Home ⇒ misc ⇒ other ⇒ Current Article

Coaching kids' soccer

Coaching practices

Dave Tutelman -- September 9, 2018

In my town, the soccer teams were picked in a draft, resulting in fairly equally talented teams. This was done in middle August, leaving time to practice for two weeks before the season began right after Labor day. I got in four practices in those two weeks, and cut back to one practice a week (plus, of course, a game) once the season started. Practices were scheduled to last an hour and a half.

The format of my practices was:

10 minutes	Announcements and warmup
15 minutes	Skill drills - first period
15 minutes	Skill drills - second period
5 minutes	Break - rest, drink, snack
45 minutes	Scrimmage

Announcements? They already had a schedule of the games, but a reminder never hurts. More importantly, I told the kids which positions they would be playing in the game. They needed to know at that point, because they needed to practice that position in most aspects of this practice session. I tried to make sure each kid had a chance at each of forward, midfielder, and defender fairly early in the season, especially under age 10.

Notice I said nothing about everybody playing goalkeeper. An early practice (typically the second practice), I would ask who was interested in playing goalie. Typically 1/3 to 1/2 raised their hand. I would have those kids move over to a goal (real or improvised) and have a prearranged and pre-trained parent start to teach goalkeeper skills. Usually more than a half of those who were interested decided it was too hard or too much pressure right away. I was usually left with 3 or 4 goalie candidates. I continued to give them some 'keeper drills, but field player as well. It's unfair to them to require them to be only a goalie all season.

Drills

I appreciated help from the parents, and I used it. Here is the second handout for parents I would issue during the season. In it, I solicited help from the parents for the skill drills. (The drills themselves are covered on the next page.) Here is how I used the parents that were willing to help.

Kids under 10 get bored really quickly. If you have a drill that requires only one or two players at a time, it is deadly to keep kids in line waiting their turn. But if I can divide them up into four groups, that minimizes the time spent waiting. In fact, you can design it so that the few kids in each group who are involved can switch off as quickly as possible, and make that speed a part of the drill -- almost a game.

I can do that if I have four parents. They don't have to know a lot about soccer, just be able to see things I tell them to watch for. I start up each group personally, with a parent watching for the faults I mentioned and telling the kid -- often involving a repeat to try to get it right. (No multiple repeats; I will handle that case personally.) I rotate among the groups, watching each kid, sometimes more than once. If someone is having trouble getting it, I take them aside and run the drill with them personally until they get it.

You will notice that the skill periods are 15 minutes. If I take 2 minutes with each group, that gives me time for two rounds of the whole team. The rest of the time, the parents are watching and correcting errors using the fixes I suggested.

Alternative structure
For some teams or for some drills, this structure may not work well. For instance, dribbling is traditionally taught with a slalom through traffic cones; I've done that with my own team. But this has a couple of problems:

You won't have enough cones for more than one slalom course.
14 kids won't wait in line while one dribbles through the slalom course.

In that case, it may make sense to have several groups practicing different drills. This works only if you have some parents dedicated enough to really be assistant coaches. (I have occasionally been so lucky. Most of the time, not.)

At that point, we take a break. The kids catch their breaths and re-hydrate. (It can be hot early in the season, late August and early September.)

Scrimmages

We spend the last half of the practice in a scrimmage. That gives them a chance to:

Apply the skills in a game situation, with opponents trying to prevent them from executing. Skip scrimmages and your team will be overwhelmed in the game.
Learn the flow of the game, which you can't teach in skill drills.
If they are having trouble with specific pieces of "flow" I can modify the scrimmage to train those pieces. For instance, this is the time to break the habit of "swarm play". I'll get into how I modify scrimmage when we discuss position play.

A few more comments about scrimmages.

I will often run a scrimmage with tiny goals, traffic cones placed only 6-8 feet apart. These scrimmages are played without goalkeepers, and there is a semicircle of about 8ft radius in which no player can go unless the ball is already inside it. One thing this does is allow practices before any goalkeepers are trained for the season. Another is to put pressure on the defenders to force the opposition to take bad shots.
The last practice or two before the games start, I phone another coach and set up a scrimmage between the two teams. This gives each team's players an opportunity to get the feel of opposing unfamiliar players, and not having to wait until the first game for that experience.

Let me offer one caveat about parents and practices. Make it very clear to all the parents that you are not an after-practice baby-sitting service. One of the conditions of membership on the team is punctual pickup. I once had a major snafu in this regard; I was lucky it didn't result in a lawsuit, but I reacted by adopting a zero tolerance policy. If the parent or a designated carpool isn't there at the end of practice, the kid is off the team. Period! No second chances! It's not the kid's fault; you should be able to depend on the adult. Today (unlike when I was coaching) everybody has a cell phone. There is no excuse for just showing up late.

Last modified - September 14, 2018