Old Notes: Talking to Parents about coaching from the sideline.

                        Some points on educating Team Parents about sideline coaching:

“Parents, please don’t coach from the sideline.” 
    You open your team meeting with that, especially with a young team, and, guaranteed, there will be parents in the group who bristle.  They don’t like to be told how to behave on the sideline or how to support their kid.  So, to help them understand why it is truly best for their player’s development that the parents not do any sideline coaching you will have to patiently help them to see the situation from the coach/player side of the field.
    When you ask the parents not to coach all you are asking is that they let the players play and let their coaches coach them.  As for what the parents might be yelling from their side,  it isn’t a question of whether they know what they’re talking about. It's also about what the coach may have been working with the team on in training recently and what they want the team to be focused on in this particular game (because every game is a training opportunity).  So I tell coaches to establish from the outset that this is your team and sideline coaching is counterproductive.  Additionally, I want parents to understand that one huge developmental step that younger players are taking is that they will learn to experience and engage in the game without the mediation of their parents.  Every parent should want their kid to be able to lose themselves in the game and not be constantly checking the sideline to see how mom and dad are reacting.

     So, tell the parents to support the team loudly with cheering and praise and sympathy and with enthusiasm for the fun of the game.  But we have to also ask that they be mindful of the effect even your non-coaching support has on the players.  Be aware of how the players react to the emotional tone they hear coming from the sideline and how that can drive the players to play in a frenzied and panicked manner.  We want to encourage confident technical play at all times.  For instance, playing fast and being in a hurry are not the same thing.  We want players to develop the technical skill to be able to play quickly but a lot of emotional screaming from the parents’ sideline can encourage a team to play in a hurry, to be sloppy and to look like they’re just running downhill the whole game.  Let them have the game.  Let them figure it out.

      This ties in to how parents handle the game results and those moments post-match when a player might be nervously anticipating a parent’s reaction. I always ask parents, please, don’t spend the drive home as a post-match analysis session.  Let them ruminate on the game and they’ll talk to you about it if they want to.  To put it plainly from the perspective of an experienced coach, I can’t have players on the field whose relationship to the game runs through their parents on the sideline. 

          So, ask the parents, please don’t do anything from the sideline or after the game or training session that would encourage your player to feel that everything they do on the field is subject to your approval.   Let them fail, let them learn. Let them move on to the next thing and trust them to make progress.  The best way to encourage your player to improve is to assure them that you really enjoy watching them play...just for the joy of it.  You aren’t playing and you don’t have to encourage them to want to win.  They do want to win.  Trust me on that.  But if they think their parent only likes to watch games when the team wins then their relationship to the game and to training will be shaped by that.  A great coach who taught me at one of my licensing courses used to say that the ride-home conversation should be the same every time.  “Tell them you love watching them play then shut up.”  It is not about teaching them that winning doesn’t matter.  It is about teaching them that failing is part of the process of learning how to win.  Embrace it.  Endure it.  Learn from it and move on.

     One positive suggestion about what parents can do to help…Want to actually engage your player’s interest in the game?  Good coaches should be trying to consistently use a specific vocabulary as they teach the game and its techniques to your players.  Words like “Touch” and “Technique” and “Stroke” when describing their ball control.  Words like “Touch Line” and “Goal Line”, “Circle”, “The D”, “Eighteen” when describing the field.  Words like “Square”, “Drop” and “Through” for players to use when communicating to each other on the field.  To really enjoy their players development, parents might want to know this vocabulary and begin using it themselves.  So, Parents, ask your player to teach you the vocabulary. It is a great way to engage with their experience of the game.

Old Notes: Vocabulary and Session Planning

 I'm going through some of my notes and reflections on coaching from when we first started the club and I will be publishing them here as "Old Notes".      

Vocabulary

It’s important to use a consistent vocabulary with your team.  Introduce them to a vocabulary of words and phrases for describing everything from the field of play to their technical skills and their tactical interplay...and then stick to that vocabulary.  Use it consistently and insist that they do too.  Here’s a list of words and phrases I use frequently.

First Touch; the player’s technical ability to get control of a moving ball.

Possession; a team’s ability to keep control of the ball.  Also equals “denying possession”.

Transition; going from attacking to defending and back to attacking.

Stroke; shooting, passing

Dribble;  And “Dribble Touch”; moving with the ball with control.  Kicking the ball and running after it isn’t dribbling...it’s a turnover.  

Develop a set of words for describing the field too so you can communicate with your players efficiently about positioning.  The sideline is the touch line (because when the ball goes out over the side line players get to “touch” the ball).  The end lines are the goal lines.  The top of the penalty box is the “Eighteen” and the arc above that is “The D”, etc.

At some point you’ll want to introduce the player position numbers to your players.  This can seem daunting or silly at first but it is important and my experience is that the players are intrigued by it and it will help them develop their tactical understanding of the game more quickly.  In the long run it is critical in that it gives you another vocabulary for instructing your team how and where to move around the field.  Additionally, this is the position vocabulary that their future coaches will be using, so help them to be ready.  [Sidebar on defense positioning:  don't set your team up the way you'd set up bowling pins or blocks in an effort to create a "wall" of defense.   Fewer players in back-line defense positions may encourage your players to play better, smarter defense.]

Points of advice for planning your sessions:

1. Have modest goals.  One big idea and a handful of technical and tactical points to make around that idea to cover in any one session should be your default.  No matter how much stuff you see in their last game that you think needs to be addressed, remember that trying to cover all of it in one training session will ruin the session because at this point it’s unlikely that many of your players are really disciplined enough in training to absorb more than one or two important points.  Remember that your most important long term goal is to help your players get better at training, get better at understanding how to train effectively and with a purpose.  Staying focused on one central point throughout a session is the way to do that.

2. Try to make your sessions organic in that whatever your one point of focus is, everything else grows out of that.  Let’s say that after a game I decide we need to have a session on first touch.  And not just on the technique for trapping the ball in various ways but really a session where I try to get the players to understand how important first touch is.  What I need then is to have them playing a game in training where you can’t play at all if you don’t have good first touch.  We could play Rondo but some knuckleheads will try to kick their way through that too so instead we play Hot Corners and we set it up as a race competition between groups.  The first team to cycle through all four players in the center after six touches wins.  Players who don’t focus on the quality of their touch will be a detriment to their team.  I’ll let them play this for three or four cycles to bring the point home:  If you don’t have good first touch you are not actually playing the game yet.

3. I would recommend that everything including warm-ups should be with the ball.  If you want them to run to warm up their legs when practice begins have them do it with a ball at their feet.  If you want them to run for the sake of developing their endurance, have them do it with a ball at their feet.  And set up your running course so that ball control is required, so no simply running in a straight line.  We are going to be constantly working to rebuild players’ understanding of the game.  Most of them will come to the game thinking of it as a game of kicking and running.  But to be really played it must be a game of sprinting then walking then jogging then sprinting again, all the while trying to control the ball with a delicate touch.  Control, control, control...always ball control.  There is no future beyond low-level recreational soccer for kickers.  But more importantly, the game only becomes beautiful when we play it with grace and subtlety, with technical control that allows creativity and improvisation.  Your players may resist your efforts to teach them how to play with skill but eventually they will come to appreciate that the game is much more fun when played skillfully.  (And if you play against a team that wins because they have players with better technical skill do not miss the opportunity to point that out to your team and maybe even to their parents.)