Interestingly enough, after my last article about Competition in Youth Soccer: Part 1, my U9 Boys played lots of indoor games and did okay (we played parity). I tend to use indoor soccer as a chance for the kids to just play. The indoor game is a high intensity, all out action packed 10 minute games of soccer. I barely said a word apart from the line-ups. I believe the game is the greatest teacher, in the indoor environment it was good to see some of the kids play instinctively. It was interesting to see who organised who, who talked to their team-mates, and who was in the right position. At the end of two hours of playing, they were all worn out, but all of them were smiling asking if we could play a bunch more games.
This led me to wonder a few things – is our Rec league not competitive enough internally? If the coaching was ran by paid coaches would the standard be better? Is parent coaching a bad thing at Rec level? All interesting questions and I’m sure each club has their own thoughts and perspective.
As I touched on in my last article, most of my boys have come through from rec level, where they were used to getting trophies for a lot of things. Personally, I think giving a kid a trophy just because you can is a bad thing. Anyway, at the end of our Travel season last Fall, I had a box of t-shirts I had made for the kids unopened on a table for our end of season meeting. One of the kids pointed to the box and said “Is that our trophies?”. With a chance to kill two birds with one stone (a reply about winning and putting my point across to the parents) I said “We’ll get trophies when we win something..” I think some kids are used to being rewarded too easily and then expect to be over indulged from then on. It’s not my way of coaching – I rewarded the boys’ effort through the season with the t-shirts, when we win something because we played good soccer, I’ll happily stand with them to get our picture taken with our trophies.
I also had an issue last season where a player was getting paid for every goal he scored. Once I found out about it, I went straight to the parent, said it was unacceptable, and moved the kid into a midfield or defensive position for the next few games. I told the parent that his motivation should be to play soccer and have fun doing it. If his sole motivation was to score goals for money and not for the joy you get when the ball hits the back of the net, then his mind wasn’t in the right place.
There is a time and a place for the parents to be supportive and encouraging but there is also the opposite of that where the parent is either uninterested or obsessive. Both of which are dangerous to a youngsters development as a young man/women and a soccer player. A parent can either place too much pressure on the child or too little pressure leading to the kid not wanting to play soccer any more. I emphasize to my U9 Boys that they come to training twice a week, give 100% effort in both training and games and they have fun and learn. I even have some parents who tell me to go harder on their kids! However, there is a fine balance.
The positives of an A and a B team: Encourages competition and there is a motivation to keep a high standard for kids on both teams (they can play well and move up to the A Team or not show effort and move to the B Team). Players and parents feel a sense of belonging to the whole group.
The negatives of an A and a B team: Creates division amongst the parents. There is also a chance that the kids in the B team get too discouraged and give up the game of soccer altogether.
The Solution?
Increase the A and B team incrementally over the season. Play one or two games per season where there are A and B team games. As the parents get used to this there should be less of a kneejerk reaction. Another suggestion is to play three tournaments – play the first two parity, then play the last tournament as competitive.
I will leave you with this quote from Mia Hamm:
I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.
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Hi Coach Lee,
I would like to hear you comments on this. I’m new to soccer as a parent of a 7 yr old girl who just started her first comp season after one season of recreational. I was hoping at this age level the goal would be to have fun while getting a taste for competition. What I have learned is that the coach picks the best kids for the “A” team and leaves the rest of the kids for the “B” team. The problem here is that the girls on the B team lose badly week after week and the girls on the A team go nearly undefeated. There was another case where a coach picked the max for her team, 15 out of a total of 18 girls who tried out. I felt bad for the girls who didn’t get picked, my daughter being one of them. Why couldn’t the coach form another team and get another coach so all the girls who tried out could play? They could put a mix of skill levels on both teams. Sure, neither team would be undefeated but both teams would experience winning and losing. In this league, you see some big miss matches. Not all towns had enough to have a B team, some towns have B teams and some towns have one team with 15 kids. You see teams with 15 players, all hand picked, all fresh as daisies due to the frequent subbing, playing B teams with 9 kids who are exhausted and frustrated. You see A teams shutting out B teams where the keeping track of points ends after 6-0. Any thoughts?
Hi David, unfortunately (and I don’t want to say that this is happening in your instance) many coaches aren’t looking at the long term development and fostering the love of the game in the kids. They take the winning and losing of games as a personal achievement.
When I took over my boys team they were U9 and fresh out of Rec soccer. There was quite a gulf in talent amongst the group, and I certainly could have picked an A and a B team right off the bat. However, I chose to play parity. Parity is where you split the kids up into two teams so each team is fairly balanced in terms of talent.
I have to say, we took some really bad hammerings, sometimes in double digits. However, through hard work by both the boys and myself, they have come a long way in a little less than two years. We still play our classic games (and our own tournament) in parity, and we sometimes take an A and a B team to other tournaments. My reason for doing so is that I want some of my stronger players to be challenged that little bit extra then they would playing parity games, but the rest of the boys (some of whom could make the ‘A’ team) receive plenty of time on the field, which is where they need to be the most.
Certainly it would seem in your later example that two teams of 9 (with all 18 children involved), instead of one large roster would have been a more suitable setup.
We need to give the game of soccer back to the kids, otherwise, the future of the game could quickly degenerate and we could lose the progress that this country has made over the past several years.