The Best Values Haven’t Changed, They’re Just More Critical Now
In this article, I describe the approach I took to coach boys' youth soccer from 6-year-olds up to ‘under-10’. Over the course of 9 seasons, I pushed myself to observe, experiment, and continuously introduce improvements to my approach based on my understanding of the players.
There are interesting parallels with the processes many businesses are now adopting.
Many businesses face pressure to adapt more quickly to changes in what their customers expect and value. Business processes are evolving to support change and innovation, to place their trust in the learning and collaboration of teams, and to iterate cycles of everything more quickly. I accepted these values a long time ago, and I had them in mind as I combined best practices plus my own ideas to provide the best possible experience for young soccer players.
I learned a lot from experienced coaches and licensing courses, but I also consciously broke from the status quo. Not enough coaches adjusted their approach for younger players, both with what would engage them and the correct skill priorities for their age. The strict discipline, level of instruction and motivators useful with older kids were lost on these boys. Verbal communication style also needs to be adjusted for younger players, from checking up instinctive reactions to simplifying phrasing and word choice. Teen boys respond to ‘ego’ challenges, are conscious of not letting the team down, and can absorb multi-step instructions. Under-10 players are looking for the attention and appreciation of adults, they have lots of energy and an innocent sense of fun, they have an individual not team focus, and their verbal comprehension requires simple instructions.
Developing better awareness of the player’s perspective helped me to use my voice sparingly during scrimmages or games. I used it to cheer a good move or suggest a simple, understandable option to the player if they seemed at a loss or stuck. Repetition in practice develops a player’s muscle memory, and games were an opportunity to show what they had learned in practice. Games were when parents and siblings were watching, it is noisier, and some kids get stressed about expectations. I realized some coaches or parents set a player up for frustration by giving commands from the sideline to stop doing this or do something else. Did he hear what the adult said? Could he comprehend it? Was it something he’d practiced and could do? Often it resulted in confusion or the player freezing up. I worked to create an environment in which these young players wanted to be on the ball and try things, and shrug off mistakes. It took a complete approach to develop that across all my players.
The Accidental Coach
I hadn’t planned to be my son’s soccer coach (although I did start kicking the soccer ball with him at the age of two, I’m a big fan!). The need simply arose. When we signed him up for his first season at the local YMCA they were short on coaches. I agreed to coach my son’s team, then I took a coaching licensing course, then another, bought a whistle and enjoyed the sound, then liked being called “Coach Herbert”. When I adopted two children I stressed how best to parent in different situations. I challenged myself to improve my skills through reading, observing, trying things, and tuning in to my kids’ reactions. Coaching felt like a natural extension of my approach to parenting. I had no problem with being introspective and changing styles or habits that weren’t working.
In my first few seasons of coaching, many players were on a sports team for the first time and had a wide range of skills and coordination. Some kids had been signed up by their parents but didn’t want to be there. Each season all but a couple of kids were new to me. My son was my one permanent player.
I decided no matter what each boy’s interest or skill level coming in, I wanted each player to end the season feeling they had accomplished something and to be motivated to continue to play sports and improve. Setting goal number one as inspiring each player to take ownership of their skills growth gave me a reference for all my decisions. It gave me an immutable value.
By league rule players must get equal playing time in these age groups. With older players, parents often focus on their son’s playing time, position, and the team’s win/loss record. This can distract coaches from an emphasis on skills development. The challenge I had instead was players with a wide range of skills (at season start, some players would fall down when trying to kick the ball). I had to get the whole team on board with practicing and establish an expectation of respect between teammates. At the start of each season I got to know each player, their interest level, and skills. I worked at setting up drills in which I could right-size challenges to each player and get them reaching for goals that were personally achievable.
I wanted each player to see they were in charge of how good they would become. I did not emphasize learning to follow orders, listening to lectures, or standing in lines. Boys this age have a lot of energy and being on the field is a release. I searched for drills and small-sided games and came up with a few of my own, that kept them engaged and not in a situation where their natural energy was going to cause a distraction or get them in trouble.
I wanted them to know if I turned my back to talk to a parent or another coach and they goofed off, they weren’t cheating me, they were cheating themselves. Practice was when they developed a feel for the ball and skills that would pay off in games. I made a point of watching for the boys who improved the most, regardless of where they ranked overall for skills, and I’d recognize their achievement in front of the rest of the team. This tended to get all the boys working harder. I had a plan for each practice made up of 5–10 minute drills and small-sided games. Each week I’d try one or two new activities and I’d work on the best order to keep them both having fun and engaged with the drills.
