Infinity '99 Girls...Vegas baby, VEGAS!

While we were driving home from our first out of state tournament to Las Vegas we asked our daughter Maddie what the best part of the trip was for her. We expected answers like seeing grandma and grandpa, visiting the M&M store, swimming, the team party, or any of the fun glittery things you can do in Vegas. But she immediately answered, “Playing soccer!”

It has been quite an adventure for our young team. We started out trying to go to a tournament at the beginning of December. That tournament was cancelled so we decided to go to one over Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. Along the way we had many lifelong memories. We cleaned the Spectrum twice, cleaned a neighbor’s yard, sold concessions at a men’s indoor tournament, and hosted a U10/11 boys-girls tournament.

The tournament we hosted was a fast, furious, and fun event! Some of the girls played 9 games in one day. They were able to play together and then play with other teams. It was great fun to watch them play so hard against some very tough boys’ teams and then join them to play with them at other times. It was a fun soccer community building activity.

We also scrimmaged many different teams throughout Cache Valley to prepare. Thanks to Crossfire, Bobcats, Infinity U10 boy’s premier, and Hot Shots for willingly come help us prepare by giving us very challenging scrimmages. We got to see different styles of play and coaching which helped us to prepare.


When we left for Vegas we didn’t know what to expect. We were both excited and nervous. But all that preparation paid off. Our first game on Friday night we won 11-0. We went to a Round Table Pizza after the game to celebrate. Take a look on the back wall and you’ll now see an Infinity practice jersey with all the girls’ signatures pinned to the wall! Then on Saturday we had two games that we won 6-1 and the 3-0. After that game we had a well deserved pool party. It was very hard for the girls to wait that long to finally go swimming. Sunday was a free day where many girls went to the M&M store, Red Rock State Park, or just played at the arcade! Then on Monday we had a morning game that we won 11-0. WE WERE IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!! We played extremely hard and never gave up! We ended up taking second place. Yes, we lost the game in PK’s but the smiles on the girls’ faces in the end reminded us if you all had fun then you all WON!!!

All of the games were great fun. We had four guest players play with us. All of the girls played terrific and got along great. The sportsmanship that Coach Doney instilled in us earned a complement from the tournament staff. Each girl who traveled on our Infinity SC girls 99 is a better player for having gone to the tournament. We can’t wait for the next one!!!

Coping with Mistakes: Teaching Tolerance

by Tony DiCicco, Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:00 PM ET

Tolerance is important not only between and among teammates but also for individual players personally. Ideally, this tolerance starts at the top with the coach.

Players make mistakes, some of them physical and some mental. It's the job of a coach to point out those mistakes, to help each player recognize the error and then, more important, provide the tools to correct it. It's also the job of the coach to make it clear that if a player makes a mistake, it's not the end of the world.

It's equally vital to coach players when they've been successful. In fact, the most enlightened coaches spend more time congratulating successes than correcting mistakes.

Over the years I've had players who, when they made a mistake, were clearly much harder on themselves than they would have been on a teammate who'd made the same mistake. These players take themselves down emotionally and tear themselves up mentally. Frankly, I was like that too. But what you have to understand is that if you're a member of a team, you have the responsibility to keep your own performance up.

If you tear yourself down or beat yourself up, you're not only hurting your own performance but also the collective performance of the team.

It is crucial to teach your players to have tolerance for their own performance and a realistic understanding that no one's perfect. Obviously, this isn't easy for most of us. To facilitate the process you can encourage your players to begin to build key words or phrases that will get them back on focus.

SHIFTING FOCUS FROM PAST. As a goalkeeper I used to say to myself when I'd make a mistake in a game, "OK, that was a bad play, but you're going to need to come up with a big play to win this game." So immediately, instead of focusing on the bad play I'd just made, I started focusing on that big play in order to reshape my mental approach. I didn't know when I was going to make it, but I knew that when I got the opportunity, it was going to be a big play that would turn the game around. In essence, my focus shifted from the past to the present because I needed to be ready now, in the moment.

Besides teaching self-tolerance, a coach must insist that his or her players are tolerant of their teammates. You cannot have a successful team if you have players who, when somebody makes a mistake, point fingers at their teammate or exhibit body language that says, "What the hell is this person doing?"

This kind of behavior definitely does not help performance. Instead, you need leaders and teammates who will actively support each other and boost the team's competitive edge through their understanding of competitive dynamics.

The best example I've seen of this occurred during the quarterfinals of the 1999 World Cup. We were playing Germany, one of the best teams in the world, and in the first five minutes of the game, Brandi Chastain kicked the ball into our own goal (essentially scoring a goal for Germany). She was in shock. At that point Carla Overbeck came up to her and said, "Brandi, we've got 85 minutes left to go. We'll get the goal back. But we need you in the game. Let's play."

This snapped Brandi back into the moment. The fairy-tale ending is that Brandi actually ended up scoring the tying goal in the second half of that World Cup quarterfinal. I don't think she would have scored that goal without the support and tolerance of her teammates for a very unfortunate mistake at a very crucial point in the game.

TRUST. On a personal level, an individual has to be pretty courageous to stay in there physically and emotionally to turn things around. It's not an easy thing to do when a player's confidence is in the gutter.

Some can do it consistently, but other players can only do it occasionally. I think it's the coach's job to try and facilitate the likelihood of that happening. You have to trust your players, trust that they can turn things around, trust that they can overcome their mistakes, and believe that they will be successful.

If you must take a player out of the game, and sometimes you will, then you've got to build up that player's confidence as soon as possible. In essence, you've got to rebuild her self-esteem. Players need to know that your coaching decisions are performance related and not personal.

Colleen has some great advice for helping players to do that. She would tell the players, "Look, let's get past it now. Let's focus on the plays you know you can make and have made so well and so often in the past. Let's play in the moment and deal with the mistakes later."

