Kindergarten Soccer

[mynewunit]

So, I have been drug into the darkness that is kindergarten club soccer.  Watched 1 practice, and offered to assist for the second.
My observations.  
        1. Coach is trying to do too much. In drills he is instructing one on one, chasing balls, answering questions.
        2. Drills are too complicated. 
        3. They don't know why they are playing.

First 3 tools. Simple. Owning the why. Decentralized command. 
        Being 5 year olds, I am trying to add repetition, structure, and get drills that you can explain in a sentence.

Trial, Wednesday. As Coach John Wooden would recommend, I have spent about 3 or 4 hours prepping for a 60 minute practice.
A little too much getting after it?
    

[mynewunit]

Okay. Kids Practice number 3.

The most successful thing we did, was a 5 minute talk. Explained the 3 rules. Helped them understand the what is right and what is wrong. Best thing, almost an entire practice with no tears. No one just gave up. I hope the game goes well.

For coaching, we didn't have anytime where the coaches were running off to do something while all the kids just stood around and looked at the ground.

Still need to figure out to have more kids involved. 5 year olds cant stand in line. Need to be able to have at least 4 kids moving at one time. Also had 4 or 5 kids developing their landscaping skills, pulling sod, mowing grass and playing in the dirt.

[mynewunit]

Had a Good Practice this week. Reviewed the rules. Didn't do the get back up drill, but might need to do it again. Last weeks shooting drill became a 1 on 1 drill. This lead to the realization that the kids run to where the ball is, and not where it is going. So, the kids heard a lot of run to where the ball is going, be between the ball and the goal.

I couldn't be at the last game. I heard that we didn't score a goal on one of the 2 fields. Still need some work on all aspects of the game. Offense, defense and Side line. Thinking about a Team Bench. Something that norrisbuffalo or jd would call a Hack Job. Thinking 2x8 and 2.5 in star drive deckers.  Spend all the time on the Paint.

[mynewunit]

Had team pictures taken this weekend. Also had our third game. We scored a bunch of goals, and they scored a bunch of goals on us. The bench worked good. The kids understood that if they sat on it, they would get back in the game. The mistake I made was giving them gatorade. Once they got gatorade they needed a drink every time play stopped.

Starting to explain Offense and Defense. Also, the concept of Move to where the ball is going to be, not where it is.  We haven't had to give a kid a time out in 2 weeks.  I have only had to ask kids about their behavior to stop anything. Other coach is building confidence slowly.

Here it is. Used it only primed. Maybe some color this week.

[Admin]

Sweet Bench! When are you going to teach them cover and move!?!

[rkt88edmo]

Good luck. At that age it is lucky to get them to just RUN fast in the right direction, lol.

Agree that coaches tend to try and do too much. Just work a few simple fundamentals with FUN drills. Everything needs to be fun fun fun.

Idle time = grass picking, hole digging, and nose picking.

Vol coaches are the best, good for you.

I totally remember being a space cadet up until I was 8 or so, so I totally sympathize with the daisy pickers. In baseball they always want to dive for the catch unnecessarily, so I tell them, you can score style points, or you can make plays, but you aren't going to make plays trying to get style points. Plays win games, style points are worth nothing. But at 4-5 that probably isn't the right message yet.

I learned more in one season about the game and technique by helping the coaches on my sons team than I ever learned in my 5 years playing baseball as a kid.

[mynewunit]

So we have 2 weeks left of Soccer. The bench became a tipping game, so no more bench. So we have a little penalty box defined by cones. I tried to just find what the kids were doing right and highlight it to the other kids. Lots of drills that last about 10 seconds. The 2 best outcomes are the whole team gets excited when we score a goal, and the just line back up when the other team scores.