Without a B license, how can you get a full time coaching job that pays enough to support a family? Catch 22. It isn't impossible, but it closes a lot of doors to you. In other licensed professions, you have to have a license first before you can work.
Mostly accurate. I believe USSF's sentiment is that Pro, A and B licenses are part of the professional pathway. From personal experience, it isn't impossible to get into them if you aren't full-time, but the assignments definitely become difficult. The one course, for instance, calls for having an 11v11; another states you have to be managing in a pro environment. In several ways, this mirrors what occurs in UEFA orgs. You can't get into a FA Level 5 without being in a specific environment. The biggest obstacle to entry I feel is the bottleneck of all the C holders looking to get in. It seems to be getting better. And yes, keeping the DCC profile updated an accurate as a living resume. Also, continued educational pursuits seem to be positive when looking to get selected.
Fair point. The only youth environment that officially requires a B across the board is USSDA (to my knowledge), and even these will hire C holders to time-bound apprenticeships.
I just finished the USSF C licence this weekend. The main difference nowadays is you coach the problem first. I.e. if its an attacking in the final 1/3 session, you start coaching the defence to be tight and difficult to break down. Once thats set up then you move to attack and coach the primary objective. EVERYTHING has to be game like, realistic. So its basically a full game but focused in one area.. rather than small sided games for example. Saying that, the instructor said we were the last class to take this version of the C licence so its changing YET AGAIN. I only took the D licence in 2016 and its already day and night different.
I was on a video chat with my instructor tonight, and she told one classmate that you must be coaching an 11v11 team for the course. If that's the case, I'm SOL and will have to withdraw. The course guide talks about 9v9 and 12 year old players throughout. We didn't have any interest in a 14U travel team at my club this fall so I helped put together at 12U team specifically because I needed a team to coach because I'm taking this course. I'm beyond frustrated right now.
I got through meeting 1. Now it's on to the development phase. I took the D course in 2017, and the instructor (who I had for the D too) told me not to look back to anything I learned in the D. That was frustrating to hear, but over the course of the weekend, the new methodology started to make more sense in this upper level context. FWIW, the new D is the top level where play practice play is used. C and up are the "professional" coach track that use WOLI (warmup, orientation, learning, implementation). Implementing this is going to be a challenge, but I'm going to try to embrace it and see where it takes me.
Sorry I never responded to this. Yes, I had to tape a training session and then do a tedious homework assignment on it. It was due yesterday so that took up a lot of my evening Monday night and most of the afternoon Tuesday. The DLC (not DCC any more!) training session program is a pain to use, and I lost all my work at one point Monday evening so that was frustrating. A helpful hint would be to copy and past all of the sub-sections of the assignment into a Word doc and type out answers in the doc so you can save them. Then copy and past into the fields in the actual assignment in the DLC interface. That way if the DLC crashes or magically reloads on you, you don't lose all your work. ETA: With respect to my particular video of my training session, I expect some interesting feedback based on my team's level of play and skill sets. I really hope that's not held against me. It feels like the methodology we're expected to use in this course is going over my most novice players' heads.
Can you describe or share a photo of your video set-up? What are you using to mic yourself up? I've been very interested in videotaping me and my team (to review my coaching).
I actually contacted our high school's video production instructor, and the teacher hooked me up with one of his students. They had the camera and tripod. I don't know any specs, but it looked expensive. We have a bit of a hill directly behind our field so I had him set up on it shooting down at us to give a little better depth perspective than just shooting on the ground. Nothing. My voice carries.
We have a stadium field, so we film via smartphone from top. On the ground, I use a smartphone lapel mic connected to another phone. Then I sync both.
In the B, had to do 2 practice vids, player interview and a halftime vid in my environment. In the new A, having a lot of game tape plus halftime vids plus player clips plus player interview is crucial. A lot of video for a lot of self-reflection.
I want to do my C, but I feel like I need a season or two coaching an older team and 10 days on site is a big ask for my wife and kids (as well as the hit it will take on my annual amount of vacation days). I'm also working toward an MBA right now, so time is already crunched. Cost isn't as much of a burden as my club can help with the cost.
You want to have significant experience coaching at the 11v11 level going into this. The higher the standard of play, the better. I wouldn't recommend going into it with a 9v9 team unless they're really good. Frankly, the methodology they want us to use has most things going right over my players' heads. It is a big time commitment even if your course is local. During the meetings, you're in class 9-5, and then you're at the field 6:30-9. Then you have assignments overnight. The course guide says expect to spend 171 hours working on this stuff between the meetings and development period. FWIW, my class meetings are over weekends so I'm only missing 6 days of work.
High-level 11v11 might be tricky. Is high school varsity high level enough? My state assoc. is one of the worst in terms of putting players into the national team pool, to give you an idea of the quality of soccer here. The six days of work is manageable. Maybe when the kids are older.
I would think so. My point was that you want to have a team that is good enough technically that your tactical training sessions are going to work. You don't want a team that is so technically deficient or inexperienced that you can't tell whether your session was good or bad due to their inability to make the ball do what they want it to.
I did my video in 2 parts and mashed them together. My wife used her iPhone to video, and I used mine to record the audio. I meshed them together with iMovie (i'm not great with computers and it was easy). Basically, start filming the video, and give your self a visual cue as to where to match the audio up. For example, I clapped in my video and that was when I started addressing the group. So where the clap occurred in the video I added in the audio.
Bingo. That's how I started off. Perfect setup, really, especially if you get the clap right. Then I invested in a lapel mic for the audio. I use video editing software for work, and use that to sync up video and sound.
I'm back from the second and final course meeting. We coached games the first night and then had our training session assessments spread out between the remaining three nights. The content of the second meeting was less soccer and more management based. There was lots of reflection and discussion as opposed to being lectured. We were given a chance to give the instructors feedback so that was good. The course guide changed in the middle of the course so that was a frustration. It sounds like there's a lot of dysfunction between the lady who oversees the C course and the instructors who actually teach it. My exit interview went well. Based on my instructor's feedback, I'm going to be surprised and disappointed if I don't get a full pass. Results should be released on November 15.
Yes, there are provisionals. If you get provisionaled, you have to get reassessed within 12 months at a retesting session. If my instructor hadn't been so positive in my exit interview, I'd wouldn't have been surprised if I'd get a provisional pass. One of my biggest hurdles has been adjusting to the speed of play and skill of the players we had this weekend. I'm used to seeing my novice 10 and 11 year olds, and at the course meeting we were working with experienced high school aged kids. I was looking for the major systematic breakdowns that I'm accustomed to fixing, and upon reflection, I realized that I missed a lot of opportunities to fix smaller issues. The parting words of my instructor were "I see a lot of progress from where you were to where you are now. You're awesome. Keep chugging along." That didn't strike me as being dubious.