(Excerpted from "Catch Them Being Good: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Coach Girls" by Tony DiCicco, Colleen Hacker & Charles Salzberg courtesy of Penguin Books.)

Tony DiCicco coached the U.S. women's national team to the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal and the 1999 Women's World Cup title. DiCicco, founder and director of SoccerPlus Camps , will be the Boston Breakers head coach when the club begins play in April of 2009 in the new women's professional soccer league. He is currently coach of the U.S. U-20 women's national team.

Girls & Boys: Taking Gender Into Account

by Emily Cohen, Thursday, Oct 30, 2008 6:30 PM ET

My daughter comes bursting through the door after soccer practice and exclaims, "Mom! We had so much fun! Maya and Natalie and I got to be on the same team!" "Did you win?" I ask. She replies, "I have no idea."

What a difference that is from when my son comes home from practice or, even more so, from a game. He can recite every well-executed play and missed opportunity in excruciating detail. But when I ask whether his best friend was on his team for the scrimmage, he replies, "No, but who cares? My team won!"
In a nutshell, these two scenarios capture the essence of how boys and girls approach sports differently. Of course, there are always exceptions -- the supercompetitive girl, the boy who would rather sit on the bench and chat with his buddy than be on the playing field -- but, in general, most of the coaches and parents I talked with agreed: For girls, the social interaction and the experience of being on a team with friends is No. 1. And for boys, it's much more about the end result.

So how can coaches apply this conventional wisdom to improve their coaching -- and get the best out of their players, whether they be girls or boys? Here's what I heard from a few longtime coaches who have successfully coached both genders, from elementary through high school.

Work with not against the innate gender differences

Girls are more concerned about having their friends on their team rather than winning. Sure, they like to win, but it's more important if they do so while playing with their friends. As one longtime coach told me, "I've never had to tell the boys to stop holding hands during practice, but I have had to ask them to quit jumping on each other or wrestling."

Given this, when you divvy up your team for squads, make sure you put at least two girls who are buddies together from the get-go, and you'll avoid the whining about who's on whose team later on. Boys -- because they're concerned more with winning -- won't worry about friendships on the team, but will worry about "fairness" or the "evenness" of the teams athletically.

Encourage the natural strengths and develop the weaknesses of each gender

Girls are experiential and process-oriented. You'll see that girls work just as hard as -- or even harder than -- the boys, but the girls care more about the overall effort than simply counting the numbers in the win and loss columns. With girls, if you spend time talking about their improvements, they'll work even harder and you'll quickly see a direct correlation to the overall win/loss record.

On the other hand, boys are much more results-oriented. It's not that they can't be focused on the journey, it's just that their DNA is geared toward winning and losing. With boys, you need to guide them to put effort into improving skills and getting something out of the experience -- encouraging them to understand that the journey, not just the number of Ws, is the reward.

Resolve problems collaboratively for girls, one-on-one for boys

Girls and boys approach problem-solving differently. Because of this, when you have an issue with a specific player -- or there's a problem with the team dynamic -- you should take gender into account.

With girls, yelling simply doesn't work. Coaches who approach girls as they would boys find this out the hard way. When you are upset with the attitude or effort of your female players, the best way to handle it is with a team meeting. Start by asking them what they think the problem is. Nine times out of 10, the girls will have already pinpointed the problem and have several solutions to propose. Girls work things out collaboratively -- as a team. It might be painful, but the results you see in the end will be worth it.

In contrast, boys need to be listened to and heard. If a boy on your team is acting out or needs help focusing, you should address it with the player, one-on-one, clear the air, and move on. You might have to get the boy's attention by raising your voice and making an example of him in front of his peers, but once you do, and you clearly explain your expectations, you should be on your way to a better team dynamic.

(Emily Cohen is a freelance writer living in Berkeley, Calif. She is the mother of a son, 12, and a daughter, 9, who both play multiple sports. She has been a team manager for her children's soccer, baseball and softball teams.)

Practicing Solo: The 720 Challenge

by Brandi Chastain, Thursday, May 8, 2008 7:30 PM ET

It's amazing how much more technical and organized soccer training is now. When I was growing up, we practiced twice a week (three times when I got older) and played one game on the weekend, unless there was a tournament, and I didn't start playing in tournaments until I was 11.

Today, with year-round soccer (which I didn't play until I was nearly in college), there are an incredible number of games being played. Too many in my opinion (but that's another story).

Children in sports are often overly organized. Informal play gives them the opportunity to be independent, creative, and self-motivated. They dictate the place, the time, the rules, and the structure - or lack of it. When I was young, aside from formal practice, I was out on my front lawn everyday, juggling or kicking a ball. I'd play with the neighborhood kids or my brother.

He and I often took it into the house, playing 1 v 1 in our hallway, which couldn't have been more than three feet wide. (Of course, that would drive our mother crazy.)

That said, these casual skill sessions don't have to last for hours - even 15 minutes a day of juggling or footwork can be a significant addition when compounded over time. Mix it up with friends, or play a little by yourself.

What's important is that you develop the habit, and put the fun into it, the way we did with the National Team. We played informal games and created challenges against one another all the time. The rewards are simple, but satisfying, like the losers serving the winners lunch and busing their trays in the cafeteria of the Home Depot Center, buying coffee or smoothies, or hitting the ground for push-ups and sit-ups while the winners gloat.

Going for '720'

Try this ultimate challenge. It's called 720, and here's why. Using these 12 ball-juggling surfaces (laces/instep of both feet, outside of the feet, inside of the feet, thighs, chest, shoulders, head - click here for a video showing the 12 surfaces) and keeping the ball up in the air, use as many of those surfaces as you can in 60 seconds. Multiply the number of surfaces you successfully use (at least once), by the number of seconds you keep the ball up.

