I find recruiting disheartening.

A very nice man who coaches at our club has lost a bunch of his players to a “higher level” team in the next town.  It’s a shame because this coach is a quality individual who runs an organized program.  Our players need role models and he is a good one.  He found new players to take their spots and is moving forward but it’s still discouraging that the girls left en masse.  They did not leave for a dislike of their coach, they just think they’re moving up.

If there is one thing I am looking forward to with the implementation of LTPD, it’s the possible/inevitable decrease in recruiting at young ages.  Recruiting starts at U8 and gets worse from there.

Decent players are being lured away from good coaches by recruiters who are promising their team will “clean up” with trophies.  There are stories in Niagara of teams paying for a player’s registration and in Toronto of gas money being paid.  CRAZY.

I don’t recruit and I don’t stop people from recruiting my players.  Hey, if you think the grass is greener somewhere else, here’s your card.  If you come back the following year, no hard feelings, but you will have to try out.  Either way, I enjoyed coaching you and I wish you all the best. 

The player's happiness is paramount so if I know a player is unhappy, I would help their parents find a situation to satisfy the player's needs.  But that's a different topic.

"Recruiting starts at U8 and gets worse from there."

My goal is to have the program speak for itself.

Parents who are being lured need to ask themselves some questions:

1.     If the coach already has a team and promises you a spot, who is getting bumped?  Will you get bumped when that same coach finds a player better than your child?

2.     If your child plays for a recruiter, do you not wonder what that recruiter promised the new kid?  How does the treatment of the new player compare to the treatment of the players already on that team?

3.     If you left your team for greener grass and you are not happy, how do you explain to the next prospective coach that you are looking for your third team in three years?

4.     Are you prepared for your original coach/club to not take your child back?  Maybe the spot was filled by another player who is too nice or too good to bump.

5.     If you were unhappy with your last coach, how do the parents of your new team know you will not be unhappy on their team?

6.     Have you ever watched your prospective coach during a game or run a practice? 

In 23 years I’ve lost one player to active recruiting.  And that was OK.  I’ve only engaged in recruiting a player once, who was a new player on our B team about 6 years back.  He was an out-of-town player, had an attendance issue with us and didn’t play much.  But if I had played him to appease/endear him it would have caused the rest of my team to implode.  He was treated like everybody else and ended up leaving the following year.  My first and hopefully last experience with that kind of recruiting.  I will say he was a great kid and I do regret not having a full season to work with him.

My middle son switched teams 5 years ago and played there for three years.  We were not recruited.  He asked for a change of scenery, he knew a lot of the boys on the team in St Catharines and played there.  It was a good experience with little pressure.

I don’t judge recruiters or parents looking for a better situation.  I think if more investigative type questions were asked by both sides, far less recruiting would happen, or at least far less uninformed recruiting.

I know people who are gifted coaches and great people and switching to them would be justifiable if the situation was right.  It's the recruiters who offer very little other than a team of recruited players that irk me. 

A last thought ... my friends who are gifted coaches and great people don't really need to recruit as the players migrate to them naturally.

An article I wrote defending LTAD/LTPD

I wrote this article in response to an article published in the Welland Tribune on October 27.

This is my submission in it's entirety.  The Tribune edited it to fit their space and kept the general meaning, but they did remove some parts.

Brian Lilley’s article of October 28 was a weak attempt to convey the general philosophy being adapted by many sport federations in Canada.

He is criticizing the patience being preached by the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) framework developed by Sport Canada.  This framework is a compilation of the best program points from around the world as well as extensive consultations, and it’s final version is being integrated into programs of other countries.  Lilley criticizes the need for higher training:game ratio.   This is the biggest difference between North American sports and the rest of the world.

LTAD in it’s generic form is broken down into seven stages addressing the elite and recreational streams for athletes.  Canadian Soccer, Hockey Canada, Baseball Canada and Canada Basketball have adopted this framework and tailored it to their respective sports.  In total, 56 national sport organizations have already adopted LTAD.

The environment presented at various LTAD stages fall in line with the physical/mental development stages of the athlete.  At every stage, coaches and organizers will know more about the athlete they are dealing with and what types of programs will benefit them the most.

Patience and methodology are being preached but also systematically implemented by the environments set up at each stage.  A refreshing byproduct of toning down the value of standings early on will be the inevitable decrease in the effect of any politics that happens at local club levels.  Less standings does not mean the elimination of competition.

Games will still be played.  Young players will still want to score goals, defend and make the nice plays. It’s the structure up to age 12 that is being targeted.

