The Baffled Parent’s Guide to Coaching Youth Soccer

5 Responses to “The Baffled Parent’s Guide to Coaching Youth Soccer”

1. Judy says:

   April 22, 2010 at 9:42 pm

   I bought this for my daughter who volunteered to be Soccer Coach for the first time. I say she wanted to do it but perhaps was more stong armed into doing it. She establish it helpful.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
2. Shannon Buharp says:

   April 22, 2010 at 10:48 pm

   The book gave very helpful information. I have never coached anything and it gave helpful insight into giving the best experience I can into my son’s 4 yr ancient soccer team.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
3. R. Cepak says:

   April 23, 2010 at 12:22 am

   I’m a second year coach with very limited playing experience. I played soccer during elementary school but it was essentially mob ball. This book has helped a fantastic deal. It gives fantastic suggestions for organizing practices and the drills, ahem I mean games, are fantastic. The problem, analysis, solution section is also very helpful.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
4. A Customer says:

   April 23, 2010 at 2:32 am

   This book took me from being a total non-athlete, knowing nearly nothing about soccer and never having coached anything before, to being a coach with a plot. I am education my son’s U8 soccer team, and even with this book it has been a challenge, but lacking the book, I would have been completely lost. Here’s what the book did for me:

   (1) it taught me the rules of soccer. I did have a bit of distress understanding the offside rule as stated in the book, so I had to question a friend to clarify for me.

   (2) it taught me the most fundamental soccer skills: dribbling, passing, shooting.

   (3) it gave me sample practices and a all-purpose structure to use as templates for my own practices, and it gave me plenty of games and drills to choose from to fill them.

   (4) it told me what to do on game day.

   (5) it prepared me for the psychology of my wild and crazy boys. This is key. I am a female “intellectual type” who has never really played or loved watching sports (and has never worked with this age group), so the whole mindset was completely foreign to me. It prepared me for the facts that they would listen to only the briefest of instructions, that they needed to be moving at nearly all times, that for them no drill or game would be as exciting as JUST SOCCER, in its pure form.

   So why four stars? There’s one thing that could really improve this book, and that is some kind of guide, for all the games and drills in the book, that would rate the maturity level and skill level needed for each one. Maybe also a minimum child-to-adult ratio required to run it successfully. (Sorry to say ours is 10 to 1.) As a U8 coach in a relatively casual city recreation league, I am at the very bottom end of the proposed audience for this book. And because of my inexperience, it is very hard for me to tell which of the drills are appropriate for my team, until I get onto the meadow with them to try it. By then it’s too late, and the failed drill can make it hard to re-engage the kids for the next activity. For this reason I plot to order the guide for 6-and-under soccer even though my kids are over six. I need some tried-and-right tricks for engaging the youngest players when things aren’t going the way I plotted.

   Overall I am very grateful for this book and what it has done for our team.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
5. Derick D. Cummins says:

   April 23, 2010 at 4:11 am

   Very helpful. First time coach. Had a winning season largely thanks to this book.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5