Frustrated then Fun - A Girls Soccer Team's Coach's Progression

Frustration.  That's what I felt.  Given time, space, and a ball, why wouldn't the girls be having a blast?  I would.  But they weren't.  Was it the heat?  It was the first hot practice of the year.  Were they getting "tired" of soccer?  It's getting late in the season.  Was it a side effect of a couple of girls not feeling their best and it spreading through the team emotionally?  Was it a lack of motivation?  We've been winning rather handily lately, but against some fairly inexperienced teams.  I don't know.  I do know I just wanted them to play some soccer, run around, and have fun.  However, several of them wanted nothing to do with it.  

Next practice - Fantastic.  I started it off with a little sit-down.  The first thing I did was apologize for getting frustrated the previous practice.  Some said they didn't even notice.  I guess I wasn't as obvious as I thought.  We also talked about the 3 most important parts of being a soccer team.

1. Try your hardest all the time.  This includes preparation in practice as well as effort in the game.
2. Take care of your teammates.  If you don't get back and support your teammates or push forward and support your teammates, you're letting them down.  
3. Play with a smile.  Tell your teammates good job and never say anything mean to the other team.

We actually discussed these points for several minutes just sitting in a circle in the middle of our practice field.  The girls told stories and extrapolated on all the points.  After that, practice picked up and they had a really good time.  It was very refreshing.  Was it the talk?  Was it the slightly cooler weather?  Who knows, but it was fun again.

-Bill

Keeping Practice Fun for the Girls

So our practice this week did not go as expected.  I made the mistake of telling some players to knock the ball around a bit rather than go for the score in a 3 v 3 scrimmage game.  I thought they might enjoy the challange of passing it around a bit rather than going for the goal as a change of pace.   I'm certain they learned something about spacing and moving off the ball, but I don't think they liked it.  I think they like to play their hardest and be fully challanged.  Come to think of it, I do too.  So the lesson for me is this:  Let them play their hardest.  Use imbalanced sides, change the goal size, do something, but let them do their best all the time.  Don't hold them back.

Youth Soccer and Children's Executive Function Ability

I've just read a very interesting article (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514) It discusses the fact that certain types of play can greatly benefit children in the area of "executive function". In this, or perhaps a related article, they say that "...good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ ."  Apparently if a child does not develop this executive function, it correlates to all sorts of bad behavior.

As I understand it, basically executive function is the ability of a person to regulate their own behavior. In other words (to have this summarized by a very non-expert), when you talk to yourself to calm yourself down or take a little extra time to consider a situation before you act, you're using your executive function abilities. Apparently imaginative, free play is an excellent chance for kids to learn this.

But this is a soccer coach's blog...how does this apply to soccer.  Well, they say in these articles that  "leagues and lessons" are not conducive to developing this executive function ability.  Under these circumstances, the children are being regulated by adults, not themselves.  Since I'm "coaching" in a soccer "league", I figure this applies to me.

How do we know this isn't just a bunch of worthless hot air?  Well assuming they're telling us the truth, there are some interesting test results.  Apparently they did some tests back in the 40s on kids 3, 5, and 7 years old.  They just asked the kids to stand still to see how long they could do it.  Well apparently our 5 year olds now are at the level of 3 year olds back then.  Our 7 year olds are barely approaching the 5 year olds of the 40s.  This seems to me to be a simple enough test that the results can be believed.  

So as a coach, how can I help make this better?  Well I've looked back at some of the things I've been doing and I'm actually fairly pleased.  From day one, I've always let the kids choose amongst themselves who would do the kick-ins, kick-offs, corner kicks, and free kicks.  They've learned not to ask me, but to talk to their teammates.  I've been moving toward trying not even assign positions.  Instead, just pick which 5 girls will go into the field and let them figure it out.  I would like to see them shifting around to the position where they're needed rather than being locked into one assigned by me.  It's a work in progress.  I figure the more decisions I let them make themselves, the better off we'll be as a team.  I guess it would also apply to this executive function as well.  

The authors emphasize imaginative play completely self regulated by children of different ages.  Soccer practice and games on a league team will never be the ideal, but we can try to move it closer.

-Bill

So How goes the Give and Go?

It was a miserably cold, misty, windy morning, but the girls came out on fire.  We had 4 out of 10 girls score in the game.  For one of those 4, it was her first goal ever.  She had so many close ones in her first season (last season), but this one reached the back of the net.  But this is a coach's blog, not a game report.

How did our give and go tactic work?  I still can't say I'm seeing a lot of it.  Now frankly we still struggle with it in practice, so I shouldn't be surprised.  Now we have dramatically improved in a couple of areas:

1. We're doing a much better job of actually passing it wide from our end rather than just kicking it.
   
2. We're doing a much better job of crossing the ball in to the top of the box and actually having players there to score it.
3. Our goal tending is very solid.

