Our season started yesterday at 34* with snow coming down... that's springtime in Indiana for you. This is my final season coaching travel for a while. In addition to my usual 19U team, we have teams at 2006, 2011, and 2013. We're only missing a 13/14U team to have a complete program, which is an accomplishment I'm proud of. In addition our rec program grew another 50% this spring so we're over 400 kids there. It's great to see our directors' hard work paying off. My daughter is in her final season of 6U, and my son may start playing in the fall as a 5U. She's super into it, but he's been more of a dust-mop than a player in his sports program at the Y over the winter. Time will tell on that one... Here's to a great spring for everyone!
Hey, I coach in Indiana too! Was (unbeknownst at the time) coming down with a flu and coached an outdoor turf game last Friday when the windchill was in the low 20s. Not my best decision lol I chip in on travel teams where I can, but primarily design/install the curriculum and run training sessions for our 9v9 and 11v11 boys Rec Plus program. I find it so rewarding! It's been fun to grow in my USSF licensing, but also, over almost 10 years now, to evolve curriculum based on what I've observed from other programs, and how I've seen players respond within our own. I won't pretend to be some footy genius or whatever, but I do take some pride in what our program has evolved into. Where I began treating it like a more standard rec program, over time it's become fairly inseparable from how I run travel sessions. We're routinely building confidence and ability for increasingly more players to make the leap to travel every year, even at ages they previously didn't. And even for those staying in Rec Plus (I never pressure anyone to go to travel, just offer pros & cons around each program for families to decide), we're getting more players on the local high school teams than ever, while quite honestly mowing through league competition during our seasons (which has actually been its own challenge: it's been hard to convince other programs to join/stay with us, because even as much as we stress being good stewards of the game and managing the experience, the reality is most other clubs just don't have the same resources in their equivalent program and are entirely at the mercy of transcendent athletes.) Our outdoor season starts in a few weeks. I'm really looking forward to the challenge of this one. Just sent up almost two full rosters of players to our 2008s and 2009s, and with spring sport attrition (lacrosse, sigh...), I'm losing a lot of good players from the Fall season. Will be a really fun challenge to see how quickly we can get returning and new players up to speed!
My spring practices for my rec teams will hopefully start in 2 weeks. Because of where Easter is this year, games won't start until mid-April. Same gig as the fall-1st grade girls, 4th grade girls and mixed group of junior/senior girls. All on the rec side.. Amazing stat from our club, we went from 5,400 players in the fall to 5,900 this spring.
I love how the game is continuing to grow. Which isn't to say there aren't common systemic (uniquely American) hurdles we all still have to solve for, but in general, the difference between when I played and now is ... it's not even a comparison. So many more players, so many more resources for them. Also feels like, even in the last 5 years, at least around here, there's been a lot more regional cooperation. Still definitely competitive in Club vs Club settings, but seems like there have been more inroads made to sharing resources across clubs and ultimately playing toward commonly realized "best of" rosters -- variable per league or camp of course. I know my attitude toward other clubs is largely "I'd love to beat them on any given match day, but I'm thrilled they're also developing players and growing the game!"
I should have been clear the growth in players is on the rec side. I have no idea what the numbers are the travel side. I may sort of add a 4th team. They are scrambling to find a a coach for an 8th grade boys team. I've offered to help run practices but can't commit to gamedays because of my other teams
You hit the nail on the head of why I got out of the admin side of things lol. One of the reasons I switched to Rec Plus is that I have a FT job (in sports, actually, but I like to keep my message board fan engagement part relatively anonymous lol), so Travel was a bit demanding on my time. But one season, I foolishly agreed to take on part-time admin in addition to my training duties for the 14U age group (boys and girls.) I love training, supporting players etc. But the admin side of things was A) not my cup of tea and B) actually somehow more stressful than my full-time job at the time. We definitely had situations like yours where we needed a volunteer coach to step up, but no one would, so I would be coaching that team while training all the other teams and running admin (which was also a lot of roster management, interfacing with families -- good and bad -- and managing/communicating field or schedule changes, especially in response to weather etc.) (But you name it, and there's a crazy situation I've had to manage over 10 years doing this lol. Ref having a heart attack in the middle of a match. Dog running on field and tackling player. Coach (not one of mine) threatening to kill a 16-year-old ref. Getting a game field cleared before a tornado hit fewer than 2 minutes after I was the last to leave it. Visibly broken bones. Physically re-routing a parent who was storming toward a coach yelling 'hey, d*****bag!'. Coaches attempting to storm fields to argue calls. Kids whose parents just never came to pick them up after practice. Crying refs. Soooo many things with parents lol. And this is just quickly off the top of my head...) Biggest takeaway from admin, though: Always roster more players than you think a team will need. Every coach whines about having to manage 5 or 6 subs ... until it's 86 degrees and suddenly half the squad needs a substitution, or there's a school function that has 4 kids out of a match from the start.
I did admin stuff for 14.5 years with my club before retiring last spring. I wanted to get the pre-season time back
Must be nice. LOL. Snow on the ground here today, and we're supposed to do preseason meetings at the fields tomorrow. We still have fields to measure and paint and equipment to distribute for the start of rec training Monday. Not. Gonna. Happen.
