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WIN OR LOOSE DOESN'T MATTER, IT'S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME THAT COUNTS
- A COACHES CONFESSION
This article is reprinted from Oct. 1998, "The Pitch,"
published by the North Texas State Soccer Association. It was
written by Steve Haney who holds the Education Chair for North
Texas, is a State Staff Coach and is V.P. and Coaching Director
of Lake Highlands Soccer Association. We greatly appreciate
their willingness to share this information.
"My interest has always been youth soccer and particularly
educating new youth coaches. The article was really looking back
on the last ten years of my coaching and teaching experiences of
getting more advanced licenses, yet further from the answer of
what to teach new coaches. The National Youth License was what I
was looking for. The Dutch Vision is incorporated into the NYL
material. The USSF staff investigated how the world teaches
youth players and coaches and relied heavily on the Dutch model.
I have been teaching NYL models since 1998 and can see the
results in both the coaches and players in Lake Highlands. I
feel it helps the non-playing coach because games and activities
are used and responsibility to solve problems is left to the
player. This is the way learning takes place, not by being told
every move to make by a well meaning, but misguided over
coaching parent/coach." Steve Haney, State Staff Coach &
Education Chair. North Texas State Soccer Association, VP &
Coaching Director of Highlands Soccer Assoc.
Confessions of a Reformed Coach I went to the Annual General
Meeting of the North Texas State Soccer Association in Midland
in July 1995 having heard a rumor that we might be required to
play 4 v 4. Like most coaches who don’t like 4 v 4 I had never
seen it and didn’t know anything about it. I knew we needed to
start playing positions earlier because it was taking a long
time for the kids to understand playing positions. I attended
Dave Simeone’s lecture about 4 v 4 where he described the
reasons why the Dutch developed the system and how they
implemented the system. I was interested enough, though still
skeptical, to attend Larry Nees’ field session the following
day. Larry was then assistant women’s coach at SMU. It didn’t
take long to see the ten year olds that had never been exposed
to 4 v 4 before were having fun and getting lots of touches on
the ball and working on creative passing combinations to set-up
scoring opportunities. I could see this would be a great
improvement over the herd ball 6 v 6 with no goalies we were
playing at the time.
I still remember one girl on my youngest daughter’s team in Lake
Highlands Soccer Association that didn’t touch the ball in a
game until the sixth game of the season! In 4 v 4 there is
nowhere the player can’t see the ball and be drawn into the
activity instead of following the herd. I also thought back to
all the practice time spent on trying to teach the U6 kids about
goal kicks, corner kicks, and throw-ins. What a waste of
everyone’s time. They needed to be working on balance, dribbling
and shooting. I came back from Midland a pro 4 v 4 person. I
made a presentation at our next board meeting and made a motion
to adopt the 4 v 4 playing rules for U6 in the fall. I was made
chair of the committee to put everything together in time for
the season to start. At the first committee meeting I told
everyone we decided this was the best thing to do for the kids
and it was our job as adults to find ways to make it work not
reasons why it couldn’t work. We had all read the handout from
the AGM “4 VERSUS 4 THE GAME FOR KIDS” by Dave Simeone.
We quickly ran into a space limitation for the number of fields
to implement the tournament style of multi-team play. We opted
for a team “A” versus team “B” approach with twelve players per
“team” as we could only use one field at our Moss complex. This
allowed us to have three 4 v 4 fields with three mini-games
going on simultaneously and we play three ten-minute games with
five minutes in between. I remember one coach asked, “But Steve.
How can I coach three games at once?” I told him he couldn’t
that was the beauty of it! I told him he needed to coach the
players at practice, but the game was the player’s.
He could tie shoes and cheer and work on how to make the teams
more even for the next game. I asked him if he wanted his
players to think for themselves or wait for someone to tell them
what to do in a game. I told him if that’s what he wanted he had
to let them make mistakes, learn and grow. Besides, U6 players
will look at you when you call their name and miss whatever
action you were trying to tell them about anyway. If you watch
them it takes all of their focus just to keep the ball moving in
the right direction. They are not mature enough to think about
giving the only toy on the field to someone else by passing the
ball. Think about it, if someone can just barely dribble can
they calculate how to hit the ball to intercept the path of
another unguided missile. This is all going on while they are
trying to fend off almost every other player on the field,
including their own teammates! The coaches are given the
following charge at the coaches meeting at the beginning of
every season.
The coaches job is to work together with the other coach to have
every player play all three games, to try to make the teams as
even as possible and to try to move the players around so they
don’t play with or against the same players all three games. If
there are odd numbers use players form both teams to make a
team. Play 3 v 3, 3 v 4, 4 v 4, 5 v 4, or 5 v 5 whatever it
takes to get everyone playing. The coach and parents are there
to chase balls and the game official is a facilitator not a
“Ref”. The difference, a Facilitator has a ball under each arm
to keep the game going and talks to the players not just
gesturing.
The rules are simple play starts with a kick-off from mid-field.
