Coaching Girls Soccer

Do you want to build a winning girls’ soccer program, on the field and off?  In Coaching Girls’ Soccer Successfully, one of the nation’s top high school coaches, Debra LaPrath, shares her expertise on all aspects of coaching. From establishing a coaching philosophy to making decisions during a game, this is the approach that has made her program a perennial powerhouse.

The author clearly outlines the importance of defining your coaching philosophy. It zeroes-in on your values and beliefs, the individual and team’s goals, keeps you focused on what’s best for the girls, and emphasizes being true to your own personality. At the core of her approach to coaching, is developing the character of individual players and team cohesiveness.

Coaching girls soccer is extremely rewarding. They are more open to new ideas, able to adapt quickly,  and willing to work hard. Coaching Girls’ Soccer Successfully is a “must-read” if you are searching for motivational tips, coaching guidelines, and specific strategies for working with female soccer players.

Purchase the book now for only $14.99 at eSoccerGear.com.

Soccer Drills for Youth Soccer

Prior to the beginning of every soccer season, every coach begins to think about what they need to do to field a better-skilled soccer team for the coming season.  Rest assured, your opposing coaches are pondering the same issue. Coaches also know they need fresh ideas to make practices interesting and fun for the kids. We all know keeping their attention is half of the battle!

Sure, I knew we’d have to focus on passing, dribbling, shooting, etc.—you know the fundamentals we all think about. However, I was looking for some news to instruct and teach these skills. My saving grace and source of new ideas for this past Fall season was a gift given to me on my birthday. The gift was a book titled Soccer Drills & Skills by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

I found Soccer Skills & Drills to be a comprehensive guide for both coaches and players. There were over 80 games and drills designed to practice those skills every soccer coach is trying to develop. The book included dozens of photographs and diagrams that illustrated technical instruction, while the application of each skill is described from both a tactical and positional perspective.

Our coaches used the insightful teaching points and effective practice activities to develop our girls’ techniques and tactics. You can benefit from this outstanding book and many others at eSoccerGear.com for only $14.95.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Okay, so you volunteered to coach your child’s soccer team. Are you ready? Have you thought about how will you teach the fundamental skills, run effective practices, and keep your youngsters attention?  As participation in youth soccer continues to grow, so does the need for youth soccer coaches. Whether you’re a parent new to coaching or an experienced youth soccer coach, the task can be both exciting and frightening.

One of the things that helped me was boning up on the current terminology and coaching techniques.  Without question, everything I’ve read-and it’s been a lot—strongly suggests you must keep the kids moving and constantly touching the ball!  A particular book, Coaching Youth Soccer, has become my handbook for planning practices and workouts.  I found the book easy to follow.  The book was written by American Sports Education Program and Sam Snow—director of coaching for US Youth Soccer.

Coaching Youth Soccer was perfect for me because it focuses on the needs of volunteer and novice coaches. More specifically, it targets the needs for instructing young soccer players ages 8 to 14. In the book, I found helpful tips on how to run my team, communicate with players, provide basic first aid, plan and conduct practices, and keep it all fun. I incorporated the gamelike activities outlined in the book to teach my players offensive and defensive skills.

Hopefully, you’ll find this book or others like it, helpful in preparing for your little monsters—I mean tikes!!! And for more books/DVDs on coaching youth soccer go to eSoccerGear.com.

Elastic Shoe Laces

Are you a weekend athlete (warrior), a serious triathlete or marathon runner, a recreational coach, or do you have kids whose shoe laces always seem to be untied?

The answer is now available! Striker Marketing has special shoe laces for all levels of athletes and children. These laces are an elastic lacing system that feature specially designed elastic laces combined with a spring activated locking device.

And guess what, you only have to tie them once!

Striker’s elastic laces are great for running, triathlon, playing sports and casual wear. They are also ideal for children, the elderly and the physically challenged. Wear them with all styles of running shoes, athletic shoes and casual lace-up shoes for any desired use.

When using these elastic laces, you never have to stop to retie your laces during any race, sport or activity. You can simply slip your shoes on and off, no more tying and untying laces or double knots!

