Thinking about the next soccer season - club players on recreational teams

I've been thinking about our girls next soccer season.  When the fall rolls around, due to our 2nd place finish, I suspect we'll be moving to the top bracket.  In Texas, kids can play both recreational and club soccer until U11.  Our girls will be U10 next year.  That means the upper bracket is loaded with girls that, year around, practice twice a week and play a league match or participate in a tournament almost every weekend.  The result is they have about 4x the playing time of our most experienced player.  They are infinitely more experienced than 80% of our team.  This translates to a very uneven playing field.  

I suspect we'll persevere for a season, take our lumps, get sent back down to the lower bracket in the spring and then flourish in the season after that when all the club players are restricted from recreational soccer.

Times have changed.  Kids putting in this kind of time into a sport before the age of 11 used to be rare.  It's common now.  Our recreational leagues need to realize this and group the club kids on separate teams in separate brackets.  My girls will have a tough time next season.  However, they're a tight team and I think they'll take care of each other just fine.

-Bill

Getting some U5 boys to play some soccer

Here's the deal. We have six U5 boys.

• One is the perfect player. He plays hard, he listens and tries new things. He's into the game. Needless to say, it shows on the pitch.
  
• Another player has a great "play hard" attitude. He can be a bit hard-headed when it comes to listening and trying to improve his game, but he's still a big impact player.
• Another one loves to dribble, but moves at a snails pace. He's creative, but easily distracted.
• Another one is a perfectionist. In order to avoid "failure", he would rather "not try".
• Another one is a most enthusiastic supporter of his team, but when it comes to actually winning the ball, well he would rather step away from that situation.
• Finally, the remaining boy just doesn't seem to have the ability to keep a sense of direction. In addition to avoiding the ball, when he does kick it, it could just as well be into our goal as theirs.

So that's the situation. Needless to say, we often end up playing 1 v 3 with the other 2 players on the field for our team either distracted, disengaged, or diffident.

So for the last game of the season, I had an idea. As the grinch would say, a wonderful, awful idea. I want my boys to be intrinsically motivated by a love of playing soccer, but for this game I broke that rule.

I asked the boys, "Do you know who Luke Skywalker is?"

They responded with an emphatic, "Yes".

"Is he a Jedi?", I asked.

Another, "Yes."

"Was he a great Jedi at first?"

"No, I guess not."

"Did he have a coach?"

"Yes, Qui Jon Jin (or however you spell his name). No, Yoda"

"Boys, I am your Yoda." (They thought that was funny.) "Right now, you are level 0 Jedi Knights. I'm going to tell you how to get to level 1, 2, 3, 4, and even level 5."

• Level 1 - Run fast.
• Level 2 - Run fast to a cover position.
• Level 3 - Run fast to a cover position and win the ball.
• Level 4 - Run fast to a cover position, win the ball, and dribble toward the goal.
• Level 5 - Run fast to a cover position, win the ball, dribble toward the goal, and score!

So what happened after that speech? Not two minutes into the game, the only player on the team never to have scored a goal in 15 games scored his first goal. And it was not a tap in. He had to take it from midfield and put it in the net under some pressure. "You're a level 5!" I yelled from the sideline. A few minutes later, the same boy made a nice run and almost scored again. Later that same half, another player that hadn't scored since last season dribbled it up the sideline and into the goal. Amazing! One of the "diffident" boys was playing so boldly, that when a boy a good 12 inches taller than him was about to score a goal, he stepped in front of him and cleared the ball away. I'm telling you, it was their best game of the season. Was it the speech? I'll never know for sure, but it would seem to be the case.

-Bill

What a Finish - What a Season

Our girls needed to win or tie to maintain their spot and earn a trophy. The other team consisted of girls primarily from the same elementary school as our team which made the game even that much more meaningful. The other team was much more experienced and coached much more emphatically, but we were as ready as we'd ever be.