Your maximum scored would be 12 x 60 = 720.


Excerpted from "It's Not About the Bra: How to Play Hard, Play Fair, and Put the Fun Back into Competitive Sports" By Brandi Chastain with Gloria Averbuch courtesy of HarperCollins.

Brandi Chastain made 192 appearances and scored 30 goals for the U.S. women's national team in 1988-2004. She won two Women's World Cups (1991 & 1999) and two Olympic gold medals (1996 & 2004).

A letter to the parents of Infinity SC '93 & '92 Girls

U16 & U17 Parents,

When I met with the U17 girls in October I defined mandatory to them. When I meet with the U16's on Tuesday I will define mandatory to them as well. Parents, I would like to explain to you my definition.

I have strict rules when it comes to training. For example: Show up 5 minutes late, miss half of a game. Leave 5 minutes early, miss half a game. Miss a training session without a valid reason (not excuse) don't dress for the next game. My big expectation is that the girls communicate with me prior to any absences or if they are going to be running late (communication goes a VERY long way with me). That being said, I only follow those rules when we are in regular season (March- May) and even then, I let the players approach me if one of their teammates is not following the rules. Only then do I enforce the rules. This is the players team, not my team. If the players are o.k. with letting their teammates slide, well that is up to them. It is their duty to ask me to enforce the rules if they feel it is necessary. I don't show up to training with an attendance clipboard and mark a player absent or tardy.

I have expressed that the training sessions during January and February are "mandatory." I want everyone to know that if they miss a session that they are not going to be cut, or sat or frowned upon. However, with the Mayors Cup (in Las Vegas) only five weeks away, I have to provide an opportunity for the girls to be prepared to compete and learn the system of play. If the teams were younger I would be o.k. with the soccer that they are playing on the indoor surface and rent out the USA indoor arena and play small sided games for training. But these young ladies need to be prepared to play 70-90 minute matches twice a day and you can't properly simulate that with the small field experience alone. The Stan Laub Training Center (SLTC) that we are currently using over the next 5 weeks is the only full sized indoor field in the local community. As much as I do not like using Friday and Saturday nights to train teenage girls, this is the only time we were offered to use it. The new a.d. and new football coach at USU have really changed the availability at the SLTC, therefore limiting it to weekends in the month of January and February. I apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause, but I am confident that when we hit the parks in Vegas that we will be better prepared because of our time in the SLTC.

A philosophy of mine... I am focused on the long term development of each player and providing opportunities for these players to showcase their abilities to their families, friends, teammates, college coaches, the world. However, I strongly believe that it is ultimately the player that makes herself great. The player must stay fit and keep her touch even in the worst of winters to be at her peak. The players job is to have the tools to perform the technical abilities necessary to execute the tactics provided by the coach. I will provide an avenue for them to be successful by developing a defensive and offensive strategy, teach it to them and expect them to execute it. The players ultimately win and lose games. Winning is fun and I am extremely competitive, but my playing days are over. The girls have to want to win and make sacrifices on the training field, on their own and during match play to win. As the U17 girls found out when they were in California, if they do not play team soccer and stick to a plan they will be exploited badly when they play quality teams. They also learned that they can hang with some of the best teams. If these two teams play united, with a purpose and allow themselves to play out of their comfort zones they will find themselves as powerful of a team as Cache Valley (and Utah for that matter) has ever seen. The player has to win the game, the coach has to provide a system in which they are prepared to win.

Now that you understand my philosophy. When we go to Las Vegas, the focus will be defensive team shape and fast counter attacking. It is as simple as that. When they get these two aspects down we will work on possessing the ball, changing the point of attack and work on unbalancing runs in to the offensive half and third of the field. I expect to have success in Las Vegas, but we may make errors while trying to learn how to play in a system that is very new to the U16 girls and fairly new to the U17 girls.

I am very excited to have these two teams under my direction. I believe they will provide one another with competition in training, social comradery and ultimately demonstrate to the younger teams in our club and community what Infinity is all about. Both teams have impressed me so far and I expect that they will continue to impress me and everyone else they have the chance to meet on a soccer pitch and in life.

Thank you for allowing me to work with your daughters. This is a privilege and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for my opportunities to work with our youth.

-Ginn

Infinity SC '92 Girls In Southern California Part 1: Unifying The Team

With the high school season coming to an end the U17 girls had four weeks (eight training sessions) to prepare for a very competitive tournament. Their preparation was focused on three things;
1) Unifying the team
2) Team Shape when transitioning to defense. Click Here for the team shape diagrams.
3) Attacking using combination play and unbalancing runs in to the final 3rd of the field.



The girls all arrived at Doheney State Beach in Dana Point, California. Coach Ginn's parents and aunt still live in San Juan Capistrano, CA so they played host and provided a thanksgiving dinner for the girls and their families. There was turkey, yams, stuffing...just enough for everyone to have a little. Also there were Hot Dogs and Hamburgers for the families to eat up if they remained hungry.



Unifying this group has not been a difficult task, as the girls have been open to the new teammates, coaches and parents. The girls had a lot of fun playing volleyball and hanging at the beach on Thanksgiving day.


After having fun at the beach the girls drove up to Irvine and went through a training session and some "walk throughs" to prepare them for the tournament the next morning. The girls shared rooms with assigned teammates. The teammates that attend high school together were all separated to allow the players a opportunity to get out of their comfort zone and get to know one another. A team rule for the girls is that the players are not allowed to wear anything representing their highs school when at Infinity activities. Even though High School soccer is important, being unified as a team and breaking down the boundaries that our valley has developed over its history is an important part of being successful, both as a team and as a club.



