The joys of coaching

Yes, that’s right, I am coaching soccer again. This time it’s my son’s 4-5 year division in the YMCA league. We’ve had a couple practices and the second couldn’t have been more different than the first. There are a total of 10 kids on our team, 8 boys and 2 girls.
   There were only 6 there for the first practice and we tried to do a bunch of drills before getting to a scrimage. it was a complete disaster! The kids were all over the field, they really hated the drills and once we started playing the scrimage, no one (even the coaches) could remember who was on who’s team. Not a good way to start things off.
   The second practice was a lot better. We focused on more of the fundamentals – lining up and kicking the ball in the goal from a dribble, basic passing. They seemed to enjoy it more. We also spent a lot more time playing a game. We stopped them when they went out of bounds, had a hand ball or started pushing too much. But mostly we just let them play and tried to coach them as much as possible. The two great things were they actually stopped playing when we blew the wistle and they seemed to get the idea of filling the lanes as they went to the goal. It was good to see so much progress from the last game to this one…can’t wait to see how they do in their first game on Saturday. We don’t keep score, but I’ll know at the end of the day if they had fun or not.