Hitting the home stretch of our indoor season (games, clinics, private training) before the local schools have Spring Break and we return into outdoor training/play. Gotta say: I love indoor training. You're only as good as your facility and field space indoor, and blessed to have a gorgeous one. But every player I work with benefits so much from working in indoor settings. Encourages more creativity on the ball, really forces players to be active instead of deferential in play, and with the runner walls, obviously keeps the action more constant. Great means for building confidence before we take play into 11v11 space! Do any of you do private training as well? I'm probably at my overall training bandwidth, but have a group of six 14-year-olds I'll likely continue working with all Spring. My clinics are usually me working with 10-20 players, and my outdoor season pool training is me running sessions for up to 30 players, so it's been great to have a smaller group to concentrate on.
I don't my teams keep me busy enough. The 4th team I mentioned above is happening and I'm the assistant coach
Just checking in. Coaching 4 teams has been a lot but I've loved it. The 8th grade boys are great kids. It has all clicked with the 4th grade girls and they are tearing things up
Coaching 2 teams has been a lot... and I'm ready for golf season. 3 more weeks... We registered our second team when we had 28 boys committed. Since then we've had several boys who quit on us, a few injuries, and a few who only show up when they feel like it. So it's been a constant struggle to get enough players to games, and our 17U team has gotten the shaft, playing shorthanded most games. We have a few boys on the 19U team who have been eligible and willing to play down with the 17Us to help them out, but that's obviously not ideal. Lesson learned. At least we should have a good start on recruiting for next spring with all the young kids we were able to keep this year.
Maybe it was my rant above, but we ended up with a couple great results this weekend. We scored 3 in the last 10 minutes to come back and win a league game yesterday afternoon. Then we won 6-0 today in a Presidents Cup game where we'd previously lost 8 in a row. So it was a happy weekend, and we gained some momentum heading into two more PC games next weekend. Here's hoping it continues...
Tomorrow is going to be a little bit nuts. I'm coaching 5 games at 4 different fields. Schedule is: 8:30 1st grade girls 11 4th grade girls 1:30 HS boys 4:45 HS Girls (guest coaching for my friend that is attending his daughter's college graduation 6 My HS girls team the last 2 games are the same venue
Thanks. It was a bloodbath. Lost 2-7 Saturday and 0-10 Sunday. We stole a 2-0 lead in the first few minutes Saturday, but a few GK errors put us down early in the second half, and we never recovered. Sunday we ran into a buzz saw of a team, but at least the boys kept fighting for the full 90. We have Memorial Day weekend off and finish with a couple league games the first weekend in June.
I don't know if I'm posting in the right thread but here goes. I'm looking for some coaching direction. I'm coaching a grade 7/8 coed team for my kid's school. Almost all of the players are good athletes but have played very little soccer. We only have three weeks of practice before a round robing torurnament. I was thinking of playing a 4 4 2 formation. What would you focus on in those three weeks during practice? cheers
Not much to go on there. How many sessions will you have over the 3 weeks? If I was just meeting a group, I would have them play some small sided games and full sided games to learn as much as possible about the players I have as quickly as I can. Then, I would try to teach them my defensive philosophy across the 3 parts of the field. While teaching your defense, you can also give them some attacking phase nuggets. Basically, let them play the game in order to teach them how you want them to play the game. I've found myself continuing to use the WOLI training methodology that I was taught in my C license course. Define the training objective. Create a Warmup activity that introduces the topic. Then use the game to teach it.
stphnsn Thank you for responding. I do appreciate your response. As for sessions, we will have about 6 to 8 sessions. Not many I know but it is what it is. I'm fairly new to coaching, so excuse my ignorance. You mentioned teaching them a defensive philosophy in the three parts of the field. Can you elaborate? Would you recommend a 4 4 2 in my situation? Thanks again
A 442 would be fine. The field has a defending third, a middle third, and an attack third. It's easiest to teach your team how you want to defend if you start with defending in the defending third of the field, closest to your goal. Get them lined up, and have other players play as an opposing attacking team trying to score on them. The attackers can start from midfield depending on the numbers you have. Work them until they understand the shape and cues you want them to recognize and act on. Once they get it, switch to a scrimmage and see how they do with those concepts in a game. Then maybe the next session your focus is teaching them how you want them to defend through the middle of the field. Then another session could focus on how you want them to defend in the attacking third, when the opponent is trying to play out of their own end.
CIrcle of life moment for me, found out through the grapevine that one of my former players ('01) who had been coaching in-house at my old club answered the call so the 05s could have one last summer together, about half of whom were on the last team I coached. Has them within striking distance of 1st place with a game in hand, not that results matter
My season wrapped up today. Season #45, teams 106-109. Biggest learning event for me was I'm much more about empowering the players at half-time. Rather than me simply talking I ask them what good things they saw and with the older teams, what we need to fix.
Our rec season ended yesterday, thankfully. I had a team full of young, passive 8Us. So it was a rough one on the field. Great kids though. Part-way through the game yesterday, the thought crossed my mind that I had a team full of future cross country runners. One player gave me an air freshener with the team pic on it... because we stunk?
Fall season ended just before Thanksgiving. Teams all played well. I am going back to 3 teams in the spring