I will share their soccer tournament experience for part two and continue to focus on the team unity aspect for now. Friday night the girls were asked to perform skits for their teammates to perform. They groups of four grous were asked to present a skit. The topics: The Dating Game, A Talk Show, Home Shopping Network & A Game Show. When given the assignments the girls reluctantly went to their rooms and created ideas, and developed dialogue for their skits. Walking through the halls, the girls were giggling more than normal. The skits were performed and when Morgan Olsen's father, Gary Olsen, was asked to be the bachelor, the girls got to see a grown man blush when forced to asked pre-fabricated questions about the available girls. He asked the two girls questions like, "describe your belly button," and what their ideal dates would be. It was pure comedy to the girls and the parents. After the skits the girls played a game called, "The Animal Game." The girls had to act out animals with body movements and sounds or move down in the seating. It is a long time tradition for Coach Ginn to play this at every tournament he attends. it was fun, by the end the girls were tired and headed to bed to prepare for the next day of soccer.



When the tournament was over on Saturday the girls went to Laguna Beach, CA where they surrounded a pit fire on the beach, roasted marshmallows and played in the shore break. Taylor Anderson and Stacy Bair ended up drenched when Coach Ginn asked them to go stand on the rocks while the set of waves were small. They stood their, nearly bored because the water was just getting their feet. Getting anxious to play in the water a bit more, the team got closer to the shore break, Taylor hid behind a rock next to the edge.



I do not believe anyone will forget when Taylor got drenched when the shore break covered her so well that nobody could see her. The same wave got everyone else wet, but Stacy and Taylor got the worst of the group.



The girls went back to the fire pit and dried up. The team really had a fun time, it seemed as if these girls had all been playing together for years and years.

The experience was memorable and the unification process off of the field seems to have been successful.

The Ginn family and all of the players families made the trip stress free (except for the trips to Jamboree Rd.). Coaches Caleb Cowley and Jeff Ginn are very grateful for the girls discipline, punctuality and responsibility that they displayed during the entire trip.

-As more photos are gathered, we will post them. Part 2: Developing While Competing, will be up soon.

Youth Soccer in America - How do we measure success?

From the US Youth Soccer Technical Department – For weekly content from the US Youth Soccer Technical Department, check out their blog at www.USYouthSoccer.com/Blog

"There are already a multitude of articles saying that winning and losing are not the correct measures of success in youth soccer, instead we should measure the development of the players. OK, perfect. The next obvious follow-up question then is, 'How do we measure the development of a single player?' If US Youth Soccer can answer this question in a way that is helpful to committed coaches and understandable to parents with limited playing experience (and paying the money to have their kids involved), they may be able to turn this overly organized youth soccer system of ours into a much more effective development program."
- Cary McCormick, Arlington, Va.

Indeed how do we measure player development?

Too often in America, a professional sport model is used in measuring youth sports success. Youth soccer is not immune to this misapplied standard. For soccer the situation is made worse by a desire of many adults to use measuring tools from other sports. In fact, it is maddening to many adults that soccer is not as black and white as with some sports in judging successful play. Many team sports played in our nation are statistically driven and coach centered.

Soccer is neither of those!

Indeed just like the Laws of the Game our sport has many shades of grey within it. As a player centered sport some coaches become disillusioned as they learn that they are the 'guide on the side' and not the 'sage on the stage'. Too many soccer coaches bring a military focused attitude to the youth sport environment. This coach-centered perspective has been handed down to us from other sports and coaching styles of past generations.

In many sports the coach makes crucial decisions during the competition. In soccer players make the primary decisions during the match; the coach's decisions are of secondary importance. Ego-centric personalities will find coaching soccer troublesome. The other significant group of adults at a youth soccer match is parents. They too often have their view of the match colored by the professional model and by a view of "coaching" that is portrayed in the media. Although it is changing, the majority of parents watching their kids play soccer have never played the game. In fact the statistics show that most of today's parents never played any team sport. So their only exposure on how to measure sporting success is gleaned from the sports media. The sports media predominately report on adult teams at the college and professional levels. These adult measurements of team performance should not and cannot be applied to youth sports.

The analogy can be made to a youngster's academic development in preparation for work in the adult business world. While the child is in primary and secondary school, the corporate world measurements of success are not applied. Those business assessments are not yet appropriate because the school-aged student does not yet have the tools to compete in the adult business environment. The knowledge and skills to be a competitor in business are still being taught and learned. This holds true in soccer as well!

Soccer is an adult game designed by adults for adults to play. Adults enjoy the game so much that they have shared it with their children. Yet adults make errors when we bring our adult performance and outcome based thinking into the developing player's world.

Alright fine you say. So how do we measure success? How do parents know if the team coach is doing a good job of teaching soccer to the players? How does the novice coach know if the kids are growing within the game?

As a way to measure success, let's look at the facts provided a by a study by the Youth Sports Institute, on what players want from their sports experience.

TRUTHS about children and sports

* Fun is pivotal - if it's not fun, young people won't play a sport
* Skill development is a crucial aspect of fun - it is more important than winning even among the best athletes
* The most rewarding challenges of sports are those that lead to self-knowledge
* Intrinsic rewards (self-knowledge that grows out of self-competition) are more important in creating lifetime athletes than extrinsic rewards are (victory or attention from others)1

During childhood allow the kids to have a good time playing the game while instilling the passion to love playing soccer on their own. Only a passion for the game can lead to success.

