These lesson plans were available on the ussoccer.com DCC as part of the F license materials. Now they are gone along with almost everything else. This is the problem with USSF. Someone new in charge comes along and they throw out all progress and start over to fit the new person's vision of how things should be done. This is not how professionals work. Professionals generally build on prior work. In my entire professional career and 100s of litigation cases, I only remember having to "do over" everything in a case one time. Litigation is different than coaching soccer, because best practices for coaching don't change from "case" to "case." In coaching the only difference over time is who is in charge. So in coaching there should never be a reason to throw out everything and start over. Yet it is a constant practice. This upsets me because I thought the F license was the best step forward in licensing ever. It was low cost. It was accessible. It was understandable. It was useful. It was educational. Now it is gone, replaced by something less accessible and more expensive.
USYSA has some great materials too including these sets of lessons plans from 2013: http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/us_you...uides_for_the_u6-u8_u-10_and_u-12_age_groups/ The links in the press release are broken, but the documents are still available for download.
Yup, they were available last year. Then when I looked yesterday, couldn’t find ‘em. Had to look through my archived e-mails. It is frustrating, like you said, because there’s never any continuity. Funny enough, it’s like how I was when I first started coaching—every bright, shiny, new coaching approach was the best and I’d revamp that week’s plan to reflect the bright, shiny new thing. There’s no continuity. Now the approach du jour is “grassroots”. There was nothing wrong with the previous set-up, as I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with the incoming approach. But, as you said, it makes ‘em look dumb.
In terms of being a club admin, I liked the USSF F-license stuff because it was succinct with colorful, informative illustrations. It was easy to see the structure of each activity and how they built to the next phase. It was something I wanted to hand out to novice/inexperienced coaches.
thanks, guys. i'll review those when i have a chance. we're trying to make it as foolproof as possible for our rec coaches so posting full training plans may help.
No prob. Mass. Youth Soccer has a great library of session plans, but again it's not the most concise. This is the "shape the path" phase of our club's coach development philosophy. We want them to do things a certain way, so we're going to make it as easy as possible. I love that there are basically only 4 practices. Me and the DoC went around and taught the coaches how to coach within these sessions. Some coaches were a little bit more experienced and wanted more and they had the leeway, others were really deer-in-headlights new so they used these verbatim.
Well for sure it was a huge change for me. From day 1 I felt behind based on the terminology used. If you have not taken the D in the last year or two, you will likely feel the same. It is pretty extensive, lots of work behind the scenes. The general idea is that as coaches, we need to empower players to be better decision makers. Each candidate essentially is assigned a mentor, and that is your assessor. Instead of working on a singular line of players (midfield) as was done in the D, it is now a group of players (2 lines, ex. defenders and midfielders). SSGs are essentially gone and you need to be prepared to get out of your comfort zone. Training needs to be reality based, so it replicates situations in a match. Best part was the diversity of coaches (college, MLS clubs, small clubs) and the accessibility of the instructional staff. It put most people at ease knowing that we were all there to learn and grow, and the instructors were tasked with assisting us on that pathway.
I generally find the DCC best for organizing sessions. It is a difficult thing to use, but get familiar if you plan on your coaching education coming from US Soccer.
we're now 8 months into the supposed grassroots roll out, and we still only have one course available online. has anyone heard any expected launch dates for the other online licenses?
It was all supposed to be done already. The "grassroots" stuff I have seen recently read like first drafts and nobody proof read them. Either that or poor translations of something written in another language. Nice graphics though. Wasn't anything horrible, just words jumbled, awkward phrasing, and extra words in the middle of a sentence that don't belong with the thought. Sometimes automatic spellchecking and grammar aps do that to you. Much harder to catch mistakes proofreading if the mistake is a correctly spelled word. My guess is that it is taking much longer than expected. Also my guess is that USSF is thinking grassroots is a polite way of saying rec. I get that mostly because the grassroots methodology is not optimized for teaching and developing ball skills. For instance they never have a ball density of 1 to 1. No warmup phase so the normal plan of doing technical work during warmup is not allowed.
well, i saw this on facebook when i got back from lunch: https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...courses-us-soccer-grassroots-coaching-pathway ask, and ye shall receive.