Striker Marketing LLC–Innovative Products for Athletes of all Ages

Coaching Youth Soccer|Motivate Your Players

Many young soccer players come to practice or report on game days with a high sense of internal motivation. However, the question is “Is it the correct motivation for the tasks at hand?” As soccer coaches, our challenge is to ensure that individuals’ intrinsic motivation stems from an intent corresponding with the specifics of the team’s practice or game.

This is not easy because we are dealing with individuals. Our society brings young players to our doorsteps with low self-esteem, poor habits, ballooning egos, grandiose visions, etc. To make it even more complex, many of these mindsets mask deep-seeded personal issue. However, we are recreational coaches, and the community is our team.

So we must become aware of the players who are intrinsically motivated by their love of the game or desire to compete. They play for an inner pride and work hard towards accomplishing challenging objectives. On the other hand, coaches must be equally aware of young players who may need external motivation.

In Sports Psychology for Coaches, it is noted “the four primary needs of athletes are to have fun, feel accepted, have control, and to feel competent.”The most common tool to meet these primary needs is recognition. Yet there is a danger in using recognition in that it may trivialize or diminish the purpose of recognition itself. Therefore, when recognizing young players, make sure the recognition is specific, sincere, and is targeting a particular athletic feat. And above all else, be consistent in how you delve out the accolades.

For a recreational coach, it can be highly stimulating and rewarding to see apprehensive, self-doubting, average youngsters transform into self-confident, poised, hard-working athletes. These same attributes will be carried with many of our young players throughout their lives.

Teach Your Players to Have Class

In a previous article, I talked about the importance of identifying your “Coaching Philosophy.” When considering your own philosophy or set of values, did you contemplate good sportsmanship? Have you thought of instilling in your team the concept of playing, winning and losing with class? I present these questions because most recreational coaches at one time or another have been exposed to, victim of, or participant in an act of poor sportsmanship.

In the book The Soccer Coaching Bible, I recently read Chapter 2 and it talks about “Competing with Class.” The authors promote the concept that teaching and maintaining class is more important than winning. If you think about it logically, it makes good sense. Because the big picture is that we are developing individuals first, soccer players and athletes second. It can be argued that coaches who reflect good sportsmanship and class produce higher quality people.

And don’t forget about your fans—parents and family members. Most recreational soccer programs now have rules that penalize—yellow or red cards–the coach for unsavory spectator behavior. As coaches we have personal relationships with most of our parents. Communicate clearly to them what is expected or unacceptable spectator behavior towards other teams, officials and fans. This should be done at the beginning of the season and periodically during practice during the season.

In the end, coaches establish the true measure for a team’s standard of conduct. Players and most parents will follow coaches’ examples and guidelines. The bottom line for teaching your players to have class, as outline by the authors of The Soccer Coaching Bible, is to follow the golden rule: “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Second, do the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason.”

Planning Youth Soccer Practices

Just a few more months before Spring soccer practices begin. Or maybe you are fortunate enough to have an indoor facility to use over the winter months. Either way, have you seriously considered the purpose and goals of your practice sessions? Where do you begin? While standard drills are an important part of a team’s practice schedule, young players may become complacent or lose focus if not presented with new challenges.

Each successful soccer coach is challenged to make their practices productive and fun. Soccer players gain the most benefit from practices that are challenging and fun and activity oriented. They benefit from constant movement, ball touches and scoring exercises. Soccer Practice Games by Joe Luxbacher will help you plan these types of practices. The book is broken into six sections:

¨ Warm-up and Conditioning
¨ Passing and Receiving
¨ Dribbling, Shielding and Tackling
¨ Heading and Shooting
¨ Tactical Training
¨ Goalkeeper Training

The six different sections contain a total of 125 game-simulated activities that youth soccer coaches can adapt to create a favorable practice environment. All of the games teach fundamentals and focus on skills and tactics. Coaches that use these proven training methods seek to create controlled competitive situations providing players an opportunity to succeed.

Let’s face it–soccer is a running game!!! So isn’t it sound coaching to incorporate physical fitness into every skill development exercise? Sure it is. The important thing for coaches to realize is they do not have to recreate the wheel to accomplish this. This is why Joe Luxbacher wrote Soccer Practice Games—for recreational soccer coaches like us.