"Success is something players take ownership of and in time it becomes personally meaningful. Success is a process, not a product. The process of doing one's best is the key to success. The determining criterion of success is whether a player gave his or her best that day. Doing one's best is the most important statement a player can make about the importance of an activity and the meaning it has. With years of experience comes self-knowledge and self-awareness. So players learn over time what it means to do your best, to give 100%."2

"Winning isn't everything, but trying to is!" – Rainer Martens, sports psychologist

Motives for Participation in Youth Sport
Reasons for Participating in Non-school Sports (study of 3,900 7 to 12 graders)

Boys Girls
1. To have fun 1. To have fun
2. To do something I'm good at 2. To stay in shape
3. To improve my skills 3. To get exercise
4. For the excitement of competition 4. To improve my skills
5. To stay in shape 5. To do something I am good at
6. For the challenge of competition 6. To learn new skills
7. To get exercise 7. For the excitement of competition
8. To learn new skills 8. To play as part of a team
9. To play as part of a team 9. To make new friends
10. To go to a higher level of competition 10. For the challenge of competition3

Truths & Motives for Participation
1. Have fun and to enjoy participating in sport.
2. Learn new skills and to improve on existing sports skills.
3. Become physically fit and to enjoy good health
4. Enjoy the challenge and excitement of sports participation and competition.
5. Enjoy a team atmosphere and to be with friends.4

Suggestions for Parents

* Remember the truths and talk to your children with them in mind. After a game, ask questions about fun, skill improvement, learning experiences and having a good time with friends.
* See yourself as part of the team and supportive of the coach; avoid setting up a conflict in your child's mind between his or her parents and coaches. If you want to affect the coaching, volunteer to help.
* Develop perspective: remember what you could do at your children's ages; don't judge them by what you can do now. Kids will not become great players overnight.
* Develop an understanding of what your children want from sports—not all children want the same things. Determine if they want to be involved at all.

Basic Urges of Children

* Movement
* Success and Approval
* Peer Acceptance & Social Competence
* Cooperation & Competition
* Physical Fitness & Attractiveness
* Adventure
* Creative Satisfaction
* Rhythmic Expression
* To Know 5

Note: Winning alone is not a motive for participation by boys and girls.

"We are asking our players to compete before they have learned how to play."
-Jay Miller, U.S. U17 Men's National Team coach 2001

In general the benefits of youth sports for children include character building, humility in winning, leadership growth opportunities, cooperative skills, social skills and dealing with obstacles, losing and competition. We employ soccer to develop well adjusted, good citizens.

Measurements of Success in Youth Soccer
Short-Term

* Fun - Do the players smile and laugh? Do the players look forward to playing? The first question from the player's family should be, "Did you have fun today?"
* Fair Play - Does a player demonstrate a sense of sportsmanship through words and actions?
* Laws of the Game - Do the players know and follow the rules of soccer?
* Health and Fitness - Are the players physically fit enough to meet the fitness demands of the game? Are they developing good nutrition and hydration habits befitting an athlete?
* Friendships - Are the players creating new friends within the team and with players from other teams?
* Skills - Are the players demonstrating a growing number of ball skills and are they gradually becoming more proficient in those skills?

Long-Term

* Commitment - How do the players answer when asked at the end of a game, "Did you try your best?"
* Roles in the Team - More important than learning a position, are the players learning about positioning? Knowing where the right back or the center forward spot is on the field is important, yet learning how to move tactically within the game is far more important. Do all of the players get exposed to playing all of the positions?
* Leadership - Are players being given the opportunity to take on leadership roles and responsibilities? Are the coaches and team managers teaching leadership?
* Tactics - Are the players experimenting with new tactics in matches? The coaches must teach new tactics to the players in training sessions and then allow them to try out the tactics in a match, regardless of how that might affect the outcome!
* Retention - Do the players come back year after year?

Retention is recognized as a short term measure of success in youth soccer and developing well adjusted citizens is another long term measure of success in youth sports. In a 2007 US Youth Soccer survey 96 percent of parents responded that one of the benefits they desire for youth soccer to provide to their child is fun. 97 percent of the parents surveyed feel the reason their child participates in youth soccer is fun.

What Parents Can Do

* Talk positively with their children before and after activities
* Supply transportation
* Assist with supervision
* Officiate games
* Help with administration
* Assist with the organization of special events

Statistics, win-loss-tie records, goals for/goals against, saves, number of corner kicks and so on are straight forward ways to measure what happened in a game. Those unfamiliar with soccer find the use of those measurements comforting as they help them define a sport they find confusing. Yet those measurements fail to show the complete picture of a random skill, open-ended, transitional sport with no timeouts. There is an immeasurable organized chaos factor in soccer.

How can one measure or quantify the unexpected 60 yard dribble and goal of Diego Maradona in the 1986 World Cup? What measurement of success can explain how some player, somewhere in the world, decades ago, spontaneously did a bicycle kick in a match making that move a part of soccer from then on?

The bottom line is that statistics in soccer are largely meaningless. From this thought springs the reality that soccer perhaps is the cruelest of team sports. It may be the only team sport where a team could have the majority of ball possession, outshoot the other team and still lose the match. If you have played soccer long enough you have been the team that was much better than the opposition and lost. You have also been the team that was outplayed by the opposition and won. The win-loss record does not accurately show how the game was played, how the players performed or how well the coach prepared the team to play the game.

Scientific research has concluded that it takes eight-to-twelve years of training for a talented player to reach elite levels. This is called the 10-year or 10,000 hour rule, which translates to slightly more than three hours of practice daily for ten years (Ericsson, et al., 1993; Ericsson and Charness, 1994, Bloom, 1985, Salmela et al., 1998). Unfortunately, parents and coaches in many sports still approach training with an attitude best characterized as "peaking by Friday," where a short-term approach is taken to training and performance with an over-emphasis on immediate results. We now know that a long-term commitment to practice and training is required to produce elite players in all sports.

Sports can be classified as early specialization or late specialization sports. Late specialization sports, including athletics, combative sports, cycling, racquet sports, rowing and all team sports require a generalized approach to early training. For these sports, the emphasis during the first two phases of training should be on the development of general motor and technical-tactical skills.

