I’ve been meaning to write some about the differences in attitudes and personalities between boys and girls teams. I’ve been a coed coach for most of my coaching life, so it was muted there. But in watching girls only matches in our Challenge program, you often saw cattiness and the ‘dominant personality’ that Old Soccer Guy talked about and I followed up on a bit. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started coaching my U11 team, but I quickly found out it was definitely differenet and not what I expected. Despite many attempts this past season, we never managed to push, cajole, or otherwise encourage a dominant personality to take over. We knew there was a risk of things getting nasty, but felt identifying a leader would help our team if they managed not to turn negative. But nobody really stepped up. Of course these are 10 and 11 year old girls, so not a complete shock. Instead, we continued to rotate our captains throughout the season and I believe it helped a number of them grow as players and leaders. I figure in the Spring we’ll continue with this.

We also tried some backdoor maneuvering. We approached two of our more skilled players and asked them to work at being ‘background leaders’ where they may not be the person up front, but worked to encourage their other teammates who were struggling and to try and nip any infighting in the bud. This did work well when the two remembered what they were supposed to be doing. I think we’ll continue to nurture this angle as well.

But overall, our team never suffered from cattiness or infighting. Our biggest problem was more a lack of intensity at practice…

A recent article over at CNN got me thinking a bit about food allergies and how they might impact a soccer association. The article is a heart wrenching tale about a parent’s discovery that they have a child who is extremely allergic to many types of food, including peanuts, wheat, and dairy. They talk about the ways they adapted at home, how their young daughter helped out, and how there were numerous times when mistakes were made that put their son’s life at risk. I can’t even begin to imagine the hardships something like this presents parents. But I was rather surprised by this section near the end when they talked about the difficulties they might face when he attended public school:

I hope that Teddy’s classmate’s parents won’t react negatively to the exclusion of pean­ut products from the classroom. I’ve heard parents freak out when told that no peanut butter could come into a classroom. “But it’s all he will eat!” one parent said, as if it weren’t possible for a child to live for a few hours without peanut butter. If an orange Crayola would kill a child, there would be no question about teaching kids how to mix yellow and red instead, but heaven forbid you ask a kid to wait for a peanut butter snack so someone in his class won’t die.

Wow. This brings to the surface a common tension among parents, especially surrounding the classroom, in terms of what level of restrictions are tolerable to ensure nobody has problems in class. It’s gotten to the point that many schools have just outright banned bringing in ANY outside food or snacks because of the wide variety of food allergies out there - it’s not just peanuts anymore. But I also think the author glosses over the fact that it’s not just her situation parents are having to deal with and it can be overwhelming and leads many to ask where we should ‘draw the line’ to ensure allergic kids are safe while not taking everything fun out of school or other activities.

» Read the rest of this post…

I was reminded by Joyce over at Youth Sports, that the US Youth Soccer Association is collecting nominations for Responsible Coach awards:

which recognize youth soccer coaches who demonstrate the characteristics of a Responsible Coach and are important youth mentors and community leaders.

I had gotten this via email a while back and forgot to post about it. More information can be found at ResponsibleSports.com

Canada is all abuzz over a recent bench clearing brawl at a hockey tournament between eight year old players which was caught on video. This is very unfortunate and is not limited to hockey by any means. Joyce Bassett from the Youth Sports Blog, had this to say after it was announced no charges would be filed due to the fight:

They had videotape of the fight between players, coaches and maybe even parents at a game involving 8-year-olds in Canada. (See hockey fight story below.) After reviewing the tape, no charges will be filed, according to the Globe and Mail. The hockey associations will conduct an inquiry. You can bet in Canada, where they take their hockey seriously, the associations will take a strong stand.

The videotape is important. I have videotaped games when my son and his teammates were just 10-years-old. Not just for the memories…but for evidence just in case something happened. Sad to say, but true…

Emphasis mine. Am I the only one that is totally freaked out by this statement?

» Read the rest of this post…

Why does Sepp Blatter think national team talent has to be ‘homegrown’? Jamie Trecker has an excellent commentary on the FIFA president’s latest comments and why restrictions on foreign players will hurt more than they help. He summarizes Blatter’s position like this:

Blatter argues that for national teams to succeed, clubs must be forced to save places on their clubs for ‘homegrown’ talent. Without this move, claims Blatter, national teams will wither and die.

How is that even close to realistic? Just because a player plays in a foreign country for a foreign club, doesn’t mean they check their nationalism at the door. While not ALL players wish to represent their country on national teams, you find a heck of a lot that do, regardless of where they play. Do we really think Beckham flew to England and back in, what, 96 hours because of anything other than a desire to play for his country? While it may present some travel challenges, playing for a foreign club seems unlikely to limit most player’s desire to represent their country.

So I see Jamie’s point - on the surface Blatter’s arguments don’t make sense, so there’s got to be another motive. And as usual, it’s probably $$$$.

Unfortunate.

