I’ve been a coach at a relatively high level for the past 26 years. Blown other teams out and had the brakes beat off my teams, both more times than I can count. Sometimes you’re that much better than the other team and sometimes they’re that much better than you. Life isn’t fair that way sometimes.

I doubt 8-9yr old soccer players who still huddle the ball will have any clue as to how to implement a game plan to stop a good team. You’d be wasting your time (and the kids’) trying to implement one if you tried it. Stick with what you’ve been doing and be true to it. If you lose, so be it. Losing is part of life, even at 8/9 years old and frankly, the kids will forget about it in 30 minutes anyway.

The only ones who’ll make a bigger deal out of it than it is are the psychopathic parents anyway.

Try this one, great for that age. Bring glo sticks to the game. After you get your asses kicked, everyone has a chem stick. Tell them they all get to think about that loss as long as that chem stick is glowing, when it goes out, that game is over and you think about the next one. Then as a team, they all crack them and shake them. They go home with a little light sticky and are happy but tomorrow it is out and they have to move one.
Make what ever life inspiring speech you want. but 8 year olds like light sticks!

At that age they don't take it too hard, and will forget about it within hours, if that long.

Just do what you do, give them any coaching they can absorb, and let them play the game.

As far as the game itself use the offsides rule to your advantage. Kids at that age naturally hang back so they won't get burnt. Keep our defense up as much as you can. You may even want to mention this to the refs before the game so they remember when to call offsides. Goodluck! And thanks for coaching. Above all, let the girls have fun. If it does become a blowout let them play positions they don't always get to play.

Jim

In our rec and competitive leagues (u12 and under) we have an SOP to handle brewing blowouts.

Once a team goes up by 4 goals we add a player to the team who's trailing. If they score again, we add another player and so on.

The approach keeps things fun for both sides and gives everyone something to focus on beside getting the brakes beat off ya.

quote:

Originally posted by Loswsmith:
Sweep the leg.


Or just do the best you can, no one can expect more from you, and ask your players to do that. If they have done that, that's all they can do.

In the same vain, they might be a little young but teach them to aggressively drive through the ball. It may take a couple of on body contacts ...ball first of course (not suggesting hockey style body checks), but after a couple times I have found that it makes players think twice before they go for the ball.

I the only season I played, senor year, I was center striker and had the worst "touch" on the team and yet started most games and made all county. This was mainly due to the fact that I went hard to the ball...always.


At least until I broke my tib/fib

my nickname was Blitzkrieg

I ma be wrong on this but, here is my personal example. For many years I coached little league baseball. The teams we had tried their best and we would win some games but, there was certain teams that would just blow us out of the water and their kids, coaches, and parents took delight in it happening as well.

We played a team that we were thumping bad without even trying. They couldn’t do anything g right and they were breaking down, the coaches and parents were as well. Not belly aching just getting down in the dumps. Well, I was first base coach and started to have our players lead off before the pitch in an obvious way to get called out so the other team would have at least a chance to bat.

Some of the kids came into the dug out and asked why we were doing that. I just kindly reminded them of the times they got kicked in the teeth and when the other certain teams enjoyed it and the crappy feeling they had.

Maybe I was wrong but, I wanted to teach them a little humility and good sportsmanship.

We played a pretty good team on Saturday. Unfortunately the other team scored within the first 5 minutes and kept momentum the entire game. I need to get these girls to learn how to clear the ball better. Considering we had 4 players missing and only two substitutes compared to the other teams 5 subs I think we did great.

We only managed 5 or 6 shots on goal the entire game. The other team probably had somewhere around 15-20 shots at least. Our keepers had some spectacular saves and incredibly close calls. With less than 2 minutes left in the game two of our girls burned the entire field and actually passed to each other then scored! We lost 4-1 but getting a goal near the end was a HUGE morale boost for our team. I heard one of our girls tell her parents “I had so much fun today! That was a great game!”. That made my day.

The really good team is coming up this weekend. I’ll let you guys know how it goes. Maybe we can beat them.

Nice !! great job Coach--

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Glad to hear it, Stickman.

Good result against a power house.

I'm curious as to what special tactics you used or formation if you did anything differently from normal.

Great job Coach!!

Stick,

I coached soccer for 12 years, and I got introduced to it by my kids. But no other parents wanted to, so I went to the classes, got my background checks, and kept up with the appropriate licenses required by our state league as dependent on the age group I was coaching.

I will sum it up as this, "kids sports are fun, until parents get involved". There are 3 main philosophies of youth sports: Physical development, psychological development, and social development. In a nutshell, with any kids sports, they have to learn the skills to play, then they have to learn to be good, then they have to learn to play as a team. But the primary focus was to keep kids involved in the sport, 75% of the kids will drop out of youth sports by the time they hit high school, I can personally attest to that. So between the ages of 4-8 is having fun, 8-12 is building skills, and after 12 it is all about winning. That will be expected in the higher level age groups.