Late Specialization Model
Stage 1 – Fundamental Stage
Age: 6-9 years
Objective: Learn all fundamental movement skills (build overall motor skills)

Stage 2 – Learning to Train Stage
Age: 8-12 years
Objective: Learn all fundamental soccer skills (build overall sports skills)

Stage 3 – Training to Train Stage
Age: 11-16 years
Objectives: Build the aerobic base, build strength towards the end of the phase and further develop sport-specific skills (build the "engine" and consolidate soccer specific skills)

Stage 4 – Training to Compete Stage
Age: 15-18 years
Objectives: Optimize fitness preparation and sport, individual and position-specific skills as well as performance (optimize "engine", skills and performance)

Stage 5 – Training to Win Stage
Age: 17 years and older
Objectives: Maximize fitness preparation and sport, individual and position specific skills as well as performance (maximize "engine", skills and performance)

Stage 6 – Retirement/Retention Stage
Objectives: Retain players for coaching, administration, officials, etc.6
It is certainly the stance of US Youth Soccer to focus more on match performance than outcome; yet this is not to say that players should not strive to win. There's nothing wrong with winning! Trying to win is desirable and praiseworthy. It means trying your best. Indeed trying to play your best (match performance) often leads to winning. But not always! Remember the outcome of the game is not a reason why kids play! Players and coaches should diligently work to improve their performance. This is the drive for excellence as opposed to success.

Success does not breed success; it breeds failure. It is failure, which breeds success. If that advice seems patently absurd, think about the careers of many famous winners:

* Babe Ruth struck out 1,333 times. In between his strikeouts he hit 714 homeruns.
* Martina Navratilova lost 21 of her first 24 matches against archrival Chris Evert. She resolved to hit more freely on the big points and beat Evert thirty-nine out of their next 57 matches. No woman tennis pro has ever won as many matches or as many tournaments, including a record nine Wimbledon singles titles as Navratilova who retired from professional tennis at age 50.
* Abraham Lincoln failed twice in business and was defeated in six state and national elections before being elected president of the United States.
* Michael Jordan was cut from his junior high school basketball team, before becoming a sports icon.
* Theodor S. Geisel wrote a children's book that was rejected by 23 publishers. The 24 publisher sold six million copies of it –the first Dr. Seuss book – and that book and its successors are still staples in every child's library.

Consider the times when you tried to learn a new game or sport. Did you get it perfect the first day? Not likely. A former teammate once told me that he did get one sport right the first time he tried it. We asked what he meant and he said, "It was the first day of snow skiing classes. I skied all day long and I didn't fall down once. I was so elated; I felt so good. So I skied up to the ski instructor, and I told him of my great day. You know what the ski instructor said? He told me, 'Personally I think you had a lousy day.' I was stunned. 'What do you mean lousy day? I thought the objective was to stand up on these boards, not fall down.' The ski instructor looked me straight in the eye and replied, 'Sir, if you're not falling down, you're not learning.'"

The ski instructor understood that if you can stand up on your skis all day long the first time out, you're doing only what you already know how to do, not pushing yourself to try anything new or difficult.

If you always play it safe you aren't going to improve yourself because when you try to do something you don't know how to do, you'll fall down. That's guaranteed! Nothing is ever done perfectly the first time someone tries it – not in business, not in school and most certainly not in soccer. The point isn't to promote failure for failure's sake, of course. We don't advocate for a moment that failure ought to be the objective of any endeavor. Instead, we advocate learning. We want American players to be leaders and not look for someone to blame when mistakes are made while expanding their soccer horizons. Instead ask, "What can be learned from the experience?"

Trying new ball skills or new tactics, a new set play or a new formation will cause errors during matches. Yet if the players do not feel they are allowed to try out these new talents in a match, when will those talents become a part of their game? The sounds coming from the spectators at a youth match should be cheers for when a player tries something new. Parents can measure their child's success in soccer by the improving athletic ability of their child, by the growing confidence and self-reliance of the player, by the emergence of refined ball skills, by the opportunity afforded by the coach to play in different positions on the team, by the taking on of leadership and responsibility, by the demonstration of fair play and by the smiles. The parents will know that there is a chance for success when they see the players and coaches striving for excellence!

"There are many people, particularly in sports who think that success and excellence is the same thing and they are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success is perishable and is often outside our control… If you strive for excellence, you will probably be successful eventually… people who put excellence in first place have the patience to end up with success… An additional burden for the victim of the success mentality is that he is threatened by the success of others and resents real excellence. In contrast, the person fascinated by quality is excited when he sees it in others."
- Joe Paterno – Penn State football coach – 1990

Striving to improve individual, group and team performance is more important at the youth level than the outcome. Simultaneously players should play to win. Coaches should teach and develop the players as they learn how to win. Parents should support the players and coaches. Intrinsic success is by its nature more difficult to measure than extrinsic success. A trophy is more tangible to an adult than the exhilaration a child feels while playing soccer. The final measure of success for parents of their child's soccer experience will require a good deal of patience from the adults. That measurement is the free choice of the child to stay in the game!

In soccer circles it is agreed that four groups of adults support the youth game. Parents, coaches, administrators and referees have an equal obligation to the players. That obligation is to live by the vision you have just read!

"We must work to create an environment to develop the American player's growth and development! In the past we have tried to train the Dutch way, the Brazilian way, etc. We can and will together create the finest players in the world if we understand the growth, development and specific characteristics of our youth. Distributing the body of information from the "Y" License is the first step."
- Dr. Thomas Fleck

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Mission Statement
US Youth Soccer is a non-profit and educational organization whose mission is to foster the physical, mental and emotional growth and development of America's youth through the sport of soccer at all levels of age and competition.

Sources
1 Ewing, M.E., & Seefeldt. V. (1990). American youth sport participation. American Footwear Association, North Palm Beach, FL. Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA).

