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Entries in Training (92)

Monday
Feb232009

2/22 Futsol

At the session today we started off with our individual dribbling.  It was really simple as we just dribbled around the gym keeping our heads up while changing direction and speed.  Then we spent time on each players favorite move and went into the footskills routine.

After that we played "Blob Soccer" The Blob game is one of the fun camp games that I have strayed away from until recently under the misguided belief that this is top level club soccer and those camp games shouldn't be played here.  The Blob game is perfect for working on dribbling with your head up, changing speed, changing direction, and team defending.  Plus it is a ton of fun.

This game is just like Sharks and Minnows where everyone starts on an end line with their ball.  One person starts in the middle as the Blob.  It is the goal of the dribblers to get to the other end line with control of their ball.  The Blob in the middle tries to kick the balls out.  If a dribbler's ball goes out of bounds, the dribbler must join the blob by linking arms with the blob.  To really focus on keeping our heads up I kept splitting the blobs into groups of 2 so there were more blobs for the dribblers to go against.  

After a couple of games of Blob soccer we played a scrimmage with each team attacking 2 small Pugg goals.  The focus of the game was to keep your head up and try to score when you get the ball from far out or to find passes to the far side of the gym.

We ended with playing futsol.

 

Monday
Feb232009

Woodbury, St Cloud, Training, Meeting, Rosemount 2/20-2/21

On Thursday night I received the "Oh crap, can you help me out call" from Eric for the 16's this weekend.  The 16's are playing in our MTA College Showcase that is held in St Cloud.  Eric is taking his doctorate/phd/whatever degree you receive for taking more classes than anyone on earth, and his weekend class had been moved up to this weekend and he was not going to be able to make the first game of the showcase.  

The game was against Mequon from Wisconsin and it was slated as the match of the Showcase that would have the most college coaches in attendance.  In short, it would be good to have someone who knows the team coaching them.  Also, last year in this event we lost 0-4 to Mequon and it would be good for us to see how much we have improved.

Normally this would not be a big deal since I have coaches for all the Academy teams and I have Evan with the 13's.  But this weekend it was going to be tough because I had planned on being at the 13's training on Saturday since I missed last weekend.  

I also had a meeting planned with the parents of our U10 Boys team to go over our club philosophies.  It is still a work in progress to get everyone to buy into the fact that we create our Academy teams with the goal of individual development as our first priority and the Academy teams are not built in hopes of world domination and victory at all cost.  

While I say that a little in jest, it is important for us to communicate clearly as a club what our goals are so our players and parents can decide if this is what is best with them so I really wanted to be at this meeting.  

To go with this I had to be in Rosemount for the U12 Whites game at 1:30.  The 12's had participated in the Dakota Rev President's Day tournament and they had went 1-1-1 against some good teams while I was gone and I was happy to hear this.  However, with their last results being the draw and the loss if I missed this game and I had to have someone fill in to cover for me who was not named Mark or Carlie, things would not be well in the U12 world.  

Mark had his team playing on the field next to us and offered to coach both teams but if one of the teams won and the other did not, lord help us.  I would have to deal with that from some of the parents even though almost all of the parents on that team really understand what we are trying to accomplish.  

With these things weighing on my mind I began to make some phone calls to see if I would be able to get up to St Cloud to coach the 16's.  I talked with a number of the U10 parents between Thursday and Friday, as well as their coach, Matt Holmes, and I ended up writing out answers to a bunch of questions and putting together our philosophies and Matt said they would be good to have the meeting without me and I would plan on meeting with anyone who had any further questions on the following Saturday.

I talked with Evan about the 13's and he was set to run their training.  Due to a giant snow storm up north the team from Red River was not going to be able to make the first game of the Showcase so Cook was able to move the 16's game up 30 minutes so that would allow me enough time to make the 100 minute trek to Rosemount and arrive right at 1:30.  

Everything was set as I left to go and coach our U9's down in Woodbury in their final winter league game.  At this game I was able to forget about all the other things for an hour as the girls on this team have such a fun time playing the game.  Mini Alberts, one of the 16's younger sisters, decided to try slide tackling today and she was quite proud of herself after she slid twice in the game and could care less that the ball wasn't within 5 yards of her.  I truly recommend coaching this age group if you are in need of entertainment.

After that entertainment ended I made my way through the blizzard up to St Cloud so I could crash at my parents house for the night.  I would not see them though because my dad was in Madison and my mom was in Florida.  I think one of them got the raw end of the deal on that one.  Despite this, I still wanted to get up there on Friday night because I would rather drive late on Friday instead of waking up early tomorrow and driving.  

