With no games last weekend I had time to complete the individual player and parent meetings for my high school girls team. They're all freshman and sophomores getting ready to start high school tryouts. We discussed their feelings about the year, expectations for high school, interest in college soccer and plans for next year. It's such a great group and I've really enjoyed working with them. Fortunately, I have two or three more years with them since we … [Read more...]
#255 How to Prepare Meaningful Player Evaluations
My schedule has really slowed down in the last couple of weeks. The end of the fall always brings with it a much more relaxed pace. I'm grateful that we were able to complete our season. That was definitely not guaranteed when we started back in August. This weekend is State Cup for my 2005's. This is the one tournament all year that I focus on winning. If we're successful we have the opportunity to go to regionals and that will put the team in front of … [Read more...]
#253 Encourage Creativity and Confidence in Your Players
One of the benefits of coaching as many teams as I do is that I see just about every situation you can imagine. Last weekend I had eight games from Friday through Sunday. Two games Friday, two Saturday and 4 on Sunday. Today I thought I'd pull out one takeaway that I had from each day. On Friday one of my teams had an opponent that relied almost exclusively on aggression and physicality to play the game. Their goal was to simply to force us into mistakes … [Read more...]
#247 The Solution to Recording Soccer Games without a Camera Operator
As I write this post it's Thursday evening which marks the end of another week of training for me and my teams. I feel very fortunate to be able to train with my teams on the field because I know where are some places in the U.S. that haven't been able to start their fall seasons yet. I was reading an article about how the clubs in New York can't get permits to use the soccer fields despite the fact that the parks are open to the general public. Other places … [Read more...]
#222 The Importance of Normalizing Errors for Your Players
The Futsal Nationals took place in Gardner Kansas last weekend. I had two teams competing. One team missed out on the semi-final due to a close loss in their third game. The other team reached the final but lost on penalty kicks. I go into detail about the weekend in this episode. It was a great event that included teams from across the country as well as at least one from Canada. Our preparation for the tournament went well. The focus on defending that … [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...]
#207 What’s in Your Coaching Toolkit?
I took one team to a tournament in St. Louis last weekend. This was my first trip to St. Louis in many years. In the past they just didn't have the same quality of fields that we could find by staying closer to home. The teams have always been very competitive but I just never wanted to play those teams on inferior fields. Now there are a number of good turf field complexes in St. Louis so I'm sure to be traveling that direction more in the future. We had … [Read more...]
#189 SPORTING KC Academy Affiliate Observation Day
First of all I have to apologize for not uploading this episode last week. I had everything planned and then my internet connection went down. If you've ever had to deal with a cable company you know that nothing ever gets fixed quickly. I wasn't going to have internet back until Monday so I decide to sit on this episode for a week. There's two interesting things that happened recently. One was an incident when a player was injured in a tackle. The other … [Read more...]
#072 What Motivates Soccer Players?
Last weekend I had a great trip with three of my teams to a tournament. The kids played great and it was great time for the parents and player to get to know each other better. This week I’m looking at player motivation. I want to talk about what I think motivates players. The difference between motivation for games and training. What works for me and what doesn’t. The two areas that you are trying to motivate in game situations and the role of motivational … [Read more...]