All restarts are indirect kicks and out balls are put back into
play from the touch line by indirect kick. There are no fouls,
but rough play can result in players getting time-out, which U6
players are use to. This is not the only way to successfully
implement 4 v 4, but it has worked well for us. I get a lot of
very positive comments from parents, players and coaches about
the program which is a great change from the death threats I
received prior to implementation. Try it or come by Moss field
#2 on Saturday and see what’s going on and talk to the players,
parents and coaches. This summer I received my National Youth
License after attending the National School in Norman Oklahoma.
The NYL is a 5-day residence course designed for coaching the
youth player U6 to U12. A full day, from 8AM To 9PM is devoted
to an in depth study of the characteristics and capabilities of
each age group U6, U8, U10, and U12 and field work with children
of the age group. I received my candidate’s workbook in the mail
prior to the course and noticed the National Coaching staff was
recommending 3 v 3 for U6 and 4 V 4 for U8.
Once again I though “Here we go again!” I still felt the players
needed to start playing on larger teams with larger fields at
U7. I mean 4 v 4 is OK for U6, but U8! No Way! I figured the
people that came up with this must be “A” licensed coaches that
were used to working with the National team not U6 players.
Wrong again! The National Staff that put the course together
included several Ph.D.’s in child development, college coaches
and U6-U12 coaches. Dr. Ron Quinn, a developer and instructor,
has a Ph.D. in child development, is the women’s soccer coach at
Xaivier College and coaches his child’s U7 team. On the first
day we were asked to keep a journal, daily reflections on what
we heard and did and how it fit into what we knew. After the
morning lecture on U8 players and how they were just getting to
the point of cooperative play I was at lunch thinking about my
journal entry I would write afterwards. I looked up and saw a
young boy with a T-shirt on that had a baseball and under it
“This is your Brain”. Next to the baseball was a soccer ball and
under it, “This is your Brain on Drugs.” At first I got mad, but
because of thinking about my journal entry I had an epiphany.
U6 players play “T-Ball” then move to coach pitch, then machine
pitch, then to kid pitch with modified rules and at U14 start
playing the “ADULT” version of baseball. In soccer, which is
very much an adult game, we expect U7 players to start playing a
sized down adult game and U11 to play the full version adult
game. Using my newly acquired knowledge of U8 players, I thought
about the transition from 4 v 4 to 7 v 7. Suddenly, they go from
8 players on a small field to 14 on what to them seems like a
huge field. This happens just when they are reaching the point
where they will play cooperatively with one playmate and we
expect them to cooperate with 6 other players. Plus, they have
to learn and remember about kick-offs, corner kicks, goal kicks
and throw-ins.
Players at this age have limited attention spans at best yet we
expect them to remember all of this while fighting to keep the
ball moving in the right direction. No wonder so many get
stressed out they don’t have the spatial awareness and cognitive
capacity that the 7 v 7 game demands. At the time I was coaching
the previous teams I’ve coached through this age group I thought
“We need to get them started earlier. They just don’t get it!”
Now with a little knowledge of the developmental characteristics
and qualities of U6 and U8 players I know I just didn’t get it!
I thought back to last year when I was coaching a U6 team and I
only saw one real pass and that was from a child that was very
advanced for his age and it came at the end of the spring
season. I still get and seek out comments from parents, coaches
and players about the 4 v 4 format most parents and players like
the format. This summer I started asking people about extending
the format to U8. The coaches most opposed to the idea were
coaches that have not coached a team through this transition.
The coaches in favor of the idea had usually coached multiple
teams through these age groups.
I had one coach at a recent “G” clinic I was teaching tell me
her whole team wanted to quit or go back to 4 v 4. I was calling
the players from last season to see who was returning and I
asked people I knew had children that had been through the
transition from 4 v 4 to 7 v 7 how their child dealt with the
change. The first person I called said her daughter played U7
last year. I asked how she liked it. She said “She hated it.” I
was ready for anything but that response. I asked her why she
hated it. She told me the girl had loved 4 v 4 and so had the
other girls. The coach was a nice guy and they all laughed and
had fun. When they moved to the bigger field the girls got to
tired and the coach was yelling all the time. She told me the
coach told her daughter she was not producing like he knew she
could. This was the best player on the team! The result, the
girl quit playing soccer all together. She quit because of the
coach, or did she? If they were still playing 4 v 4 with
multiple games and most kids not able to keep tract of winning
versus losing would the coach feel the pressure to win? Would he
be telling a seven-year-old she wasn’t PRODUCING? Even though
there are no scores reported and no standings the coach felt
pressure to win.
I consider we have three years of no pressure about winning to
work on soccer fundamentals. That’s why we don’t keep scores or
standings until U9! Maybe we as coaches and parents need to
redefine winning. Winning to me is to have everyone still
playing at U12 that started at U6. Winning is giving the
children a passion for the game they can enjoy for life. Winning
is challenging every player to achieve realistic goals based on
the child’s individual abilities. Winning is giving them
positive role models. Think of the difference the child sees in
the 4 v 4 coaches working together for the kids to have fun
versus two coaches screaming at the players, the Ref and each
other from across the field at a 7 v 7 game. Soccer can be
enjoyed at all ages. Let’s not drive the next Mia Hamm or
Claudio Reyna from soccer at U7 because of our misguided concept
of winning. Let’s challenge them and most of all let them have
fun and remember it’s their game!
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