It was intense from the start and halftime came around and they were leading 1 to 0. Shortly into the 2nd half, our most experienced player moved the ball up the sideline, crossed it to the top of the box, and found our 2nd most experienced player who one-touched it (under pressure) past the keeper into the goal. It looked really professional. The score remained tied for a while, then the other team got another goal to take a 2 - 1 lead.

We were still playing our game in great form. Compared to last season, when I couldn't get half the team to move up and pressure the goal, this season we often had 4 and sometimes all 5 field players up trying to score. This left us vulnerable to a breakaway, but our girls would get back so fast, we almost never let the other team get a good shot on our goal. And our girls were doing it all with almost no coaching from the sideline (other than occasional reminders about "balance").

With literally one minute left in the game, the girls pushed up hard to try and score. Again, we coaches were just watching. The girls were playing hard. We had all 5 up near the goal. One of our backs and a forward pressured the ball all the way up into the other team's corner. The ball got past them, but a 2nd back had them covered. She passed it toward the middle where our 3rd back crossed it to the top of the box. Our other forward was there to one-touch it past the keeper with a beautiful shot. The whistle blew and the game was over and tied. Let the celebrations begin. If we'd had one player not there, it wouldn't have worked. Everyone of them contributed on that goal. They played bravely and with their very best effort. I couldn't be more proud.

I have to attribute the change in attitude toward getting forward to working on the give-and-go early in the season. I still didn't really see a "classic" give-and-go started by a back in a match all season, but I think it put enough forward motion into our girls that it worked to get them moving forward. I think they got past the mental barrier that backs only defend and got them into the mindset that backs press forward too. With this being only the 2nd season for almost half the team, earning a trophy was a real accomplishment. It took all of them playing their hardest, taking care of each other, and playing with a smile to make it happen.

-Bill

Getting Benched for Smiling?

I couldn't believe my ears. The coach of the other team yelled at one of his players, "If you keep smiling, I'm putting you on the bench."

Wow. There's so many things I could say to branch off of this event. I could be sarcastic and talk about how winning in U9 recreational soccer is the most important thing. I could be self-praising and talk about the fact that one of our team's 3 points on "how we play" is "play with a smile". Tony DiCicco says, "If it isn't fun, it's not soccer." Our girls are 8 or 9 years old! Wow.

-Bill

Pressure, Cover, Balance, Balance, Balance

With my girls, I've talked "balance", I've shown "balance", we've practiced "balance", but we didn't really seem to understand "balance".

It's very rare now for the girls to have trouble with "pressure". I'm actually quite impressed at how little they dive in. They seem to have "pressure" down.

With our newer players, we still have some issues with "cover". Some of the time they forget to get back and cover or they run along beside or behind the "pressure" instead of sprinting ahead to cover for their teammate. Sometimes they forget to push up and cover for the forwards, but overall, we do pretty good.

However "balance" has been troubling. We allow the girls to play a very free-style of soccer. We don't assign left, right, or center positions. We let them watch each other and adapt to the situation. This has frequently led to having all 3 backs providing pressure and cover on a sideline and no one in the middle of the field. Well this week we played a team that kept a forward in the center of the field better than most teams. Wouldn't you know it, they found her on a fairly long pass and in a flash we were down a goal. I had 3 backs on the bench and told them, "Look at that. That's why we need balance. We can't leave that girl alone to receive a pass and score with no pressure." I substituted in the 3 backs and started coaching the 3 that had been on the field. Of course, the 3 I just sent in did exactly what they'd always done and left the forward by herself in front of our goal. It made for a great coaching opportunity for the 3 girls on the bench. "Look," I said. "They're doing exactly what you were doing. We have to mark up. We have to have balance." About that time they scored their second goal. "Sub!". Now the original back line was in the game again. Let me tell you, they got it. They marked up the center forward while still maintaining pressure and cover on the ball. The player marking may have changed as they played, but they looked out for each other and shut the door on the scoring. There were a couple of instances where a player actually was running so hard to recover her mark that she actually ran away from a ball she could have won, but her teammates were right there with her, so it was all good.

Now if I could just get most of my forwards to do the same to the other team....

-Bill