Key Phrase for Teaching the Little Players How to Win the Ball

Below is an old message I found on my hard drive from 4 years ago. I must have sent it to a parent or parents, but I don't really remember. There's some phrasing and things I would say differently now, but the general idea is correct.

I'm sure you've all seen it. When trying to stop an attack and defend their goal, the players either stand and wait for the attacker to come to them. Or the "dive in" and loose all balance. Or they drill the ball right into the attacker shinguards. Or, the most frustrating, they run beside the attacker at the same speed (no matter how fast or slow), and never do anything to stop her; they'll jog along beside the dribbling attacker the entire length of the field and watch her shoot the ball, never attempting to win it. At least she's running.

Four years later, I can attest to the fact that using the phrase "run between the player and the ball" seems to be very effective for teaching the little players how to shoulder tackle. Just for the fun of it, I'll paste my original message below:

Actually, "getting between the girl and the ball" is a way for them to visualize "running through" the steal. In other words, if the defender is coming right at her and she wants to kick the ball away, she has a few choices:

1. Wait for the attacker to get to her and try and kick the ball away; this doesn't work very well.

2. Move toward the attacker, stop, and try to kick the ball; this is better, but the "stop and kick" motion throws her off balance. If she misses the ball, its an easy score for the other team.

3. Move toward the attacker and get between her and the ball. If the defender's feet incidentally kick the ball away from the attacker in the process, great; this will happen 90% of the time. If the ball gets trapped between the girls, the attack has still been stopped temporarily. If the ball gets past the defender, but she is between the attacker and the ball, the defender will still probably get to the ball first and kick it away.

The idea is too keep our defender on her toes and with good balance as opposed to off balance and on her heels trying to reach for the ball with her toe. It should also prevent the error where the defender does a hard kick right into the attacker's shinguards where it rebounds into our own goal.

I hope you can see what I'm trying to say, because I really believe it will work. The thing you'll have to overcome is the reluctance of many or our girls to physically contact someone else on purpose. It seems like kids with older siblings don't have this issue, but the oldest sibling has always tried to avoid physical contact with their younger siblings. I've actually practiced in the backyard with [my daughter] letting her knock me over with her shoulders as she steals the ball from me just to get her used to initiating physical contact. (She had a blast doing it too.)

It's fun to find your old emails.

-Bill