A running joke among soccer league officers and volunteers is ‘Offseason? What offseason?’ Here in NC, we’ve already held tryouts (two weeks surrounding Memorial Day), formed teams, and are currently registering players and submitting Intent To Play forms for the Fall.
But beyond that, summer is a chance to improve things and try to make things better for the Fall. For me personally, I’m headed to get my USSF ‘C’ License this August and I hope to finally lay out more of my training sessions on paper as part of an overall plan.
From a league perspective, there are a number of things we’re looking to accomplish this summer:
- Field Renovation – We’re doing some major work on our fields which got absolutely destroyed last year. Beyond wear from heavy use, we experienced some sizable ‘die off’ of our dormant turf, even in lightly trafficked areas. They are in horrible shape and we’re spending close to $15,000 to top dress, aerate, and ‘sprig’ them.
- Better engagement of Rec coaches – A common issue we see is that kids are not being taught some basic things. Everyone may run a passing activity in practice, but many of the kids don’t know how to pass. Or shoot. The mechanics are all wrong. Our goal is to further engage the coaches of younger age teams and try to really help them understand the important things to focus on for a given age.
- Launch a skills training program for U7 and U8 age players. Once a week for an hour on Sunday afternoon, any players interested can come out to a skills session run by our experienced coaches. The goal is two fold. First, we want to help them be better players. Second, we want them to get comfortable with soccer outside their cocoon. So many Rec players get very comfortable with one coach when they are young, they’re scared to death to play for someone else, either in Rec or Travel.
- Improve our payment collection system – yes I know everyone says youth soccer is all about the money and I’m just reinforcing that. But remember, our league has no paid staff, no paid team coaches. We pay skill trainers for our travel teams (10 sessions a season). So the bulk of the collected money is put right back into the program. With 1300 kids playing every year now, collecting payments is a major endeavor. So is tracking all those payments. So we’re working on a new system that’ll help both parents and managers know who still owes what.
- Finally starting to draft a real ‘Coaching Manual’ for the league that spells out our vision and includes insights from national as well as local resources.
What do you all have planned for the summer?
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June 13th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Interesting off season! I’m always interested to hear other clubs structure and organization.
Our club is fortunate to have some paid trainers – for rec teams, they get about half of their practice facilitated by paid trainers to do skill work. About 3-4 rec teams join with one trainer and the team coaches help herd and keep kids involved. So for a U7 team that gets an hour a week of practice – they get about 30-40 minutes with the trainer on skills.
It’s tough with rec coaches – still a lot of people who have never played soccer, but have an interest in a good experience for their kids. But it still ends up with a lot of misguided attempts at prioritizing wins over development.
As for fields – hoping our county does some work on the new park this summer to get some of the weeds and fescue out of what could be really nice fields.
June 13th, 2011 at 9:01 am
That’s an interesting concept with the Rec teams. We’ve bounced around a lot of ideas, but none have ‘stuck’. Coaching clinics, mentoring, helping out with a session for a coach, etc. Certainly is more efficient to have 3-4 teams together at once. What ages do you do this for? All? Younger?
June 13th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
All Rec get the trainer once a week. U5 this spring was done by mostly younger trainers – high school age – but U7 and up get the pro trainer.
Our practice structure:
U5-U8 1 1 hour practice a week, with about half dedicated to the trainer
U10+ get 2 1 hour practices a week, with I *think* one 30 minute trainer session.
Trainers are also present during the other half of practice as a resource to the coaches.
With the importance of focusing on technical skills (Especially the dribble) at U5-U8 under the state curriculum and now the new US Soccer curriculum – it’s really important to make sure the practices are firmly focused on these skills.
June 30th, 2011 at 12:07 am
We don’t have a “recreational” notation on any of our age groups below U12, everything is run like an academy. So every gets two trainings a week by our trainers and 20 minute games at the end. The city still has a recreational program, but they pay our trainers to run a practice once a week with the age groups and then they play games on the other night. We give all of our academy parents a list of jamborees they can play in if they want, and we have sign up list if the parents want to travel and play.
When our players hit U12 this is when we put them on a team that trains twice a week, plays league, and travels for tournaments.
I think it’s a system that works fairly well. I have to admit I was a little skeptical when I first saw it (I’ve only been around this association for two years), but now I tend to like it.