I’m with Mike H at My Soccer Blog - this is going to be a REALLY nice stadium for the Red Bulls that actually looks like it was meant for soccer. Of course they’ll host concerts and other events - but it’s a soccer stadium first and foremost. But what’s with the black rectangles in front? They don’t LOOK like electronic displays. Wonder what they are.

Old Soccer Guy posted an interesting article back in July as he was just ramping up his U13 Girls team. I had hoped to write about it before now, but never got a chance with my own team getting started.

He was torn between the need to develop all your players, possibly at the e­xpense of winning, and how promotion/relegation might require that he coach to win so his team could advance to the Premier division, something that would help all of his players in the form of better competition:

here’s the thing — we are in a killer division. With the exception of two 2-0 wins and a 2-0 loss, all of our spring matches were one goal games or ties. At U13 here, teams are promoted and relegated at the end of the fall season and then again at the end of the spring season. Next fall, a Premier Division will be formed from the 10 best teams in the state. My team, which is kind of the flagship team from our small club, has a chance to be a Premier team.

To do that, we need to not­ finish in the top seven in the fall to avoid relegation, then finish in the top five in our division in the spring.

Reaching Premier at U14 was one of the stated goals of this team when I took over the team before the spring season. If I am to win, it will have to be at the expense of the best player development situation for some of the girls on my team. There are some that just can’t be in a close game if the team is expected to win.

This situation is a lot more common than you think and the answer isn’t as clear as some may think.

» Read the rest of this post…

Have you ever thought about why most soccer balls look the same in terms of the number and shape of the panels? The Teamgeist ball introduced for the 2006 World Cup had a revolutionary panel design (a­nd a revolutionary price!) and adidas continues to come up with neat panel designs including their F50 Xite ball. But a soccer ball is all about geometry. An ar­ticle in Science News looks into the geometry of both old and new soccer ball designs:

This soccer ball is modeled on a geometric shape called a truncated icosahedron, which has 60 vertices. Its polygonal faces, however, are curved rather than flat so that the ball is roughly spherical.

Since about 1970, soccer balls have been stitched or glued together from 32 patches of material-12 of them five-sided and 20 of them six-sided. These patches are arranged so that each pentagon is surrounded by hexagons.

You learn something new every day!

» Read the rest of this post…

New York magazine has an excellent article up on the impacts of kids sleeping habits and their cognitive development:

Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour’s less sleep than they need, a deficiency that, new research reveals, has the power to set their cognitive abilities back years.

According to surveys by the National Sleep Foundation, 90 percent of American parents think their child is getting enough sleep. The kids themselves say otherwise. In those same surveys, 60 percent of high schoolers report extreme daytime sleepiness. In another study, a quarter admit their grades have dropped because of it. Over 25 percent fall asleep in class at least once a week.

The raw numbers more than back them up. Half of all adolescents get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights. By the time they are seniors in high school, according to studies by the University of Kentucky, they average only slightly more than 6.5 hours of sleep a night. Only 5 percent of high-school seniors average eight hours. Sure, we remember being tired when we went to school. But not like today’s kids.

It has been documented in a handful of major studies that children, from elementary school through high school, get about an hour less sleep each night than they did 30 years ago. While parents obsess over babies’ sleep, this concern falls off the priority list after preschool. Even kindergartners get 30 minutes less a night than they used to.

How much sleep do your kids get?

» Read the rest of this post…

Over at Top Drawer Soccer, Rebecca Thatcher Murcia­ has published two articles that provide some insight into how youth soccer is played in Colombia. She and her two sons moved there to be near her late husband’s family. What she­ discovered was a very different youth soccer culture, but not as different as you might have been led to believe. Kids play pickup much more, but competitive teams exist and flourish. Tournaments and training academies exist, and they play small sided matches - except in some cases it’s 11v11 on half a field. Talk about cramped!

Be sure to read both articles - they are an enjoyable read and I look forward to her upcoming book about their experiences in Colombia.

• Youth Soccer the South American Way: One American Family’s Experience
• Youth Soccer the South American Way - Episode Two

The funniest part of her experience had to be at the end of their first tournament:

At that point I was looking around and thinking I had noted all the differences between my first Colombian youth soccer tournament and a typical U.S. youth soccer tournament. Gabriel came up to me and said, “Mom, did you notice what all the adults are drinking?” I looked around and noticed that sure enough, just about every adult around was holding the dark-colored bottle of Aquila beer, the official sponsor of the tournament. I thought of all my friends in the U.S. who would appreciate the Colombian way of winding down a youth soccer tournament.

Reminds me of a fun thread over at NC-Soccer about tailgating at youth soccer tournaments. Some soccer parents are nutty enough sober, I can’t imagine throwing some alcohol into the mix!

