Coaching Youth Soccer

Okay, so you volunteered to coach your child's soccer team. Are you ready? Have you thought about how will you teach the fundamental skills, run effective practices, and keep your youngsters attention?

As participation in youth soccer continues to grow, so does the need for youth soccer coaches. Whether you're a parent new to coaching or an experienced youth soccer coach, the task can be both exciting and frightening.

One of the things that helped me was boning up on the current terminology and coaching techniques. Without question, everything I've read-and it's been a lot--strongly suggests you must keep the kids moving and constantly touching the ball!

A particular book, Coaching Youth Soccer, has become my handbook for planning practices and workouts. I found the book easy to follow. The book was written by American Sports Education Program and Sam Snow--director of coaching for US Youth Soccer.

Coaching Youth Soccer was perfect for me because it focuses on the needs of volunteer and novice coaches. More specifically, it targets the needs for instructing young soccer players ages 8 to 14. In the book, I found helpful tips on how to run my team, communicate with players, provide basic first aid, plan and conduct practices, and keep it all fun. I incorporated the gamelike activities outlined in the book to teach my players offensive and defensive skills.

Hopefully, you'll find this book or others like it, helpful in preparing for your little monsters--I mean tikes!!!