There are some basic problems that need to be addressed  for the younger age groups: poor environments for development, lack of mastery of fundamentals, lack of proper coaching information  and adult competitive values imposed on young athletes, to name a few.

Lilley and many others argue that things are OK the way they are in sports.  That’s an interesting attitude seeing that we are not consistently competitive in all but one sport.  The public outcry when we fail at Olympic games is deafening.  The lack of federal funding and proper programming gives journalists their collective topic of the day.  He plays the trite line of people who are afraid of change “when I was a kid ...”.  Well, when we were kids hockey players did not wear face masks, wet soccer balls weighted 10 pounds and 8-year-old basketball players shot at 10ft baskets.  It’s time to move forward.

His main argument is that there is too much interference in the new framework.  If you read it closely and think about what it’s saying, it’s actually reducing the interference and elements that impede development.

Ask your child’s coach if they wished for  one more training session per week to be able to address specific problems and improve on individual techniques.  Ask your organization if they feel they would retain more coaches if the environment was set up for more success for players and coaches alike.

Think of the environment up to age 12.  Lopsided house league drafts.  Shortening the bench.  Arguments with officials.  Players statistics.  Not enough training.  Poor coaching.  Inefficient use of facilities.  The big trophy.  Parental influence.  Driving 90 minutes to and from a game on a school night.  Recruiting by inferior coaches.  Smaller October/November/December children left behind at age 7.  All these factors impede true system-wide development of players and coaches.  Wonderful moments happen in sports every day , and would still happen with or without the craziness our younger athletes are exposed to.

If you were ever involved in travel sports, ask yourself this:  If a travel team for a certain age group was first picked at 12 years old (instead of 8 years old) after all the eligible players had received the same fundamental training by a qualified coach, would the same players still be selected?

If you want to read about development of young athletes and students, check out “The Talent Code” (Daniel Coyle) and “Outliers: The Story of Success” (Malcolm Gladwell).

For more information on LTAD, visit canadiansportsforlife.ca or the website for the national governing body for your favourite sport.

Book: Whose Puck is it Anyway?

I just finished reading a book called "Whose Puck is it, Anyway?".  The book chronicles the season of a Novice AAA hockey team coached by Ed Arnold and assisted by Steve Larmer and Greg Millen.  Yes, two former NHL stars as assistants.  The coaching staff decided to take a hands off, no pressure approach to coaching. It was a very interesting read.

Coaching hockey in Canada is no easy task.  Everybody is an expert.

Making Ethical Decisions (Course)

I just signed up to take "Making Ethical Decisions" which is part of my requirements for delivering courses for Ontario Soccer.  It's Monday night and I am taking the online version.

I enjoy those types of courses so I am looking forward to it.

Thursday Night Clinic 6 of 8

Tonight was the 6th of 8 Thursday night sessions I run at the Welland Soccer Club.

We reviewed opening up with the ball and then we coached and rehearsed movements after passing the ball to support that is behind you.

The picture we painted was the player in possession facing his own net while being pressured from behind. After passing the ball back to a teammate, we reviewed possible subsequent moments of support to turn that into a 2v1 going forward again.

Some got it. Some didn't. But they all will before 8 weeks are done.  I wasn't overly happy with how tonight went but I know it will sink in.  With 30 kids at different levels on the same floor, some will not be in a position to demonstrate their learning right away.

More players are opening up more consistently.  That was encouraging.

I told Coach Rick that I wasn't leaving the field with a great feeling but he is very good with perspective.

Next week we are going to work on penetrating passes. Partly for more game intelligence and to stop always passing to a player's feet, but also to force them to properly strike a through ball. Points will be simple. Quick Early Accurate passes that get between and behind the defenders as soon as possible.

Some very frustrating things happen in Canada. The kids don't play often enough and when we do play the defensive pressure is not there to force the team in possession to be better. Passes don't have enough pace. First touch is weak. Decision making is not the best. Players are not forced to move to an oncoming ball.

I tell everybody this story. When we were in Italy in 2005, my boys played soccer on the street with the local boys all day for 3 weeks except for the 6 days we were traveling. By the time we left, they were in the habit using their bodies to establish their space before the ball arrived, moving the ball quicker (to avoid getting hacked), defending with a bit more intensity and generally playing smarter. When we came home they were flying for 3 weeks then it all went back to normal. The same thing happened when we took our 1994 boys team to Holland in 2009 for 12 days. Oh well.