As I was driving up to St Clould I'm not sure if I ever actually saw the road as it was completely covered with snow.  I just kept hoping that the tail lights in front of me knew what they were doing.  I wondered how many people were doing the same thing.  It was a good thing whomever was leading us had a clue of where to turn.

Whew!  Saturday morning finally came.  I woke up early for the 9:40 game to make copies of the 16's player profiles and went to the Carribu Kinkos combo store at 8:15.  I ordered my Caramel High Rise and went next door to make copies and found that the Kinkos in St Cloud do not open until 9:00am on the weekends.  I asked in my head "What kind of town allows a business center to be closed early in the morning on weekends!" and then I remembered that people shouldn't be doing business early in the morning on weekends because sleep is good.

So I drank my Caramel High Rise while relaxing and waiting for the store to open to make the all important player profiles.  I relaxed even more when I didn't receive a call a little after 8:00 asking where Evan was and what was going on.  Even though Evan is never late and is great with the girls, there was still a little fear that something would happen and I'd get a phone call.

With the player profiles made it was off to the 16's game to see how we compared with Mequon 1 year later.  It turned out to be a non contest as we completely dominated them.  We spent a majority of the game in their half and scored 2 goals in the opening 30 minutes and cruised to a 2-0 victory.  It was great to see the improvement in one year with this group.

On my way down to Rosemount it turned out that I was one session off with my bad feeling premonition when I found out that Carlie had been in a minor car accident a couple of miles from Holy Angels and was unable to make it to the 12's training.  Luckily Mark was able to mix both the 12 groups together and run the session.  Since I had plenty of time in the car I also found out that the 10's meeting went very well and no follow up meeting would be necessary.  

I also talked with Evan about the 13's session.  Although unplanned, it was good for Evan and the girls that he was able to run the Saturday session for the 2nd week in a row so the girls continue to get used to his coaching style.  Evan built off of his session from last week and things went well.

I pulled into the Rosemount Dome parking lot at 1:28 and the 12's played well in their game.  Then I remembered that I had forgotten to eat all day.  It was time to go enjoy a nice steak and hang out with some friends after the long day.

 

Thursday
Feb192009

2/14 Training With Evan

With me out of town Evan led the training today.  He worked on dribbling with your head up, shooting, and then played a game that involved high pressure as a team.

In talking with Evan he said during the high pressure game that every time the group who was high pressuring as a team did not step together as an entire team (ie 3 players went and 3 stayed back) the other team combined around the 3 that were pressuring and then walked around the 3 that stayed back.  Evan said it was great to show the girls what happens when a couple of players hesitate.

It is also great for us on offense that we were able to punish the defending team through good offense.  All this work on defending has forced us to become much better at attacking.  I can't wait for us to get a couple of games in a row and begin to put everything together.

Only 4 weeks until the friendlies up at St Cloud and the games begin!

Monday
Feb092009

2/9 It Isn't Magic: Training With Ralph Akale

One of the best things about being with the Thunder Academy is that there are so many incredible coaches and trainers in the club.  Last Wednesday when I was at the dome talking with Ralph Akale and he mentioned that he would enjoy working with the 13 girls.  He had seen us play a couple of times against the South 12 boys where his son Mukwelle plays so he was familiar with the girls.

I was super excited when he said that he would be able to lead our training today and I was very interested in what he was going to teach the girls as Ralph is one of the premier Technical trainers that I have seen.

Ralph began the session by telling the girls that he cannot teach them anything.  I can only show you what to do.  You must teach yourself in order to learn anything.  Then he talked to the girls about what it takes to achieve their dreams, whether it is on the soccer field or off of it.  "You have to have a plan and you have to be dedicated."  He then asked the girls who their favorite player was and they responded that Cristiano Ronaldo was because he has great moves, he is fast, and he scores lots of goals.  (I doubt there are any other reasons why they like him.)

"How did Ronaldo get so good?" asked Ralph to the girls.  "Because he practiced everything thousands and millions of times.  Nothing that he does is magic.  It is repetition and dedication.  It is important when you are training to not get frustrated. When you get frustrated there becomes a wall between you and your dreams.  You cannot allow that wall to stop you.  You must refocus and continue to work."

