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Hi Caleb:
Thanks for sharing your practice plans and schedule. You mention “assign weekly Coerver homework that they do nightly“.
I assign homework as well, but only the keeners do it (about a third). How do you ensure they are doing the homework? Any consequences?
Hey Eric,
I check their progress each practice as part of our warm-up. The daily homework is a series of 10 (at this point- I think we started at 6) ball movements from the free Coerver App. I am a 5th grade teacher so it’s in me to type up a paper for them with the assignment to follow along with some inspiring quotes. It takes approximately 6-8 minutes to get through the assignment.
I can pretty much tell during warm-up who puts in the extra effort at home and who doesn’t. I talk in general terms to the girls saying things like “WOW! I can really tell who is practicing at home. Great job girls!” and then I’ll specifically point out the obvious girls who are super motivated- “Awesome Alyssa, you are rockin’ the slides”. I then will throw-in the “Some of you need a little extra work.” I will single out the ones in private who need work and also talk with their parents about the homework to get that support at home.
Overall- it’s all about just getting my girls to play with a soccer ball more than the 4 and a half hours of practice each week.
-Caleb
Caleb,
We just went through this process of preparing for a tournament this last weekend and I did end up changing the practice routine in order to lighten the mood a little and to work on some of the finer details, such as set pieces. The first hour of practice didn’t change much in that we still did our rondos, but the second half of practice was used for finishing and set pieces. I have a GU14 team and I’m not sure they had ever really walked through the details of how to setup a corner or defend a free kick so I think it was worth the time spent, especially for the goalkeeper.
As far as your comments on applying what you’ve been practicing in games and seeing improvement, I can give our experience now that we’ve gone through the tournament. We didn’t make the finals, but I saw dramatic improvement over the 3 games in implementing what we’ve been working on with the possession focus over the last month or so since I’ve become their head coach. I have to say the 3 games in a row really helped bridge the gap between rondos/SSG and how it actually is applied in the game. The first game we talked about what we wanted to do, but the girls just really didn’t understand how to do it in the game. The 2nd game saw us make some concerted efforts to implement playing simple and keeping possession, but only about half the team was on board. Finally, in the third game the light bulb seemed to go off for most of the team and they saw (and felt) what it was like to control the game by having the ball. We’ve got a long way to go (we didn’t even discuss pressing concepts the whole tournament), but it was encouraging to see improvement.
-Justin
Update- We went 3-1 and took the consolation championship. Not bad for our first tournament as a team with 3 and a half months of practice together.
The Bad:
Lost our first game 4-0. The team we lost to ended up going undefeated for the weekend and taking home the real championship. Their speed was a little bit too much for us- and I mean just a hair quicker and in completely shut down our build attempts. We were too open down the middle in our defensive third- my holding mid was covering too much ground and leaving lots of passing lanes open to split my back line. My back 5 and attacking 5 were not moving up and back together, so there was massive ground in between that lead to the other team sprinting at my back 5 with a head of steam. We got called offsides 7-8 or times as well. I think we had 3 shots on goal total.
I felt defeated. I had a very clear feeling of “Oh shit, I’m a fraud. This sucks”. I kept a straight face to my girls, telling them we would get the next one. Deep down inside though, I was feeling like a total loser. We had about 2 hours until the next game and I sat alone at the tournament snack shack browsing the internet on my phone when I remembered a blog post I had read sometime in the past.
The Good:
It was this blog post by a member here named John Pranjic:
http://theriotpig.com/2012/07/15/themomen/
I completely connected with it all. It gave me the advice that I needed at that moment. I got my bearings. I switched some pieces around in the lineup and I met with my girls. I told them about the minor adjustments we were going to make- drop one of the attacking mids down into a holding mid position to keep more compact in the middle, have my wings play closer to the center forward so they weren’t out on an island, finally one of my holding mids would be doing the goal kicks. The girls were all on board with the changes and I challenged them to show me what they left in them for the day.
We completely dominated the second team of the day. The team’s indentity was really starting to show- baby steps, but it was beautiful. My girls were looking up to string passes together, my outside backs were running combos down the line and sending crosses in. We had about 10 legit goal scoring opportunities (only connected on 2), my defense was much more compact and held a shut out to the very last seconds of the game. We ended up winning 2-1. Compliments from everyone watching the game- including the opposing team’s parents who were impressed that we literally started practicing together just 3 months ago while their team has been together for a couple years. My girls were excited- I could see confidence starting to build.
The second day we opened up with beautiful combo plays and pressing- it was 3-0 in the first 5 minutes. My girls let off (to my annoyance) but ended up putting one more goal in the net in the 2nd half. I wasn’t too vocal about my displeasure though, the team wasn’t much of a threat- we seemed to drain any confidence of theirs pretty quickly and I knew we would be in a street fight for the 4th game of the very hot weekend. Final score: 4-0.
The consolation game was everything I thought it would be. A complete street fight between two tired teams in 100 degree weather. Again we opened up quickly, it was 1-0 in the first minute. My outside left back and left winger connected on an overlapping run, by left back sent a hard cross on the ground back to the winger in the box- GOAL!. The girls’ energy drained pretty quickly over the next 59 minutes- but so did theirs. We definitely passed much better, they were playing the long ball and chase, we would set it down and play soccer. It wasn’t too pretty though. When the final whistle mercifully finished the game for both teams my girls had literally left it all on the field- it was hard for them to even smile in the first few minutes after the game. I was so proud of them.
We are attempting to establish a culture of winning here and I think we have laid down a solid beginning. Thank you 3Four3 for all the help- even if it is indirect. I will keep updating my progress throughout the season. We are taking a step up with our next tournament 5 weeks out. We need to start perfecting our little details- my building between the back 4 needs to amp their speed of play way up, spacing needs to be worked out- just working towards perfection!
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