2 Fine, Aubrey H., Ph.D. & Sachs, Michael L., Ph.D. (1997). The Total Sports Experience for Kids. Diamond Communications

3 Ewing, M. & Seefeldt, V., (1989). Participation and attrition patterns in American agency-sponsored and interscholastic sports: An executive summary. Final report Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association(North Palm Beach, FL: Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association) as cited from Weinberg & Gould (2007). Foundations of Sport & Exercise Psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

4 Cox, R., (2002). Sport Psychology: Concepts and Applications 5th Ed. (p.108). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

5 Pangrazi, R. P. (2004). Dynamic Physical Education for Elementary School Children. (pp. 159-160). (14th ed.). San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.

6 Long-Term Athlete Development: Trainability in Childhood and Adolescence, Istvan Balyi, Ph.D. and Ann Hamilton, MPE; Olympic Coach, Volume 16, Number 1

“Seeing the Big Picture”

By: J.J. Ruane, PSA Director of Coaching

I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago, sitting with several professional youth soccer coaches from the area. The topic of discussion was the top 100 players in the world. The first 25 players were pretty easy to figure out as we went down the list and most everyone listed the same 25 players. As we went down through the top 100, our players were significantly different, but there was one constant through everyone’s list, there was not one American player. I visited the IYSA Expo this past weekend and was able to watch some different sessions. One of the presenters was from the Everton Youth Academy which has a senior team in the English Premier League. The one thing that really impressed me was his comments about youth soccer and soccer as a whole in this country. “The United States is a sleeping giant in the soccer world; the country has all the tools to win the World Cup. The problem though is that you are using a hammer to unscrew a light bulb.”

I think these two examples show a number of things. The first is that our potential as a country is huge. The problem is we want immediate results. As a director of coaching, it is ironic to hear that a group of youth players are the 3v3 National Champions meaning they are the best 3v3 team in the country. The shocking thing about this entire thing was that the kids were U8. We don’t see past tomorrow. As a director of coaching, my primary job is to make sure that the professional staff is doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Another part of that is to make sure that they are able to move on in their coaching if they so choose, staff development. My other primary job is to do the same thing with the players. My job is not to look at a U10 player and pick him for the national team. My job is to take the appropriate steps to take that gifted U10 player and get him to love the game, so he can play the game for a long time and get to the national team, but only if the player so chooses: player development.

The other problem that the opening story suggests is that there are no American players presently that the world respects. I believe this problem exists as an extension to the above problem. We put too much pressure on our youngest players to produce results at a young age. We don’t allow our players any time to make mistakes. Let players be creative, let them make mistakes, let them solve problems on their own, and let the game teach itself. This is in no way to say that as coaches, we do not give the proper tools to our players to be good technical players. An infant must fall down on its bottom several times before it learns how to walk on its own. A player must take players on hundreds of times until they develop the confidence needed to be successful. Legends coaches preach this in training and also in games.

It is the staff coach’s job to develop players and prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead, hopefully making them better people along the way. These challenges may be making them a confident player, getting them to a top team level, preparing them for the high school level, and obviously the ultimate goal and challenge for us as coaches is the college level. All of us coaches love to win and really take it to heart when we lose. I don’t know how many times I have taken that long road trip wondering what I could have done better to help my team be more successful. The thought I always come back to though is did the players do what I asked them to do, did they get better at things we worked on in training the week before, did they work hard, and most times the answer is yes.

In closing, soccer is a funny game. This is not like basketball or football where the best team wins 90% of the time. Most time in soccer, the best team does not win. I watched Arsenal (England) play PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) last week. Arsenal was far superior in almost every facet of the game except when it came time to finish. They missed 10-12 chances throughout the match. Arsenal scored one goal. PSV had 3-4 chances and they scored two goals. How many times has this happened to Legends teams that has been far better skill wise, but lose because the team they played did not really play soccer correctly and were just bigger and much faster? The Legends staff will always instruct our players to play the game the best way possible and we ask that our parents do the same and not be blinded by who was the better team because of the score.

Questions or comments can be emailed to J.J. Ruane, jjruane@plainfieldsoccer.org.

Advice to a fellow coach (From the blog archives of Sam Snow)

Hi Sam,
I have a question about formations, especially the back players. I coach recreation Under-12 girls and we play 11 vs. 11. All of the other teams have their four back players stand at the 25 yard line and wait for the ball to come to them. I encourage my back players to get involved and get forward as much as the game will allow. We have lost every game so far and our parents are requesting that we do the same because we're not winning. Is this the way youth recreational soccer is supposed to be? Most of the girls on my team played for a different coach last year and she instructed her backs to stay 25 yards in front of the goal.

What do I do? Please advise.

Thank you,
Jack
---------

Hello Jack,

Please do resist the urgings of the parents and instead educate them on why your approach is the correct one. In the National Coaching Schools, one of the tactical concepts we teach is called compactness. Essentially this means a team should move up field as a unit on the attack and move back into their half of the field to defend. We expect everyone on the team to be involved in the attack and everyone on the team to be involved in defending. Even with the US Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program we look for players who have the versatility to be involved on 'both sides of the ball' as the saying goes. So we look for talented well-rounded players who can both defend and attack.

The approach of telling fullbacks to not move forward beyond a 25 yard mark is inhibiting those players from learning how to play the game.

Coaches take this action for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are a lack of understanding of the tactics of soccer or a fear of failure. Soccer, like basketball, is a game where the team moves together around the playing area. Imagine a basketball team where some players are told to never cross the halfway line for the fear of the opponents scoring; that indeed would be a poorly played game of basketball.