After a few seasons, I learned that everything worked better within the team when I first focused on certain core skills, kind of a common denominator for all players on the team.
The Minimal Viable Product
For defense, the first priority skill for each player to master was the blocking tackle, to challenge an opponent who had possession of the ball, and to do so while blocking the progress of the opponent towards our goal. Young players get a lot of anxiety when faced with an opponent moving the ball past them. They instinctively either retreat or over-commit. I broke down the tackle into simple steps, emphasizing balance, getting their weight anchored, and positioning themselves between the opponent and their own goal. Soon every player, regardless of skill level or coordination when they started the season, gained confidence they could stand up to an opponent’s attack. This was the ideal skill to build as a common denominator across the team. If successfully executed they found themselves in possession of the ball in transition to offense. Often it was boys who started the season with few skills who got a huge boost from learning this and then successfully performing a tackle in a game. Any player who could stop an opponent was contributing a lot to the team.
In an Agile business, a Minimum Viable Product provides an anchor and reference point from which to better understand customer value and needs. It is how a modern business successively iterates and aggregates value. With my young soccer players, the blocking tackle was an MVP that opened up more of the game to them, opened up more areas where they could add value. As a common denominator across the team, this first skill focus did more than anything else to result in our teams rarely losing games.
On offense, from the youngest ages through age 10, I spent time in every practice having the players work on trapping, dribbling, passing, and shooting with either foot. If you have watched soccer at any level, you have probably seen someone lose a scoring opportunity when they tried to get the ball to their preferred foot! Sometimes in practice, I had the players use only their ‘weak’ foot in a scrimmage. Both-footed players were able to gain or retain possession of the ball in more situations. They also finished more scoring chances than single-footed players, something that is noticeable with older players as well. By working with both feet they got a head start creating neural connections that would help them progress to next-level, heads-up play.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, he gives examples of the 10,000-hour rule to develop expertise in…anything. In skills involving the hands or feet, the more we work on it the more space our brains allocate for motor functions and the more neural connections are created. If you’d like some mind-blowing stuff on how much our brains can adapt, read David Eagleman’s book, “Livewired”. There are amazing advances in what we know about our brains that can be used to create better dynamics for kids in school, sports, the arts, and other activities. Muscle memory in soccer or basketball allows the player to quiet their mind and apply conscious thought to strategy. Empirical studies have shown the minds of the best athletes are actually very quiet during competition, allowing them to enjoy it more and stress less.
Winning vs Taking Ownership
Prior to the teen years, kids have different motivations and respond to different rewards. Recognition for a good tackle, a controlled dribble, or pass can make a player’s day and reinforce their work ethic. A majority of youth soccer players quit playing in organized leagues by the age of 12 or 13. There are many reasons for that and I was just one coach of one team, but I felt at younger ages we could do a better job of connecting with what is in the control of the young player and keeping other complexities and pressures out. when we do this, it is natural for them to love the sport and be excited to practice and play each week.
We often forget that as adults we have control over many more aspects of our environment than kids, and we have more tools to affect outcomes than they do. We want our kids to ‘win’ and we want them to give their best effort, but that can cause us to say things to kids that are counterproductive. Winning a game is a complex activity. It is not atomic but is made up of many different actions on offense and defense, and is not within the control of any player, particularly at the under-10 level. Using anger to trigger improved effort makes the player’s performance about meeting the ego needs of the coach. It’s used to win games with teens and adults, but it’s out of place with younger kids.
Shouting instructions during play is often confusing- a boy under 10 won’t understand adult vocabulary or multi-step instructions, particularly with many other things going on during a scrimmage or game. Any instruction to not do something leaves a vacuum with a young player. Often their response is to ‘freeze’- if they avoid the ball they won’t get in trouble for that thing they did! I practiced removing “Don’ts” from my sideline behavior. If I gave a player advice I tried to make sure it was simple and familiar (something he’d practiced). Suggesting a positive rather than reacting with a negative is an improvement, but it still sends a message to the player that they can’t decide for themselves. Parents sometimes make the mistake of giving young players a guilt trip for not passing or ‘sharing’ the ball. They aren’t wired for it yet, and at that age, it’s about developing initiative and confidence on the ball. Trying to dribble the ball past three defenders and score may be selfish, but we want players at that age to try that!
