Quick, off the top of your head, what do you feel are the main qualities that make a youth coach successful? Is it passion for the sport? Friendliness? Ability to teach techniques? Ability to communicate with players? Approach-ability? The quality of practice plans or knowledge of good soccer drills?
Ask ten different people, you might easily get ten varying opinions. However, if you were to dig a little deeper with the question, and you would probably find that there are common tendencies present with any successful youth coach, be that on the recreational or competitive sides of any sport. What anyone who gets involved in youth sport needs to keep in mind is that most get into coaching for the right reasons and have the best of intentions of making a difference in many children’s lives, whether they go to play at the highest level or their highest level. Children never forget a good teacher. It should be everyone coach's goal to never be anyone’s last coach. It’s important to understand that, no matter if you agree or disagree with the points made in this post, that being a good person is or should be the overriding #1 most important factor in any endeavor you take on in life, whether that be your personal job, family life, or coaching. Being a good person, who is fair, consciences, empathetic and has good intentions goes a long way towards becoming a successful soccer coach. Being this type of person helps gain the respect of your soccer players, their trust, and allows them to have fun playing for you. However, what causes fun? As a group of kids involved in sport, what they find " fun" about being involved in sports and I am convinced that anything associated with winning would be far down the list. The most common answers in some form or other, would probably look something like this;
The personality of the coach, and how they treat their players, is so important that in some coaching courses, the some coaches are graded on if the instructor “would want to play for them.” Personality and intentions count, and when exploring the other qualities that make up a strong youth coach it’s important to understand that exemplifying players as people, over your ego and need to win, will be the biggest leap any coach can make towards making your soccer team stronger. When I took my very first coaching course and this after having guided my team to a national championship the year before ( I've already covered the tale of that story before), the first comment we got from the instructor was that to always remember that without athletes, we didn't need coaches. It was our responsibility to put them first and adapt to them. So how is this relevant? Well simply, a successful coach knows when and how to adapt and vary his or her coaching techniques in order to ensure that the athletes have the best chance to thrive. As the saying goes "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome." If players aren’t learning or understanding that the coach wants them to, it’s not necessarily a problem with the players, but could be an issue with the message. Coaches need to learn to be creative with how they deliver instruction to players. There are many different learning styles, so repeating the same message the same way continuously will only serve to frustrate the players and ultimately the coach. Players learn in different ways and it is important for coaches to be perceptive to the learning styles on their team. Another issue that often plagues teams, not just at the youth level but at all levels, is that training ground success doesn't always translate to wins in games. In my opinion, this is related to two major root causes, the fact that some coaches are unable to recreate game like conditions during practices which leads to players being out of sorts when faced conditions they haven't faced before and secondly, coaches that are so focused on results, that cut corners on the process of teaching good habits, that players freeze up when it comes to game day. This second situation is usually made worse by expectations typically brought up by parents and those that don’t understand what really matters in youth sports. If sports were played on paper then why play? Coaching youth soccer is much more complicated that simply living up to performance expectations. If coaches are caught up in performance anxiety then so will their players. Most sports are a psyche/social game over a technical/tactical one. You can have players with fantastic technique and tactical know-how, but if they aren’t comfortable and happy with their soccer, even the best of coaches won’t be able to get the most out of them. Just watch example of teams that make a coaching change mid-season, same players, but you can often see the positive shift in player mindset and how that can translate to game day success. However, this is often a short term bump and improvement. If the new coach isn't able to sustain a positive environment, sooner or later, the players can fall back on old habits. Let's be honest, to some extent or other, winning is important. It's why we keep score during games, but winning at all costs will actually affect the process of player developments, especially at the younger age groups. One important tool to not completely push aside the issue of winning but still focus on development, is the notion of setting “development milestones” during a team’s pre-season. Instead of setting lofty team goals like "win championship" or "remain undefeated this season," it is important to set realistic goals that are easily measurable and achievable and can be reviewed periodically throughout the season. When young athletes are able to see a quantifiable level of success and achievement, it keeps them motivated to putting in the time and effort. Goal setting can be done both at the team and individual level. When goal setting is done right. the focus of the team from the beginning of the season meeting onwards is to improve each practice , each game, as improvement gives them the best opportunity to reach their next goals. In contrast, setting lofty goals like ‘"win championship" or "remain undefeated this season," can be broken by losing the first game of the season. What then? Successful teams, and successful coaches, understand that the process is the focus, not the end result. By focusing on the process, you allow success to happen naturally and as a byproduct of development. Think of it like taking a trip, if you are so focused on the final destination, who knows what you might miss out along the way as you take the route to arrive where you are heading. Often, at the foundation of most dissatisfaction with a coach, it comes down to the practices, how interesting they are, how well they are planned out, how much the players actually get out of them. When you have a certain amount of experience and observe other coaches, especially younger or less experienced coaches, you can see certain indicators that maybe practices are running efficiently. Players will be going through the motions, but training has a ‘meh’ feel to it. Good soccer coaches will create an environment where players are excited to come to practice, compete, and learn. Every coach has tough practices, no matter how long they've coached, how much training they've gotten or what level of certification and experience they might have. Coaches who get 100% “buy in” from their players can answer the question “why are we doing this?” and present the information in an engaging environment. How can we teach technique and keep it engaging? I see many coaches on the practice fields who run very static practices:
A selection of great small sided games can be a way to increase engagement and gain buy in. Things to think about when selecting small sided games:
Strong coaches can paint a picture of not only “this is what you have to do,” but rather “this is what we should do, because then it was cause this to happen.” Doing so helps to create a picture for players, which helps them understand what they are being asked to do. Try it in practices: keep the activities dynamic and, when there is a breakdown in them, recreate the scene right before it happened and show players what they should think about doing next time to fix it. Keep in succinct, and check understanding by re-asking players open-ended questions at the end of practice to see if it stuck. So if you've read all the way to here, everything that I've tried sharing to this point can be summarized somewhat succinctly;
Not sure how all of this might apply to you ? Well ask yourself a few simply questions.....
If you are truthful in the answer you come up with, it is a first step to a valuable self-assessment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|