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Continuing with our team communication plan: After your 3rd or 4th game your players will have hopefully made good progress towards your initial tactical/technical goals for the season. Now might be the time to highlight the progress the team has made and what new goals you’ll be working on for the next set of practices. The specific skills you are teaching will differ, but your update should involve walking parents through some aspect of soccer development and describing its relative importance.

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Greetings Firefly Nation!

We’ve had a few amazing games to date. Your coaches can’t believe how quickly these girls have picked up some pretty complicated techniques for their age. As you know we’ve been laser focused on getting them to hold a basic shape, keeping them spaced out, and taking a deliberate action with the ball.

Now that we feel like they’ve all gotten a good handle on this, we’re going to be taking the next month and focusing on PASSING. Now, if you think that “passing” is something they should be able to master in ONE practice (like I used to), just consider everything that goes into a successful pass:

  • The player has to retrieve the ball and generally get away from an opponent who is chasing them
  • The other players must know to move to a new spot on the field and get open
  • The player with the ball has to be comfortable to dribble the ball while looking up AT THE SAME TIME to find the passing opportunity
  • Their teammate has to call for the ball
  • The player has to play a well directed and weighted pass under pressure
  • All of this is done while both sidelines are cheering loudly

For a (6) year old this is a very tall order. In order to help them develop this skill, you will notice coaches making a big deal around successful passes and runs to get open. You may notice that we deemphasize goal scoring during this time. We ask that you consider doing the same. Players will focus best on what’s rewarded. And as I illustrated above, passing is oftentimes a tougher endeavor than scoring at this age. Based on what we’ve seen we know they’re ready for it!

Looking forward to another great month of soccer!
Coach Darrin and Mike