Retrieve a soccer ball…using only two knees and one elbow. Carry the ball across the field…under your chin. This is a coaching course?!
It sure is--and one of youth-soccer’s toughest, as DC Stoddert travel coach Craig Jones and I along with 27 other coaches from Virginia and the District of Columbia discovered this past summer when Virginia Youth Soccer hosted the National Youth License (NYL) course in Dumfries. For two sweltering weekends at the end of June and beginning of July, our middle-aged group spent nearly fifty hours—and over $600 of our own limited cash—basically to relearn what it’s like to be a kid.
US Youth Soccer’s Director of Coaching Education, Sam Snow, flew in to aid in the immaturity process. On the field, VYSA’s Coaching Education Program Director Gary Allen put pairs of 40-something coaches through paces designed to instill a sense of how children think about soccer at various ages. We had to fetch a soccer ball using only two knees and an elbow. We learned to remove our sunglasses before talking to youngsters who need eye contact to feel comfortable. VYSA Assistant Technical Director Matt Badiee taught us a really cool game of tag. Rick Flores, La Jolla (Calif.) Youth Soccer League’s coaching director, led a mean street-soccer session geared
toward 12-year-olds. After a field session pretending to be a six-, eight-, 10- or 12-year-old, the coaches reassembled in the air-conditioning to think critically as adults about the development of youth players.
If the NYL doesn’t seem like a typical coaching course, that’s because it was designed in 1995 to be different. Back then, traditional coaching methods clearly weren’t working to develop top-notch soccer players in the United States. Frustrated by the low player quality, Timo Likowski, US Soccer’s Director of Coaching, pressed to improve training for recreational coaches of younger players. Developing youth players at ages U6 to U12, he argued, would lay the foundation for developing soccer as a whole. To build the United States into a world-class soccer nation, Likowski reasoned, US Soccer needed to attract and retain the best athletes in the country. And that meant training stronger youth players.
The goal of the NYL is to do just that, by teaching age-appropriate methods of coaching. The course is divided into four modules: U6, U8, U10 and U12. Each age group is analyzed from a physical, emotional and intellectual standpoint. What is the appropriate level of performance--skill-wise, behaviorally, and mentally—that we can expect from a particular age group? How can the coach keep the players engaged to achieve that peak performance? To address those two core issues, the NYL teaches coaches to keep activities challenging but achievable for the age group. It also encourages creative problem-solving in the players. (Photo: Sam Snow)
Above all, coaches have to learn to keep it fun. If practices and playing aren’t fun, young athletes soon will find another activity. Indeed, studies show that three-quarters of kids drop a sport by age 12 because it isn’t fun. Fun is a serious business. That is why US Soccer and US Youth Soccer call the NYL the “most important soccer coaching course provided in this country.”
For the coaches, the NYL was hardly all fun and games. In fact, there were elements of sheer terror. Each of us had to lead a coaching session with actual children—who are well-known for undermining the best laid plans of adults. Meanwhile, one of the three nationally known coaches stood on the sidelines scribbling a critique. More terrifying still, all the sessions were filmed so that entire, humiliating episodes could be relived in the classroom in front of all the other coaches.
We drew lots for which age group would be in our “practical” exam. I drew U6. I now know what it feels like to be a comedian with bad material and a surly audience. Never before have I so welcomed a water break.
Tom Gross
