We’re now into the second full week of the ‘Stay at Home’ order in Kansas. I wish that more people were following it strictly. I'm seeing too many people on the news that are just acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Kansas hasn’t seen the huge spike in cases and deaths that some areas have. I'm hopeful that we can avoid that happening by taking the necessary steps now. My hope is that we can get back on the field starting May 1st. That would give … [Read more...]
#224 Coaching Conversation with Ted Hansen
It was great to get back to outdoor games last weekend. I was curious to see how the teams transitioned back to the outdoor game. Each team had a slightly different reaction. My youngest team that plays 7v7 didn't really have an issues. They seemed to pick up right were they left off but with more confidence and creativity on the ball. That was great to see. There was a bit too much use of the sole of the foot but I always notice this for the first few weeks … [Read more...]
#223 Coaching Conversation with Marcus Walfridson
This is the 5th Anniversary of the CSW Podcast! It's hard to believe I've recorded 223 episodes that have been downloaded more than 1.6 million times. I really appreciate everyone who listens, contributes or spreads the word about the show. THANKS! Last weekend we had our last Futsal games of the winter. It was weird having games after the Nationals but there was a weekend that was canceled due to snow and ice so they were rescheduled to the weekend between … [Read more...]
#221 Coaching Conversation – Robert Scott
I continued to focus on defending with my teams this week. With the younger teams it was more about individual defending while the older teams worked on defending as a team in preparation for the US Youth Futsal Nationals this weekend. During the session I wondered if I might be spending too much time on defending. Would that time be better spent on improving the player's attacking understanding and abilities? Then I realized that even though I hadn't been … [Read more...]
#214 Coaching Conversation with Michael Davitt
I really enjoyed the weekend off for Thanksgiving. Lots of time for family, friends, food and football (mostly American Football). The week before my teams started their Futsal season. I never know what to expect on that first weekend of Futsal but the teams all played really well and made a much quicker transition than I had expected. We were fortunate to player our first games on some of the largest fields. I think that helped us keep the ball in play and … [Read more...]
#203 Session Template Software
Last weekend I took one team to Omaha for a Labor Day tournament. This is a tournament hosted by Sporting Omaha that is played on a nice complex of grass fields. When we got to our first game we discovered that it was going to be played on a field that just had turf installed. Our players were very pleasantly surprised. We got off to a good start with a win and then came back in the afternoon to play a very physical team with one outstanding player. We were … [Read more...]
#191 The Techne App – Individual Training made Simple
I had a team play in a tournament that used grass fields last weekend. This is the first time any of my teams have played on grass this spring. In my opinion a good grass field is better than a turf field but it has to be a good grass field. The fields we played on this weekend were good in the past but aren't what they used to be. We're just not used to playing on grass anymore. It slows everything down so much that it's hard for the players to get their … [Read more...]
#190 Owning Your Development with Yael Averbuch
We're starting to wind down the 2018-19 soccer year. This is the last week of practice for one of my teams while the other two just have one tournament left for each of them. I'm always surprised at how fast the spring season goes. It's no shorter than the fall but it just seems to move so quickly. It may be because we're in the process of planning the tryouts and looking toward next fall already. During this time of year I do a lot of multi-themed … [Read more...]
#147 The Game-Based Approach to Training Sessions
We're finishing up our spring league season in the next couple of weeks. Then there are a couple of tournaments to end the season and we're back to tryout time again! This is also the time of year I set aside time to complete player evaluations for all of my teams. If you've listen to the podcast over the last three years you know that our club uses ZoomReports.com to communicate and save the evaluations for our teams. It's a great system and if you're still … [Read more...]
#102 Differentiated Coaching
The weather was so bad in the midwest last weekend that we weren't able to play most of our games. It rained pretty much non stop from Friday morning through Sunday morning. They had it even worse in St Louis where many of their fields are built in 100 year floodplains that flooded much more recently than that. These are photos of the St Louis Soccer Complex during the flooding. Obviously many people were impacted by the flooding and I don't mean to … [Read more...]