Ralph then let the girls in on another secret of his "When you mess up today, I am going to laugh at you because it is funny.  I want you to laugh at yourself when I laugh.  If you laugh at yourself you will not get frustrated.  Laughter is key."

When he finished talking with the girls he taught the girls how to find their comfort zone with the ball.  The comfort zone is the zone where you can have your head up and the ball within reach of your feet.  The girls started working on it without moving the ball, then they moved it with the sole of their foot in a 5 yard space, and ended by dribbling around with their head up.  Ralph watched each of them and caught them every time their head went down he laughed and corrected them.

A couple of the girls became much stiffer with their bodies when they started dribbling so Ralph reenacted how they would look if they were running with out the ball.  Everyone laughed, again, and then he made another good point: "Don't change who you are because you have the ball.  When you have the ball, be yourself, relax and enjoy."

Next he had the girls stand without the ball and had them shift their weight from one foot to the other while moving their arms.  He then began to beat box a rhythm for the girls to move to and they all began to dance.  

It was funny to see a majority of the girls looking around at their teammates asking in their head "Is it cool to do this?  I must look really silly."  The girls who were doing this were stiff, uptight and had no rhythm.  The girls who were into it were loose, relaxed, and moving to the beat.  

Reflecting back on the session I couldn't believe how many girls were in the former category and worried about what the outside world thought about them dancing.  I have no doubt that when I do this with our U10's that they will go crazy dancing and they will not care at all what other people think because they are more concerned with dancing as opposed to thinking about what other people think about their dancing.  It was a good point for me to see so we can work on the confidence and self belief of the girls on a consistent basis with fun and crazy activities like this.

The next step with this was for the girls to begin doing the scissors around the ball while they were dancing to the beat.  It was amazing how much more rhythm the girls learned from the 20 minutes of doing this.  Comparatively speaking against all the other U13 girls teams I have seen, we have some of the most comfortable and creative girls on the ball, but the level that Ralph wanted them to do this at was way beyond what any of them were at.  The rhythm and coordination that Ralph was looking for was a great reminder for me to go back and revisit all of the basics and work to get them to another level.

Ralph then had the girls do this dribbling and the improvement was huge.

The last thing that Ralph worked on was a 4 move dribbling sequence.  

To recap the 80 minute session here is all that Ralph worked on:

Training set up:
-You and the ball
-Moving the ball with the sole of your foot
-Dribbling around with your head up
-Dance without the ball
-Scissors with the ball standing still
-Scissors with the ball moving: 5, 10, 15 times
-Roll, Scissors, Step, Reverse Cryueff-jump back with other foot 

That was it.  Incredibly basic, tons of repetition, focussed, fun and absolutely fantastic.  The training session really reinforced my belief that the top players training sessions are very simple with lots of repetitions.  There is no magic.

We are hoping that Ralph will be able to work with us a couple of more times through the year.

Saturday
Jan312009

12/15 Training- Combination Finishing and 1v0-4v4

We started off training with some fun partner juggling challenges for the girls.  The first one was one girl had to juggle the ball up high and her partner had to take a knee and hit the ball off her other knee, get up and juggle it back to her partner.  The second challenge was one partner juggles it up high and the other partner hits it off her back back to her partner.  The third challenge was to have one parter juggling and the other partner hits it with her shoulders back to her.

The girls seemed to enjoy the challenges and it helped to work on our ability to time the ball out of the air and control your body.

Next we did a Combination Finishing exercise that Mark Abboud wrote up.

We only focussed on the pulling away portion.  Eventually we added in live defenders at the trash cans that could start to recover as soon as the ball was passed.  Adding in the recovery defender really showed the girls how important the pass was to the success of the break away.

We talked about all the different ways that you could hit the through pass and it was exciting to see the girls actually trying the different ways to strike the ball.  Many of the girls struggled with the different ways to hit the passes but they kept trying the different ways even though they didn't have to.

After training I told the girls how happy I was that they were trying to push themselves to get better and they were not afraid to look bad.  If you don't look bad in training you are not pushing yourself to get better.  Looking back on it now I am also very pleased the the girls continued to try the different passes even when we were competing and did not get discouraged when their pass didn't come off and their team didn't score any points because of the missed pass.  They could have played it safe the next time but a lot of them continued to push themselves and continued to get better.

Next we played our 1v0 to 4v4 game but I modified it so we went to 2 goals and had teams coming off of each post.  The variation worked very well and I was able to get a lot out of the new set up with going from quick counter attacking to building the attack when it was 4v4.

 

 

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