What's most important in your situation is to teach the players about positioning. The idea here is the distance and angles that teammates take between each other during the match. Those distances and angles constantly change as the ball and players move around the field. It requires anticipation and game sense from the players. When children as young as 12-years-old are learning the sport of soccer they will make mistakes in regard to positioning. This is simply the learning process in action. However those mistakes may mean lost scoring opportunities in front of the opponents' goal and giving away scoring opportunities to the other team in front of your goal. This creates fear among the coaches and supporters who often value the score line more than a well played game. This is the fear of failure component I mentioned earlier. Regularly the adults involved in youth sports fear losing more than the players do. Yet winning, losing and tying are part of learning how to play the game.

So your challenge now is to balance short-term and long-term objectives. For the short-term work on the team learning to respond quickly when the ball is lost to the opponents to sprint back into good defensive positions - and here I mean the entire team. For the long-term objective work on the concept of positioning, which in the end is more important than learning positions.

Do not hesitate to let us know if the US Youth Soccer Technical Department can be of further assistance.

Keep Kicking,
Sam

A Decade of Coaching

About 40 miles away from Jacksonville, North Carolina and about an hour away from Wilmington, North Carolina is a town called Beulaville. In August of 1997 I was assigned to serve in this town with only two stop lights. It is likely one of the favorite and most memorable places I served on my two year LDS mission. After a week of being there I became very acquainted with the Batts family. The father was the 2nd counselor in the branch 20 miles away, his wife over young women's a son that had just moved out, a second son that played soccer on the h.s. team and a daughter that was just about a year away from being in h.s. To make a long story a little shorter, the family found out that I played soccer at UVSC. The same day I got a call from Bro. Batt's and he said, "East Duplin High School just announced that they are going to have a high school soccer team, do you want to coach it?" I didn' think there was anyway it was going to happen, "I would love to, but I will have to get my mission presidents approval." My mission president approved after a phone call to the area authorities and got back to me the next day. President Esplin explained to me the cans and can nots of the new service activity and I was allowed to take my companions to the two hour practices and games, both home and away. Now, there was a true head coach, he was the basketball coach. He was a great guy and gave me a lot of responsibilities.

Meanwhile, back in Utah, my oldest brother got the coaching bug as well. Right before I left on my mission my brother Bobby and I were asked by our Aunt Delanie to coach our cousins recreational teams. Bobby enjoyed it so much he found Celtic Storm Soccer Club, a newly established competitive program in Orem and earned his E and D license and coached a team. While he and I were both getting excited about coaching at the same time, I don't think either of us knew what we were getting in to. Bobby was learning how to deal with teenage girls and I was learning how to deal with teenage boys.


I had written my parents to inform them of the new service activity we were participating in. My loving and oh so wise mom replied to me in a letter, "...you let the head coach do all of the yelling at the refereee's, no yellow cards for my Elder...." Sure enough the first yellow card I ever received as a coach was me defending our goal keeper at East Duplin High School. Just think about this; your on a mission representing the Lord and you get called on to a soccer field and are asked your name so the official can book you. I replied my name is "Elder...Elder Ginn." Later that night I broke the mission rules and called my mom and apologized to her. That was the only time I called home when I wasn't supposed to. East Duplin was very memorable and a great introduction to the coaching side of Soccer



OK, So I returned home from my mission in July of 1998. It had been about 9 months since my time in Beulaville. I was home in California with the family for a few weeks and then headed back to UVSC in Orem, Utah. Bobby had arranged for me to take my E license (Got my D 3 months later) and made sure I had a team to coach when I returned. The team was a U17 girls team. I coached them for a year, a year later I was asked by Robyn Bretzing, the club president and founder to coach a u13 girls team and invited me to take over her position at the new high school in Orem, Utah...Timpanogos H.S.

I coached 4 years at Timpanogos and took that u13 girls team until they were U17. I coached with bobby one fall at William Penn University and then 4years with coach Ammon bennett at Iowa Western C.C. where we started the program and took the women's team to nationals two years in a row and were national runners up both years. While in Council Bluffs, Iowa with the IWCC teams I also founded a soccer club: Council Bluffs Futbol Club. My time in Iowa was amazing, I learned a ton and was prepared for my next step in Logan Utah with Infinity Soccer Club.

Anyway in a decade of coaching, I may not be rich in money or making a name for myself at any prestigious level, but I am happy because I have been paid in so many better ways:

Celtic Storm Girls:
Tamika Wilson: Married, Graduating from University of Wyoming. As a Jr. was named Mountain West Conference co-offensive player of the year
Julie and Kellie Hegerhost, married and have families of their own.
Candice Clark Graduating from Utah State, played starting striker for the Aggies, married, coaches for infinity soccer club
Kira Lazenby: Iowa Western CC graduate and Captain of first team to ever play in a national title game for the Reivers. Continued her career at University of Texas El Paso and Northwestern.
Tara Devenish: Married and played for a national title at Iowa Western CC.
Becky Pulham: Played for a national title at IWCC, continued playing for BYU-Hawaii, on an lds mission
Karly Nelson: Played for two national titles at IWCC, continued to play at grand Canyon University in Arizona.
Sutton Cherrington: married, played Goal Keeper for Southern Utah University
Deborah Benson: married, Plays for Mesa State in Colorado and captained for final two seasons
Kirtley Sorenson: attends BYU, does not play soccer
Jana Davis: married and plays for Idaho State
Megan Richardson: plays for BYU
Lil' Bree Robinson: married, plays for Dixie State
Jessica Nelson: married, plays for Dixie State
Shantae Adams: married, plays for Dixie State.
Hannah Silvey: Played for the national title twice at IWCC, captained IWCC and plays for University of Texas El Paso.
Katie Long: First Ever Captain for IWCC, returned from LDS mission, married.
Kiddist Kennard: Played on the inaugural team for IWCC, went on to play for Hastings college in Nebraska
Shayla Adams: Married, Played for UVSC