Week Eight. What We Were Working on in U6.

     The video above shows the basics of the move we were working on before the games yesterday.  I was trying to teach it to the kids as something they'd use in combination with their pull-back move and my goal yesterday was just to get them to start trying this move in the most basic way.  I was happy to see that everyone seemed to get it in practice and they were all making good attempts at it.  Hailey tried to execute the move in the Bats' game but she was the only one.  The hurdle to get over with any of these new moves is convincing the kids that if they perfect the move it can be useful in a game situation.  So both teams worked at it diligently in practice but I could sense that they were skeptical as to why we're doing it. 
     Spectators at the Bats' game may have noticed that we were playing down a player much of the game.  I decided to do that when it became apparent in practice time that the Bats were very excited about playing the purple team as they were assuming we'd win easily.  Confidence is good and I want them to play with a desire to win but I think it's important to make sure they are always being challenged.  Playing one player down forced the Bats to work a little harder and it opened up the field for them a bit, giving them each more opportunities to carry the ball for longer runs.  Ultimately the purple side was no push-over either, with two of their girls, Hajar and McKayla, playing very strong in keeper.

     The Lions had a good workout in practice but not such a good game.  This was another one of those lazy days where most of the team seemed to have checked out early.  The issue I think, and I've got to figure out how to deal with this as a coach, is that most of the players sort of assess the opposition team based on size and make a pregame decision as to what our chances are.  The yellow team has a couple of very tall players and one of them is very fast.  It looked to me like the Lions as a whole had just decided that they weren't going to get past those big kids so they'd just play defense all game.  Not all of them fell into this though.  William and Ava don't seem impressed by anyone's size or skill.  They just go hard to the ball for the whole game.  I love that the two youngest players are setting the example for the whole team.