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Beginner’s Guide to Coaching

Youth Soccer Gives Useful Tips
on Staying Positive At Practice
Today, Coach-Smart.com published a handy Beginner’s Guide to Coaching
Youth Soccer. The guide aims to serve as a concise and informative
instruction manual to help a new coach have a positive first-time
experience. The guide gives useful tips on organizing practices, running
practices, coaching on game days, and even communicating with players’
parents.
The following is an excerpt from the guide. It addresses the different ways
that a coach can give positive instruction and encouragement during a
practice:

“Coaching requires the flexibility to adapt on the spot. A practice plan

serves as a suggested blueprint for each practice. But practices rarely go
according to plan.
While the majority of coaching occurs before practice, coaches also serve a
live and vital role during practice. Here are some other tips and concepts to
consider when setting up and coaching practices.

Use Your Voice

As a coach, you need to communicate ideas clearly and in a positive way.
You need to say the right points in the right way at the right times.

Simplify Instructions
It’s easy to over-coach. Doing so can make practice boring and confuse
players. Try to keep instructions for activities as simple and quick as
possible. Also, try to communicate one point at a time.

Tone and Volume

How you say something is as important as what you say. Pay attention to
the tone and volume of your voice. Modulating the intensity of your voice
can produce results. Say, for example, that a person’s voice has five levels of
volume. A normal conversation occurs at level one. Coaching should take
place at level two or three. The coach communicates a strong, confident
stream of information. When things break down, when players aren’t
paying attention, the coach can jump to level four for a few quick remarks.
Watch players react. You are in control. You want to vary your voice to
emphasize certain points. But you want to avoid screaming whenever
possible.

Freezing play
As players perform a drill or game, you can yell “freeze” or “stop” to explain
a concept or make a point. With younger players, coaches should limit play
stoppages. Make a quick point and get back to the game.

Constant Encouragement
Learning takes time. Be realistic. Don’t expect players to improve overnight.
Especially with younger players, compliment success whenever possible.
This encourages improvement by keeping players involved and excited
about their effort. Try to compliment everybody, even if you need to invent
compliments. Keep your vocabulary simple but varied. You might need to
prepare a few more ways to say, “good.”

Positive Criticism
When a player makes a mistake, try not to say ‘don’t do that.’ Instead, try to
make a positive ‘if-then’ statement. ‘Dwayne, if you want to kick the ball
farther, try doing this…’
In-Game Coaching At Tournaments

Why Coaches Should Leave Games to the Players

By Cyrus Philbrick

Over-coaching, or over-instruction, has become one of the worst

plagues in American Youth soccer. It flares up most during
tournaments, when the intense atmosphere and emphasis on winning
causes coaches to try to control their players’ every movement.

“I see a lot of over-coaching on the sidelines, a lot of instructions from

coaches play to play,” said Adrian Cox, the current coach of the U12
Lower Merion Lighting. “I like to do most of my coaching after the
game and during half time. If you’re coaching every roll of the ball
then the kids will be worrying too much about what the coaches think
and what they’re supposed to be doing.”

During halftime and after games, coaches have the players’ collective

attention. Players can reflect on their performance and on what they
can improve.

Even during these breaks, however, coaches shouldn’t overload the

players with instruction and criticism.

“At halftime I want to limit the amount of information I give my

players,” said Ellis Pierre, the Director of Coaching for the Bethesda
Soccer Club in Maryland. “Instead of talking about all the things
they’re doing incorrectly, I talk about a few things – and I try to limit it
to three – that we need to do. It might be something that we need to
continue to do, or something that we need to do to come back and
win.”

Dave Green, also of Bethesda Soccer Club, suggests addressing

halftime criticisms to the entire team, instead of individuals, whenever
possible.

“If there’s two or three players that need to be criticized,” said Green,
“then I’ll mention the criticism to the entire group, hoping that the
players that it applies to will think, ‘I’m pretty sure he’s talking about
me.’”
Although coaches should try to save the majority of instructions until
after games, sometimes players need instruction and criticism during
the heat of competition, and not just if they’re going the wrong way.

Darren Marshall, the Director of Coaching for Eastern Massachusetts

FC, says that the amount of instruction that a coach gives often
depends on the circumstance of the game. Important, or extremely
competitive, tournament games can require more instruction as less
margin for error exists.

If the errors on the field require shouting or instruction, coaches of top

clubs recommend waiting for “coachable moments,” or moments when
instruction can benefit the player and the team.

As Pierre suggests, “a ‘coachable moment’ in a practice and a game is

different. In a game you don’t have the luxury of stopping and
restarting so that the instruction gets engrained in a kid’s head. In a
game, a ‘coachable moment’ is when you see a player do something
incorrectly that you have worked on a lot in the past.”

Green also says that coaches should focus their instruction on topics
that they covered recently in practice, on concepts that should lie fresh
in players’ minds.

“Especially with younger players, it’s important to concentrate on the

things we just went over in practice, or in the last few weeks, instead
of criticizing them for something that I might not have gone over or
something that we’d gone over months ago,” Green said.

Coaches should also stay aware that boys and girls might interpret
instruction or criticism differently.

Travis Kikugawa, who currently coaches in the Real So. Cal youth
system and has coached both genders in many different sports, says
that the difference between coaching boys and girls hinges on the
ways the two genders react to criticism:

“With boys, you can be a little more direct, with both what you say
and when you say it. With girls, you tend to have to think before you
speak, because girls are a bit more sensitive when it comes to getting
called out or criticized by their coaches or peers. Girls tend to
internalize it and take it personally, while the boys tend to want to
prove you wrong … One of my good friends, and an exceptional coach,
might have said it best. He said, ‘Girls need to feel good to play good,
and boys need to play good to feel good.’”

“Girls take criticism personally,” Green said. “In talking to them, it

helps to phrase your criticism in a way that shows that you care about
them and think they’re a good player.”

Above all else, however, coaches should remember that practices

serve as the best place for instruction.Games are for playing, practices
are for coaching.

“During games I want kids to make decisions, even if they make

incorrect decisions,” Ellis Pierre said. “I can correct them after the
game or at the next practice.”