. Kids will be divided into four main age groups; U6, U8, U10, and U12. These age groups will not be assigned to teams, but will train with everyone in their age group on Day 1. U6 and U10 will train at the same times, and U8 and U12 will train at the same times. Day 2 of every week the kids will be randomly placed on teams to scrimmage with a coach on the field helping with the fundamentals they worked on in practice earlier. The season is 6 weeks, so we're only looking at 12 sessions total, but we want to have one day of scrimmages be completely mixed between all four age groups. Parent volunteers will be asked to help make sure kids are getting equal playing time, that they have snacks at the end of the game, etc. U6's will play 4v4, U8's will play 5v5 (adding a goal keeper), U10's will play 6v6, and U12's will play 8v8. The local soccer club is going to offer an additional Jr. Academy training piece for a third day of training every week, and the U10's and U12's will have the opportunity to travel with the club to some jamborees. Thoughts? Things I should change? Things that sound good?
I like it alot. The only thing that I hesitate over is adding keepers at U8 5v5. I don't see that it serves a purpose. Defensively a sweeper would be difficult enough to beat if you play with small goals. I think it comes down to the question of "do you want to train keeper skills as part of the academy," and if so at what ages. I am not a keeper and not a keeper coach, so I really look to others as to when to start to teach keeper skills. My own planning thoughts was along the lines of developing ball mastery and small group tactics. Nothing more at U12 and below.
As a parent, I mostly like it, except I am not wild about keepers at the u8. Either they don't want to play keeper at that age, or they want to because they are scared of playing in the field. So either way is bad. They can get keeper practice when they practice shooting on each other, they all do that anyway. The 6 week session is very short as a parent. Its a hassle to always be planning for the next session, or not knowing if the practice will be the same day or whether the kid will gel with the new group of kids. As a parent I would not be enthusiastic about that short a session.
Thanks guys, I'll consider the goal keeper thing. Nothing is set in stone yet so we can change things up. The six week session is predetermined by the city and I completely agree it would be better to be longer. We do have an indoor session as well that the kids can participate in, but again it's a six week session in the winter. Our Jr Academy through the local soccer club runs year round though, so the coaches from the club are going to be out at our rec program trying to identify kids and parents who want more training and to play in some jamborees. Hopefully the kids that want more can get more through the club trainings year round.
More importantly develop a structure that has a playing philosophy and a gamestyle like the Spanish check www.keeptheball.com one of early blogs is on gamestyle structure.Set a culture for the league that clubs play with style and really aim to develop great players
Dakota Soccer - We have just had a interview with Tom Beyer discussing Grassroots/Youth development & his philosophy "to make the good players better, you need to make the worst players better". So a bottom up approach. It is a podcast and worth a listen to take ideas from to help you out: http://www.coachzone.com.au/Podcast Cheers
I completely agree with that statement. I've seen that improving the quality of the entire team has pushed the best players. They not only have to push their skills to show that they are still better, they also are able to do more by playing with better players.