Dakota Rev Tournament

This past weekend we participated in the Dakota Rev Indoor tournament at the Rosemount dome. We did well and won the U11 boys age group. Although the group was not as strong as I would have hoped we did have a couple good games.

Game #1 vs Minnesota Thunder Jrs 98.e White 7-0 W

Game #2 vs Minnesota Thunder Jrs 99.s Blue 7-1 W

Game #3 vs Dakota Rev 5-0 W

Championship vs Dakota Rev 6-3 W

We play a couple of formations over the weekend to see what worked well, we tired 3-3-1, 2-4-1, and a 2-3-2. Each provided interesting situations for the boys to deal with. What I really like about this group is that we can put pretty much anyone anywhere and still see good soccer. One of the things I struggle with as a coach is discouraging players from going 1v1 and testing their individual skills. I understand that soccer is a team sport and I preach that but is having a team play two-three touch an entire game at this age really the best course of development? If they dont learn 1v1 skills now when will they? The scary part is when they are 13 or 14 and can balance their skills with passing very consistently what is going to hold them back from being successful? Right now (Soccer blast league, Futsal, scrimmages) what we are seeing is glimpses of what will be. The reason i bring this all up as this weekend was the first time I really saw us struggle with finding some sort of balance between our passing (team play) and our skills (individuals). We will continue to talk about this balance and how we create it and how it will benefit us.

I do not want to continue on a bad note as we did a lot of really good things all weekend. My personal favorite is the charater we showed in the final game. As a coach and especially coach of a team this age the team really feeds off of you. To my surprise we were down 2-1 going into half time and eventually we were down 3-1 at one point. The worst thing I could do at that point would be to panic and become negatively animated as this would have transferred over and reflect in the teams play. We had not played poorly up to this point but we did not play well. What I did see was a pick up of tempo and concentration by the boys. At some point in the last 15 minutes of the game they realized that a team effort was really need at this point and they started to play some of the better soccer that they had played all weekend. The only adjustment I made was a small one, I moved us into a more attacking formation and it really paid off with 4 or 5 unanswered goals in a very short period. Sometimes I tend to stay quite on the sidelines and coach the group on the bench more then the players on the field, however there are some instances were that is opposite. I want the boys to be able to play and not rely on me for the answers, if they can figure out how to apply what we work on in practice on their own it will only benefit them more in the long run. So all I did was make a change they adapted and they figured out how to play within it.

Overall it was good to get some 8v8 games in to shake off the rust and it also gave some new insight to our pressing issues as a group. Looking forward to heading to the indoor tournament in Milwaukee on the 27th through the 1st.

Comments

[Patrick]

I agree totally that it is very difficult at this age to hold the boys back with their individiual plays while competitively tryin to win games. It is a balance coaches want but very hard to accomplish. If they are not creative at this age, it will be very difficult to untrain them as they get older. What I've found, especially with older kids, is to stress on the risk versus rewards factor. If the risk outweighs the reward then go for it and be as creative as they can..take the opponent on! If on the hand, the reward is not that great, don't take the risk. Play simple and try it another time. Just my thoughts.

[pwalczak]

Patrick,

Great comment, lets chat this weekend.