One change that seems pertinent from the latest makeover it that it seems the State D is gone. I assume that now, if one doesn't meet the passing threshold for the National D, one gets provisional status and has to go to a retesting location.
I just took the 7v7 online this afternoon. It felt like a lot of repeat of the 4v4 material (although I did that one in June so who knows how well I'm remembering) without much new 7v7 specific content. There is some mention of the "moments of the game" and setting "goals" for planning training sessions, but other than that, it was all review of the how to coach lessons from the 4v4. I don't coach 10Us, but I still found a few things that will be applicable to my 6/8U or 19U sessions so it wasn't a waste of time. These still feel like they're missing a big component because they don't mention technical instruction at all. It's all bigger picture, let them play the game stuff. Grassroots coaches need instruction on how to teach technique too. USSF's failed Soccer Starts at Home partnership could have been great for that, IMO.
If I recall correctly the 4v4, 7v7, and 11v11 modules were alternative paths so that candidates could select the path most relevant to their coaching situation. So I would expect the same teaching points to be made in the three different contexts.
You're right except coaches must take 3 of them if you ever want to obtain a D license, which is required in Indiana if you want to coach travel soccer beyond 14U. I still plan to sit for the 9v9 and 11v11 courses when time permits just so I know what my coaches at our club are seeing when they take them. Tom Byer is supposed to be putting together an online training module for his program. Hopefully that will be cheap and provide the technical training the USSF courses lack.
Take Tom Byer's stuff and marry it with the 3four3 stuff and you have an off-the-shelf solution for US Soccer development. They have talked about developing possession play for a decade or more. But keep nibbling at the edges on how to get there. These grassroots module don't get you there. They want to be style agnostic, style generalists in grassroots education but they also want possession play at the senior level. Make up your mind.
In my state the friendly state instructors will gladly come to your club and do private technical instruction under the auspices of the p2p club they also coach for, for a fee, even though in official settings they will tout the party line that "all the greats started just playing without technical instruction". I also hear from parents doing the p2p u6-8 "academy" sessions that they are not doing the 4v4 play practice play stuff. I'm sure that's just an oversight though Sometimes, when I squint really hard, I look at the USYS partnership with Soccershots and can kind of make out a pathway that from 3-8 the kids will learn skills at Soccershots, then join rec clubs where the grassroots modules will keep any well meaning parent coaches from doing any harm, and then get into the p2p pipeline at u10 where at some point they'll hit coaches that have a D. Because the guys that flood Indeed with "Soccer Coaches needed" ads every week are surely providing the same quality as the guy who had a hand in the recent success of Japan's national teams....
Sort of. But if you start with your 6 year old, and stay with it through u10 and u12, my state requires you to take the 4v4, then the 7v7, then the 9v9, then the 11v11. Inhouse we're letting them slide with the intro course, but once you get into travel and register directly through the state system, it won't roster you without the appropriate course. And they want them to take the online and inperson version of each. So it's an alternate path if you were already coaching and just were planning on continuing at that particular level. Luckily for me they grandfathered the E, so my path to the D is registering. For people who have the F or nothing the path is: "two (2) in-person courses, one of which has to be 11v11, and one On-line course of your choice."
Dumb thing for your state organization to do. Waste of time and money. Ultimately it drives up the cost to the parents. You have to take the introductory grassroots course to qualify for the D course, but it is free to E holders and relatively quick to do.
it's a USSF requirement to take 3 courses to be eligible for the D, not the state orgs, from my understanding.
That is a requirement for the E license, which has been renamed the "Grassroots" license. You need a E license (a/k/a Grassroots) to be eligible for the D. If you have an E license that is not the Grassroots license, you have to take the on-line introductory grassroots course to be eligible. (Which takes less than 20 minutes.)
I believe you are correct. Now, if you have the State D, I believe you are rated at the E as well for purposes of eligibility for the D.