#103 Why Your Players are Bored

Coaching my games this weekend and covering for a couple of other coaches the “kickball” being played by some of the teams we played against was killing me. It was hard to play against because anytime we build the play up if the opponent won the ball they just kicked it as far up the field as they could.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that my way of coaching the game is the only way. We’ve had coaches on this podcast that have a wide variety of methods that are very different and effective was to develop players. But surely we can all agree that just kicking and throwing the ball as far as you can is not one of them.

We should all be teaching these kids how to control the ball and make decisions. We’re not trying to train them all to become Pros but these are skills that carry over into other sports and places the value on control and skill rather than on who wins the game.

Sorry, that just really got under my skin!

This week’s question is from Steve.

He asks about player evaluations.

Steve says,

“In one of the past episodes, you have mentioned that your club does player evaluations during the year. We are starting up a new season here for our U12 girls, and I was wondering when you typically do evaluations during the course of a season. I see a lot of merits in sitting down with players at the beginning of the season to encourage and let them know where we see potential for growth in their game.

Additionally, I was wondering what sort of form or format you use in evaluating players? What areas/skills do you evaluate? Is that something you could share with the listeners?

And finally, I was wondering how you share the evaluations with players & parents?”

Thanks for the question Steve!

I’ve been working on my end of year evaluations so this question comes at a great time.

Many of our teams have the players set goals at the beginning of the season. This can be a valuable tool especially for players U13 and above but it can also be helpful for some younger players.

We evaluate our players twice a year, once about five months into the year and once again at the end of the spring before tryouts.

The system we use for evaluations is from ZoomReports.com. It allows us to write up each evaluation and send it to the family. They can view it and respond with any questions. We meet with players on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it’s the coach that would like to talk more about the evaluation and sometimes it’s the family.

We keep the evaluation very simple. We focus on the four key areas of development: Technical, Tactical, Physical and Psychological. I’ll put an example of the form in the show notes.

This system keeps track of the player’s evaluations over time so that future coaches can look back on what I told the player when they were on my team.

In This Episode

I talk about how giving your players choices and decisions to make during technical training makes these activities more fun and more connected to the actions that they perform in the game.

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Next Week

Next week I’ll look at how you can use High Pressure Defending to win the ball back quacking and create goalscoring opportunities.