Cost-Curriculum & Coaching
Karl Dewazien
Emeritus State Director of Coaching, California Youth Soccer Assoc., Author & Creator of the FUNdamental SOCCER Player Development Methodology.
“As concerning were reports of long term decline in player participation, particularly in the younger ages,” stated the United Soccer Coaches in their “Commitment to Culture” initiative which began this discussion.
The Washington Post substantiated this trend in their article, Youth sports are still struggling with dropping participation, high costs and bad coaches “Baseball, basketball and football all experience participation growth in 2017 –but- Soccer continued its decline by an alarming 9.5 percent.”
An important piece of the puzzle is providing a curriculum and training environment that is better/more engaging/more fun/more effective (pick your adjective) than we have at the moment. So, we asked you our readers; to “Let Your Voices Be Heard!” realizing that you can be the change-agents who can help in this quandary. John Dykin and Tim Holt are telling their voices be heard this week …
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From where I stand courses aimed at the grass roots coach have a curriculum that is based on what was needed 20 or 30 years ago. They focused on helping coaches get to grips with technical and tactical basics of the game because we had a generation of coaches coming in with little knowledge of how to play and no experience of having been coached in soccer, and not many resources for them to get this information from.
This type of curriculum has served a purpose but should not be used as a model to carry forward into the future. People know more about the game now, and ideas of what to coach are easy to come by - YouTube is full of them.
The outliers we need to bring in to help design the curriculum are the people who understand the role that team culture, relationships, and emotional intelligence play in developing young people, all of which fall under the one topic that present curricula avoid at all cost: psychology.
A new national license should be all about the ability to lead competently. While this type of education will not impact the coach of a 6 year old recreational player so much, coaches of older players and of players competing at higher levels will eventually wonder how they ever managed without it. And in the end it will produce a stronger pool of talented, happy, confident players to keep moving the game forward. John Daykin
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Let kids be creative, keep them active, and make it fun! You can teach the basic skills of the sport within enjoyable activities and games. The game is the best teacher so put the kids in situations where they have the freedom to make decisions and find solutions.
Finally, and most importantly, encourage young players dribble and take defenders on in appropriate situations, rather than demanding they immediately pass every time they receive the ball -- we have a culture of criticizing kids that “over dribble” and labeling them as selfish players, yet we bemoan the fact that we aren’t developing any creative play-makers and attacking players ...
On that note, I believe that our most glaring player development “problems” is our collective failure to prioritize on ages 6 to 12. Perhaps this is fantasy, but how do we get our very best coaches and teachers of the game to focus regularly on working with our youngest players?
Of course, top coaches aspire to coach professional, college, and the oldest youth teams, and our system creates economic and other incentives that reinforce this. This isn’t anyone’s fault, however in the elite soccer nations the most talented coaches with a gift for teaching the game work with the younger age groups where they can have the biggest impact on our future national teams.
These coaching positions are viewed with equal or greater significance and respect to the professional level gigs. In the U.S., these roles are largely left to well-intentioned parents or developing coaches and as a result we don’t maximize this critical early window for establishing a foundation of important skills. TIM HOLT
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Koach Karl’s Notes: Thank you for taking the time to read these personal views, perusing the ‘9-Step Routine’ and sharing them with your soccer community.
You can also “Let Your Voice Be Heard” by commenting on this subject!
Your FUNdamental, Koach Karl (Karl Dewazien)
- Emeritus Director of Coaching - California Youth Soccer Assoc. 1979-2012
- Author - Internationally Published FUNdamental SOCCER Books Series
- Producer - highly acclaimed ‘FUNdamental SOCCER -Practice’ DVD.
- Clinician at: www.fundamentalsoccer.com
Building tomorrow's leaders through Sport
5 年Karl Dewazien, thanks for posting this. What a great thought provoking article. My first and immediate thought when reading the title was the Birth Year Change. The article states it clearly “The top reason kids want to play sports, the report indicates, is a desire to be with friends, not winning.” What accounts for the “sudden” drop in soccer? Could it be that half my team either graduated or is playing their high school season on top of the club season? What a huge mistake for youth soccer. Only the top programs need to be concerned with BY.?
Corporate Counsel
5 年My experience as a “soccer mom” is the exorbitant cost and how the clubs operate. If you don’t start paying $1500 for your 8-year old to be in competitive soccer then it is an uphill battle to give them a fair shake. I’m not putting that amount of money in if my kid is not dedicated to the sport. By the time they are old enough to make that decision all the spots in the top teams are taken and it is hard to break in. This happened to my son who made the Academy team in our state but for some reason wasn’t good enough for the top Club team because, in my opinion, we waited until he was the ancient age of 12 years old to put him in Club soccer. The same thing is now happening to my daughter. And I see it with other families as well. Kids on the D2 teams who should clearly be D1 and vice versa And then there is the cost associated to actually participate on the Club teams. Like the previous posters, travel tournaments can easily run you $500 for the weekend and you are expected to do at least two, if not three a season. If your child is in ODP then add at least two more travel tournaments to your tab. We are missing some exceptional talent because the motivation of the Clubs seems to be driven by money and the atmosphere is elitist.
One problem in the game today. Comes from lack of follow-up. We train or "educate" coaches, call them licensed or certified and turn them loose on the field? with kids and we never follow up to see if they are doing right by kids. They coach or allow bad habits to develop or turn the kid off, thus we either have poorly trained players or kids leaving the sport. The coach then still collects paycheck and parents still continue to pay for poor coaching. The coaches are never held to higher standard and never given proper support to help them grow
Expert Witness, Owner/Manager at faulkner edc
5 年We have many coaches and directors in my local area that have no moral compass and it shows in all they do. With scandals at the top of Soccer and these idiots following suit it is no wonder why so many families are saying that Soccer is not for their children. Big EI or IQ is not what I am seeing from club leadership, especially big club leadership.
IT Operations Manager | Software Developer
5 年Food for thought...is it still necessary to travel 7-8 hours to find good competition if you can find up to 10 teams within a 3 hour radius that will push your players to their limits?