At age five, I got my first Coke.  It was so good that I wanted it to last.  Chances were pretty good that it might be three or four years before I would get another one.  So after a few sips, I put the bottle in the windowsill (we didn't have an icebox, much less a refrigerator).  Unfortunately, the next morning the soda was flat and stale and had to be thrown away.  As a five-year-old, I suddenly understood that you should enjoy life's blessings, no matter how small, when you can, because they won't last forever.
-Lou Holtz

Today we started up our body movement training before training started with all the U12 players from the East and South.  Everyone arrived 15 minutes early and we spent the time doing cart wheels, hand stands, somersaults, wheelbarrow races and other things of that nature.  We have started this because in order to be a top level soccer player you have to know how your body works in a variety of ways.  You need to be able to control your body and learning to move it in ways that you are not used to will increase your balance, coordination, strength and reaction time.  This also is a great way to make sure that the girls are awake and ready to start training.

On to the team session.  We have 3 sessions left at Holy Angels and I wanted to keep working on getting the girls to see how and when to combine.  I wanted to keep working on creating the mindset of seeing the game in a series of 2v1's.

I. Tennis Ball Work
We started doing this with our U9 girls age group to work on their spatial awareness and ability to judge where a ball will land.  In the few weeks that we have done it with that age group, we have seen huge improvements.  This will be another activity that we are going to be doing for 5-10 minutes at the beginning of each training to help make the girls better athletes.

Today was the intro.  We taught the girls how to throw and catch the ball.  They started out 10 yards apart and had to complete 10 passes in a row.  Then we moved them back to 20 yards.  We ended with having the girls throw the balls as high up as they could and their partner had to try to catch the ball above their head. 

II. Ball Masters
We showed them some quick skill moves that Cristiano Ronaldo does and we let them experiment with them on their own.

III. 2v1 With A Wide Goal


IV. 6v6 Scrimmage