H/T MR @ NC-Soccer

I’ve been coaching soccer for almost six years. To some I am still a naive rookie, while to others, I’m expected to have ’seen it all’ and am an expert. It’s not surprising at all - it just depends on a person’s own experience and perspective. I’m definitely closer to the former than the latter! As outlined in an excellent article by Steve Jordan at Coaches Notebook, youth coaches go through an evolution, and Steve highlights many of the evolutionary steps:

I believe head coaches (for any level team) go through an evolutionary philosophical process if they continue to work with kids. You learn all kinds of lessons and make many important observations along the way. If you accept the fact that most coaches change with time, it gives you a different perspective when you see them behave in certain ways. When you see a coach do something that seems reprehensible, there is a temptation to assign a label, such as “he’s a hothead” or “he’s way too competitive to be coaching that age group”, and overlook the good work that has been done.

He then goes on to list a variety of stages youth coaches go through if they coach for a significant period of time. From validation up through realization and implementation, youth coaches can go through many phases as they mature and learn. What phase are you at?

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Ah the offseason - when I get to be a pure spectator/team parent. My two oldest play basketball in the winter to give them a break from soccer and keep active. I enjoy being able to just drop them off at practice!

­At a recent practice, I happened to notice a girls team practicing and all the girls were wearing these strange goggles. They were strange because they had no lenses. Just a fat bottom part just below the eye and a thin upper part. At first I thought they might be some type of facial protection, but it made no sense for all the players to have them. So I asked the coach. Turns out they are a training aid. The bottom part doesn’t sit flush against the skin. Instead, the upper edge pushes out about half an inch from the face just under the bottom of the eye. What this does is block their lower field of vision, forcing ­them to dribble without looking at the ball and keeping their heads up watching the game around them. Even if they look down, they can’t see down well at all. Yet their outward vision is unobstructed.

Wait For It… Do you see what I see?

» Read the rest of this post…

While adding a few additional soccer blogs to my RSS reader, I decided to include the ‘new’ US Youth Soccer Blog, which is part of their new website redesign. Only problem is - there is no RSS feed!!! Wow. How can you launch a new blog in 2007 and not realize that RSS is what ensures your content gets noticed by other bloggers?

Old Soccer Guy’s U18 Girls had a tough ‘end of the road’ coming so close to the State Cup final four. But harder still was the realization that it was ‘over’. The girls, many who had played together for years, were aging out of youth club soccer, facing graduation and college next year. As someone who always manages to screw up his ‘end of season party’ speeches, I enjoyed reading how OSG summed up the ‘end of the road’:

All week I thought long and hard, trying to come up with some deep philosophical wisdom to relay to them. At first I thought they would expect me to give them some meaningful speech to help ease the pain. But then I had a revelation. To them, I wasn’t a philosopher. I was the guy who inspired them by making them laugh, the guy who cares about them as people, and the guy who always found something slightly off the wall to say that grabbed their attention and made them think.

So I told them that I was heart-broken when we lost and the tears were devastating to me. But, I said with a sudden burst of energy and enthusiasm, “I have a quote for you. It’s from Dr. Seuss (no lie, look it up). The quote is …

“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.”

Awesome!! The emphasized part is spot on. I’ve found myself over the years asking my players a lot more questions than giving them answers. I want them to think.

As a coach who is just beginning a journey with a U11 competitive soccer team, I sometimes wonder how long the team will stick together, and if it does for a few years, how hard it’ll be when the ride comes to an end. I can only hope I’m as insightful when the time comes to say something they’ll remember.

You’d think one of my most popular posts would be some genius­ nugget about coaching, some funny story, a story where I might have typed ‘hot soccer moms’, stuff like that.

Nope. It’s was ‘Christmas Gifts for Soccer Fans‘. So with Black Friday just around the corner, I figured I’d come up with an updated list so you all could add your own ideas. And yes - if you buy anything from the links here, OTP gets a couple pennies to pay the bandwidth bill.

So what cool soccer gifts are out there for the soccer fan or player in your life?

• Design Your Own Soccer Ball Kit
• adidas F50 Xite Soccer Ball - this is a nice soccer ball!
• FIFA 08 (­PS3, PS2, XBox 360, Wii, PC, DS, PSP)­
• Movies/DVDs:
  • Goal!
  • Gracie
  • Dare To Dream: USWNT
  • The Miracle Match
  • Bend It Like Beckham
• LEGO Sports Soccer Stadium
• Soccer Goal w/ Training Target
• Soccer Candles
• Soccer Ball Night Light
• Soccer Ball Christmas Lights­
• Soccer Ball Table Lamp
• FIFA 2006 World Cup Trivia DVD
• Soccer Ball TV Ornament
• Soccer for Dummies - Great for family members watching your child’s first match!
• Levitating Soccer Ball
• Know someone into beads? Soccer Beads!
• Kicks the Soccer Bear Beanie Baby
• Swivel Soccer Chair and Ottoman - This is COOL
• Got money to burn? Striker Pro Soccer Simulator
• Soccer Robot Kit
• Baby’s First Soccer Ball
• Soccer Party Plates, Cups, and Banners
• Soccer Cooler
• Soccer Bratz
• Soccer Ball Display Case
• Harley-Davidson Foosball
• Soccer Ball LCD TV

­

And if you’re looking for the perfect gift for a soccer coach, get them a rolling equipment bag. I have one of these and it’s fantastic.