Friday, December 2, 2011

My family's involvement

Other than me, my family is very involved in sports. All three of my sons play travel soccer at various levels (U13, U17, U18), ski and play hockey. Two of my nephews play travel soccer at U9 and U10. My brother and sister also played at competitive levels during their youth.

I have 2 other nephews who are involved in basketball, baseball, martial arts and hockey.

Thursday Clinic 5 of 8

On Thursday nights I deliver a clinic to boys and girls U12-14. There are up to 30 players in attendance and we run this on the indfoor field at the Welland Soccer Club. Most aspire to play travel soccer the following summer. The skill level spectrum of this group is very wide.

The way I have this organized is:
-Warm-up related to the session
-Introduce or rehearse a concept
-4v4 games
-Introduce another concept progressing from the first
-4v4 games
-7v7 full field to finish off

Last night we reviewed and stressed first touch away from pressure and opening-up when receiving. It's basic, but many do not do this as a matter of habit.

The gentlemen who work with me on this are great guys. I stress to them to let the kids play, only coach what they see and try to keep the coaching focused on the topic of the night. it's very tempting to coach everything, but that kills the session. Too much talking, too much info, not enough playing.

If it was my team specifically I would do more technical work but these players are all training with their respective teams already.

Young players rehearse and develop specific techniques but very few of them actually know how to "play". My goal for this 8 session clinic was to give them more ideas to try during games.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Start of my blog

Well, this is the start of my first blog. Somebody said once that if it wasn't written about, it never happened.

The last two seasons have been very busy with my being in teachers college and working that, in reflection, I am not 100% satisfied with what I've given my 1999 boys team. They are improving but they deserve nothing less than the best. I started this blog to keep an ongoing reflection with our 1999 boys program.  Other soccer activities will also be in the journal.

I took this team over in 2010 when they were entering U11. It wasn't something I planned to do but it's been very OK to date.

We are taking training slowly with our 1999 first and second teams and look forward to reconvening in January. I have some ideas for this group that I will expand on once we get started in January.

My assistant coach for this team is Coach Paul.  Paul is a Sargent with the Niagara Regional Police Service and a man the kids are lucky to know.

I've had some good coaches and good men work with me over 23 years.  I hope to expand a bit on all of them during this project.