Fall Season Kick Off Redux
Saturday, September 1, 2007 at 08:10AM Tuesday, Aug 22 – Field Training
Lighting forced us to delay the 6:00PM start of training today, but we were able to get going at around 6:20PM.
The idea for today was to do some benchmark testing of the girls, then finish with some 4v4 play.
I took half the group for some timed dribbling testing, and Andy took the other half for some juggling work.
Dribbling Turns
- Partners work with one ball in a 6x3 yard channel
- Player A starts at one end of the channel with a ball in the center of the channel on one of the 3 yd endlines
- At the coach’s go signal, the Player A dribbles to the opposite endline (6 yards away), crosses the endline, executes a specific right footed turn, dribbles back to the starting endline, crosses it and executes the same specific turn with their left foot
- Player A works for 45 seconds and see how many successful turns they can complete, Player B counts the turns
- If an incorrect turn is used, or if the correct turn is used but completed with the incorrect foot, Player B does not count it
We tested each girl on three different Dribbling Turns – using the inside of their foot Inside Cut), outside of their foot (Outside Cut), and then the sole of their foot (Pull Back or Shield Turn).
Pressure to Perform (P2P) Juggling
We’ve emphasized and tracked juggling progression in the Academy already, so this was nothing new. What was new this year is the approach we now take with testing in a Pressure to Perform environment. There is little doubt that, no matter what we do to minimize it, there is pressure on the kids to perform in games and tournaments, especially when we travel to regional events. The idea with our P2P testing is to put the girls in uncomfortable environments early. These out of comfort zone experiences will, in our minds, help make the kids more mentally tough in the long run. This is assuming that the kids find success in these out of comfort zone experiences. I know that with practice, juggling records can be absolutely shattered in months, and this success in our P2P environment should help the players. We’ll see how things shake out with it.
So, we had all the kids come up and juggle in front of the entire group. They were given two tries to see how many juggles they could get using any soccer part of their bodies to keep the ball up in the air, then were tested again forced to use feet only. We would also record the players juggling record (if known).
As you can imagine, not one of the players, nervous and tense in front of the group, came anywhere near their individual records.
4v4 Free Play
Set Up
- 2 40x25 yard fields side by side with 2 yard flag goals on each endline
- Each goal was surrounded by a 4x2 yd no man’s land crease that no player could enter (this helps not allow a player to simply stand in front of the small goal as a GK
We had 7 teams of 4 players.
Procedure
- Blue v Green on field 1, Gold v Red on field 2
- Purple, Gray, and Orange on deck (in that order) with two players on each side of the field along the touchline that the fields shared (see diagram below)
- When a team gets scored on, they exit the field and send two players to each on deck line
- The team that is first up on deck enters the field that was just vacated by the got-scored-upon team, grabs a ball from the flag goal where the goal was scored, and attacks
So the team on deck could enter and play on either field, depending on which one of the 4 teams playing scored.
Make It Competitive
- +1 point for each team when they score a goal and vanquish an opponent to the on deck lines
- Which team has the most points at the end of the session?
Coaching Points
- Not many, let them play