My U9s came out in force, ready to play. The session was admittedly all over the place. However, at the beginning of the season I needed a way to scale the players' abilities and skill level. These are all new players to me this season and a majority of them have never played organized soccer before.
Warmup: Passing (15 min) Basic Technique. Inside of foot. Squared hips, push through the ball. I failed to get to where to make contact with the ball. A lot of good touches were being made on the ball but several bad as well. That can be fixed. This also gave me a chance to get started with my Goalkeepers. I fortunately have 2. Unfortunately they are both new, but both very athletically minded. I think they will both be great! I worked on their basic scooping and rolling techniques.
Small Sided Activity: Group Passing (15 min). 8 players, 5 balls. Players without a ball checked to a player with a ball calling for a pass. The pressure was to get more than 100 passes within the time limit, unreasonable but it got them communicating and moving more. Watch for the ones who pass back and forth and the ones who stand in one place. The goalies worked on their scoop and rolling distribution.
Expanded: (15 min)Passing - Defending, Two lines, one near the corner area, one outside of the 18, on the opposite corner of the penalty box, balls at the corner area line. The "defending" player passed it out to the "attacking" player at the top of the 18. The two then tried to see who could score. The attacker on the big goal with a goalie, the defender on 2 smaller goals at the top of the 18. This gave me some good coaching points on defense and passing, but most importantly to continue working with my goalies. The activity remained 1v1. Normally this jumps into direction and a bit too much pressure early in the practice, but I'm still working on the flow of a practice for this age group. Now 2v2, and the goalie could play it to a defender who could continue attempting to score. This is more of an adjustment to the small sided activity. I can now provide coaching points on when the pass defensively and how to cover and support your defending angles.
Scrimmage: Full scrimmage (15 min), 2 goals, 2 goalies, 1 neutral player to offset the odd number of players out today. Overall I'm happy with the results. I have some strikers, some defenders and some that will struggle with a position on the field. I will need to work on that. Lots of notes to be taken at next week's game. This also gave me the opportunity to learn that this age level is rather competitive. There was a lot of "We smoked the blue team, didn't we coach!?" I'm used to saying to my younger kids "Did you have fun?!" which tells me whether or not I won really. Now at this age, however, points count and not everyone gets a trophy. I had to surrender "Yup, you guys really smoked them." Will have to work on a way to filter the competitiveness within the practices to avoid inner team rivalries.
Moving on to the U6 team, we only had 3 of the 5 show up today due to the end of basketball season. Oddly enough, i think this was one of the more successful sessions I've ran with them despite the lack of numbers. I think this is attributed to just knowing the kids and being able to work better with them.
Warmup: Capture the flag (10 min) 1v1, around a stationary ball. The players tucked flags into their shorts. The objective was to capture the flag from their opponent without leaving the ball. I brought the ball into play because I wanted to simulate being in the "hive" that usually forms around the ball. The strategy was to translate this to taking the ball instead of the flag. This game tries to force the kids to understand the value of an athletic stance while defending and readying to tackle the ball.
Small Sided: Capture the flag v2 (10 min) 2v2, 2 goals, 2 balls, didn't matter which one you scored in. Flags were worth 5 points, goal worth 1 point. So you wanted to protect your flag and be aware of other players, but also be aware of the ball.
Expanded: Capture the Flag v 2.1 (10 min) 2v2, 2 goals, 1 ball, directional. The magic began to show here. I noticed that the off ball player was now sticking with the other man instead of trying to hive around the ball. BINGO! A few more sessions like this and I think we may begin seeing some shape at a U6 level!
Scrimmage: Full scrimmage, 2v2 (I was the fourth player). I can't say enough good things about this scrimmage session. Aside from 5 years olds being 5 year olds, I saw runs to space. Passing. Pressure on the ball on defense and having fun to boot!
I think I'd be fair saying that not a single player failed to have fun today. Mission accomplished. Plus I think they may have learned a thing or two!