Now when I say better, that doesn't mean we're good at it yet.  It's just I think that's where we're gaining some advantage compared to last season.  

A couple of areas we still need to work on:

1. Marking up the opposition with our third defender.  
2. Finishing the give and go with a "go".

We'll work on point 2 (finish the give and go) by simplifying the drill in practice where I think they can learn this with some repetition.  Instead of 3 or 4 players, we'll cut down to 2 players, a forward and a back.  The forward will back pass and move wide.  The back will touch the ball in the same direction and complete the "give".  We'll do that a few times, then add the "go".  This is simple enough I should be able to get several groups working in parallel.  

After that, we'll bump up the fun level and start some 3 v 3 or 4 v 4 on a very short field.  We used the very short field last week and I liked what I saw.  It didn't run the girls to death, so they seemed to have more fun.  (With 10 girls playing 6 v 6 and unlimited substitutions, their fitness level is fine with the amount of running we do.)  The keepers were very involved in the game and I think it encourages the girls to use the width of the field.  Since it is by getting the ball wide we start our give and go, I think I like the emphasis on this aspect of the game for now.  I want good first touches away from pressure, not hard kicks up the field.  

I'll keep you updated on how this is going.  

-Bill

Dribbling is harder than Driving a Car

(A parent sent me a message saying her daughter was smiling the whole time she was on the field, even if she wasn't kicking the ball around as much as we wish she would...and that they (the parents) were all laughing and smiling watching the girls play.)

My response:

Thank you. Fun is my primary goal. I'm not planning on any of our girls being the next Marta, but I do want them to love the game so much that they play until they're 90 years old.

I didn't play soccer as a kid, but I just started playing in MSA's adult league last season. It has given me such a good perspective on how the game looks to our girls. The number of decisions you need to make when you're dribbling the ball is unbelievable. First you have to be moving with the ball and not kicking it away from yourself. Much like when you first learned to drive a car, you had to really concentrate just to stay in your own lane. After hours and hours of driving, you finally were able to focus more on the surrounding traffic and staying in your lane was a subconscious activity. Dribbling a soccer ball is even harder (though not as dangerous). It takes hours and hours of dribbling to get to a point where you can really start to observe the "traffic" around you. Then once you get to that point, you have to decide if you should slow down, speed up, turn left, turn right, pass forward, pass back, shoot, kick it out of bounds, and don't forget to breath. Then once you decide not to dribble, kicking the ball is a whole different set of skills to work on. I love it and I want the kiddos to enjoy that challenge as well.

Thanks again,

Bill

Soccer Girls Just Want to Have Fun

I started the soccer practice with some boring old drill that was slightly confusing and only a little fun.  After that, we played some games that were much more soccer-like and the smiles certainly picked up.  In the end, we were playing 3 v 3 plus 2 keepers on a tiny field with huge goals.  The girls were just having a good time and enjoying the pleasant evening.  I tossed in a few words on some good plays and some opportunities missed, but for the most part, they just played.  The keepers had fun because on the really short field they often punted or goal-kicked the ball directly to the other keeper.  There were plenty of shots on goal by both teams.  To finish off the practice, we had the punting game where one girl punts the ball and the first player to touch it gets a point.  If it's a header, she gets 2 points.  When a girl gets two points, she becomes the punter.  They learn to bring down a bouncing ball and love doing it.  Its when you see this kind of enthusiasm and enjoyment of the game that you walk away from practice with a big smile.  Will they be ready for the match tomorrow?  We'll see.

-Bill

Coaching the Girls How to Move as a Team

The concept is simple to me: If you back-pass to your left (facing your own goal), then after the pass you move to your left in anticipation of getting the ball back. If you're the back, the movement will be to your right, so take your first touch away from the pressure (to your right) and then put the ball out wide of the forward in the direction she's already running. To finish off the play, after the back puts the ball out there for the forward, she should "go" and get the "give and go" started. It makes for a beautiful game.

We worked on this a couple of weeks ago when we only had 4 girls at practice and things went very well. This week, with 4 different girls (and 4 others working on their own), things seemed much more difficult. I suspect the difference was me. Having done it before, I probably tried to move to quickly from a simple thing to a more complicated thing. I'm not good at teaching the same thing twice. The first time I coach a concept, we're discovering it together. The second time, I'm waiting for the girls to catch up. It's a different perspective.

In the end, I just asked the 4 to play 3 v 1 keep-away for a while and encouraged them to take the first touch away from the pressure and ask the other girls to give some good support with good off the ball movement. This was basically more fun, and there was clearly plenty to learn still. It also took a lot fewer words.

I have to constantly remind myself that if it takes more than a sentence to explain a concept, I should probably simplify it. Going in to tomorrow's practice, I will keep that in mind. Simplifying makes if more fun for the girls and the coaches. Soccer games are always better teachers than a soccer coach's words.