Recreational Soccer Teams

The volunteer coach that will be gearing up to train a recreational soccer team would plan differently than one that is leading an elite team.

For one thing the main theme should be the fun factor of the learning to play soccer and planing accordingly is important. Depending on the category the planning would involve skill sets that will be varied among your young players.

In most cases the soccer association that you are affiliated with will offer some kind of help if you are new to the sport or to coaching it. Although it is recommended that you learn how to coach using as many resources as you can namely the internet. In doing so you will realize that training U5, U6, U7 and U8 categories is slightly different than if you are at the U9, U10, U11 and U12 categories. And as they get older the fun factor is still important but there is the competition element that will come into play. Like in most cases when learning a discipline there are steps that build on previous steps and learning to play soccer is not different.

Most soccer associations  will have course offerings that will cover different levels of coaching. When you are beginning you will probably be offered the first level which will cover the youth level. In most cases it will apply to the the level you will be training. Find out what the club has to offer you and make it part of your learning process. Keep an open mind even if you already have athletic skills acquired from your youth. Playing a sport even one like soccer is not the same when teaching it as a coach.

Preparation comes with learning how to teach a sport skill even if you already know how to do it yourself you need to be able to teach it. You will need to be very open minded as how you teach it will heavily depend on the category you will be coaching. This should become part of you preseason preparation and needs to be part of your presentation during your initial parent meeting.

How do you gain your coaching knowledge? Do give much thought on how you will present a particular soccer skill? Do you plan a parent meeting at the beginning of the soccer season?

The Coach Within

So you find yourself in a situation where you sign up one of your children or all of them to a soccer league. It is a first experience for you and your children. Excitement, nerves, sense of pride and many other feelings all become a part of the initial experience for both you and your child.

It appears that all is well with the club you have signed up with but what most parents do not realize is that most soccer clubs rely on volunteers to offer the service. The clubs find themselves short of them to effectively deliver a community service that runs smoothly and in harmony. Member registration at times overwhelms their capacity to staff even when they try to limit the enrollment. Volunteers always have the best intentions and therefore, the club may not want to turn away new members and scramble to look for more volunteers to fill in the need.

Soccer clubs in this situation will reach out to their soccer parent pool first to fill in the head coach positions for the teams they build within the different categories. Players are grouped by year of birth and teams from these groups are assembled. The groups are call categories and are identified as U5, U6, U7, etc. Within each of the categories there may be as little as one team just like there could be four or five teams. Some are co-ed and others are divided boys and girls.

The category identification is preceded by the letter 'U' which stands for the world 'Under' and then by the group's age. So a U5 soccer category is made up of soccer teams with 5 year old players. A U12 category will have teams with soccer players that are 12 years old. There may be exceptions were players are mixed within the category and there are many reasons for this. An 8 year old player may be playing within a 9 year old category. This is another topic which I will cover in another blog.

When a club realizes the shortfall on soccer coaches they promote your participation. Now keep in mind that most parents have doubts about taking on this responsibility. After all they went in to sign up their children and never even thought that they would be recruited in the process. Parents worry not just about the knowledge of the sport but the time that it requires. Therefore, parents will not commit to this role other than to bring their child to games and practices. But before you turn this opportunity down there are some things you should evaluate and those I will cover in another blog.

For those of you that take on the challenge there is a feeling of excitement and fear if it is the first time doing such volunteer work. The coach within you needs to be born and the implications are plentiful. One thing is for sure there are certain realizations that a soccer parent coach needs to acknowledge. I'll cover these in another blog post. But for the most part you have filled in a need and at the same time your children have a team to play in and are proud to say my Dad or Mom is the coach.

Soccer clubs have programs in place to help volunteer parents learn the sport and also how to teach playing it. So for those parents with little knowledge there is help. For those parents with the knowledge then they will benefit from the training by learning how to teach.

A new venture starts for you and the proud child that you will be guiding within this sport. I hope to share with you my experience that taught me a lot about myself and help you be the best coach you can become.