So let me backtrack. When my kids first started, at age 4, there were coaches that "recruited" the best players to have a "winning season". Let me add that we didn't keep score, there was no score board, we didn't hand out trophies at the end of the season. But these same coaches pulled the same crap all the way up until high school, and a few of them are high school coaches. But now they are having trouble getting kids to play.

My biggest issue was team formation before the season. My last season as a coach, I had 27 kids that wanted to play on my team, but another coach showed up with his 5 players. I stayed out of this process, but they obviously had to take kids who specifically signed up on my team. Some of my parents flat out refused, and once their son got on the other team's roster, they just said, "No, he's not playing". And they didn't.

My "soccer" kids went from a team that didn't win a single game during their first season, but we were undefeated in our last season, over a span of 6-7 years. My son was the top scorer in our entire division. But I never ran up scores. If it was getting lopsided, we'd switch around the players between offense, defense, and goalies, and tell the kids to just have fun. But this was at the psychological development phase. Once it become all about winning, I knew my shelf life as a coach had expired. I enjoyed every year of it, but I don't miss it, and it's primarily because of the other coaches.

One thing these coaches overlook is the development of kids. Little Johnny may be an all star at 6 y/o, but Little Billy will be a bad ass at 12y/o. But as a youth, especially for young kids, is making sure they have fun, and continue to play, and stay in the sport. It's hard to form a team when you don't have kids.

My high school has an "upcoming freshman" recognition for the soon to be freshman players. The girls side had 22 girls, the boys had 5. These were the same coaches I dealt with during my career. And they still ask if my son will play, he really doesn't want to play for them.

Where do I begin. Ok, I’ll start with a little bit of background on the team we played today. These girls have been together for 4 years and have not lost a game in 3 years. A few of the girls on my team are playing soccer for the first time ever. We played them today with only two subs compared to their 4 subs.

I decided today to run a new, more aggressive formation that we drilled in practice on Thursday. We ran a 2-2-2 and I told my midfielders that they are both offense and defense. When we have the ball we attack and they move up with our forwards and can score too. (They liked hearing this) When the other team had the ball their job was to take it back ASAP and help the defense if they got onto our side of the field.

WHAT A GAME!!!!!!! my girls had complete and total control of the field. We owned the mid field and kept the ball on their side of the field the vast majority of the game. On paper we outplayed them, we outshot them and just got a little unlucky. They got a goal in the first half but just barely, it hit the bar and bounced in. We had two shots hit their goal post and their keeper had two amazing saves.

One of our parents is friends with their coach and after the game they talked for a bit. Their coach was shocked at how our team played, we are the only team to hold them to one goal in a loooooooong time. The coach even admitted that they could very easily have lost this game to us.

I had four parents come up to me after the game and thank me for coaching and then comment on how excellent that game was to watch. The best part of it all was hearing my girls talking to each other about how much fun they were having.

I honestly think I like coaching more than playing. I’m going to try to convince the parents to keep this team together.

Thank you all for your input and advice. Today was just amazing! Even though we lost a very close game I let our girls and their parents know that they did a great job can be nothing but proud of their effort. To me watching them do the things we did in practice and hold a powerhouse to one goal and almost beat them feels like a win.

Congrats, Stickman, obviously a great job coaching them up.

Thanks. It’s been a lot more fun than I was expecting. My son is jealous that I’m not coaching his team so I’ll possibly be coaching two soccer teams next year. The sports director at our local YMCA was telling me they take extra effort to schedule back to back games with no overlap for those coaching multiple teams. He said if you want to get in and get out and not have long chunks of time between your kids games the best thing to do is coach.

It sounds like you did great. Good job.

Season two is starting today!!!!

I am happy to report my team Has a ton of returning players!!

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
Season two is starting today!!!!

I am happy to report my team Has a ton of returning players!!

Good luck this season...

Good luck this season! Good on you for coaching. You may very likely be giving these kids life lessons that they don’t even realize yet.

Not sure how I missed the original thread but I’ve been coaching youth sports for 10 years now. The game I’m most proud of was my second year coaching 6u football. And, like your game, it was a loss.

It was the super bowl game and the team we played was way better than us. They had already beat us in the regular season something like 36-6. Without going into detail this team shouldn’t have been in our division but they took advantage of a last minute rule change to play in our division instead of the one they should have been in.

Anyway, they averaged something like 40 points a game and had only allowed 2 TDs all season IIRC. We were a good team but heavy underdogs. We lost the game 6-0. But man what a performance by the kids! I’ve won several championships since then but never have I been more proud of a team. And despite most of them being devastated (and more than one crying) after the game, even years later it was not uncommon for one of those kids to bring that game up. As they have grown up many of them have looked back fondly on that loss.