These days, I work with a lot of different youth teams at various levels – from park district or recreational programs, to higher level club and travel teams. Due to the nature of my job, I often coach sessions with players and teams that are permanently coached by someone else as part of guest appearances, clinics, and various other types of sessions. In one of these sessions recently, one thing that I noticed about the team I was coaching was how many players ignored the bo

It has become commonplace among many coaches that our youngest players need to master technique before learning tactics. After all, how can we teach players to switch the point of attack if they can’t even pass or control the ball? The logic behind this philosophy is mostly sound, but it is often misinterpreted and certainly mis-implemented. A succinct counterargument to this logic would be: Why should we teach a player how to pass a ball if they don’t know why they are pass

Clubs and coaches providing post-season player evaluations is a trend that has caught on in the last few years. The best clubs will even provide a mid-season evaluation or report to allow players time to work on specific skills before the end of the season. 95% of the time, providing these evaluations is a waste of time, energy, and resources for youth clubs. In most cases, the players don’t even read them, and if they do, they read them once and never look at them again. The

The phrase “no pain, no gain” has been widely popular in sports for a long time. People tend to put this statement on t-shirts, posters, and live by it as a badge of honor. Usually when people use this phrase, they are referring to working hard physically. People believe that you can’t get stronger and grow without going through the pain – both physical and mental – of working physically hard. Many people believe that athletes are developed and achieve success through this pr