If you are thinking of youth soccer coaching, you are in for a ‘ball’ of a time. These youngsters have all the enthusiasm that you enjoy watching and they have the energy to keep going. But as a coach, you have to maintain strict discipline and a keen interest in the game.
If you don’t reinvent yourself and your training sessions, your players will get bored and start dropping out of the team. You don’t want that to happen, do you? Then before you start on a coaching career, have a look at many tips and tricks that have been used by other coaches to keep their drills far from monotonous.
Doing The Right Thing!
The first thing you should do is put yourself in the shoes of the young players. What do you think would keep them interested and motivated? Think of various ways to make them practice their drills so that they improve their skills and have fun doing so.
It is not possible for you to do all that by yourself so there are various resources you can use to get ideas. You can check with other coaches, search the internet and invest in a few soccer handbooks. These will definitely help you when you start your career by teaching youth football players.
Nobody said coaching youth soccer would be easy. Don’t expect it to be. You have to keep thinking of new ways to make them practice dribbling, passing and shooting. These basic skills can be taught in various methods which you will have to find out and implement.
Shooting the ball can be practiced by the players kicking the ball into the goal. You can add variations to the same process by perhaps getting another player to lightly defend the goal.
You could have players kicking a stationary ball into the goal or have them dribble the ball a bit before shooting. This one exercise can be performed with many variations. That is what you have to keep doing as a young soccer coach. Make practice fun and interesting.
Never hesitate to change or stop an activity if it does not seem to be working. You can always try it another day or scrap it altogether. Young soccer players can get motivated easily bit they can get bored as easily. Another important thing to keep in mind in youth soccer coaching is to have a game plan for every training session. You must never appear for training unprepared. If you follow a plan, you will show that you are in command.