A lot of kids’ lives are highly structured and parents make most decisions for them. Sports provide one of the best opportunities to cultivate decision-making in kids. A prerequisite to enable a player to focus on what to do next is to repetitively practice having the ball at their feet so that it becomes ‘second nature’. Encouraging kids to talk through options and decision criteria can help- being able to verbalize a process or decision helps us at any age to organize our actions. Sports provide many decision-making opportunities for kids if coaches open their approach to encourage it. Soccer is a game of constant movement, and no situation in the run of play is exactly like any other. Many boys at this age flock to where the ball was (there’s gotta be a meme for that)! I got players talking about where the ball would likely go next and what that meant for where they should move. Simple decisions at younger ages builds the neural connections to progress to more dynamic, complex decisions at older ages.
Emulation and Tradition vs Learning and Innovation
I took coaching courses and developed friendships with Club Directors of Coaching and other experienced professionals with youth sports. I observed youth sports practices and games- not just in soccer but other sports as well. I watched coaches, parents, and players interact and saw what worked and what didn’t work. I saw how often we react instinctively, based on emulation and conditioning when we should be tuning our actions based on the impact on the boys on the field. I became more aware of my speech and taught myself to check up.
As social beings we naturally emulate others, including other parents or coaches. We have instinctive behavior based on family tradition and experiences of our own childhood. Weaker players on a team often emulate the skills they see in the strongest players, or players with older siblings often get a headstart by emulating an older brother or sister. But too often we fall back on emulation or what comes easy or is familiar. We defer to what we were taught or follow the status quo, but if we put some energy into observing and integrating knowledge from different areas we can improve. We need to acknowledge and respect others who did it before us or provided us an opportunity, but it is our responsibility to always be looking to improve and experiment with new ways of doing things.
I tried to establish a culture where it was a privilege to be included in drills and to be part of the team effort. Those who acted out were left out or assigned a solo drill away from the team. With those who wanted to feel superior to others and pick on other players, I come up with challenges or drills at which they failed in front of the rest of the team. I’d recognize the individuality of each player, but I made sure that across the entire team the players bought into a culture where each player gave his best to improve, and the team and I were there to appreciate their effort. Mistakes were a natural byproduct of trying to get better, and in many situations I learned to just encourage the player to try again. Criticism of player efforts can cause a player to freeze up, avoid situations, or cause players to find scapegoats. It can permeate a team. I needed to exhibit the respect I expected them to show to each other.
I built a simple system of private metrics on the team that I used to understand each player’s growth and combinations of players to use in games. One was a plus-minus rating. If the player was on the field when their side scored, they receive a plus one, if they were on the field when the opponent scored, they got a minus one. With small-sided matches these ratings helped with trying combinations of players and pairing stronger players with weaker players. With each practice I laid out a practice plan with 5–10 minutes each for various drills. Some drills were fundamental and proven but I also kept a couple of slots for experimentation with ‘champions’ and ‘challengers’. The champion was a drill or activity we had done before, the challenger was something I saw or read or invented. If the kids got more out of the challenger and/or we more engaged in it, the Challenger became the new Champion. Simple systems of metrics and processes gave me a quantified look at the players’ development and kept me continuously evaluating my approach and keeping parts of practice fresh and exciting for the players.
Oh Mercy, Mercy Me
I adapted rules if a game or scrimmage became dominated by one or two players. One rule was to allow stronger players to use only their ‘off’ foot. Not only did this improve the player’s development, it humbled them if they were getting a bit cocky! Another rule was to allow players no more than two touches on the ball after receiving it. Players then paid close attention to their touches and what they did on the ball. My practice approach was based on adapting challenges to a wide range of player skills, adjusting rules during a game to challenge certain players and include others was a natural extension to that.
I’ve seen mercy rules where the team leading is not allowed to score or the game is stopped. I strongly disagree with that. If adults focus on skills development instead of the score with young players, a lopsided score is simply a signal for the winning coach to adjust their lineup or apply rules to force players to work on their weaker skills. Players on both teams should always put in their best effort until the final whistle, it’s more than a soccer lesson, it’s a life lesson. If we were up by a lot and a player started goofing off, I sat him down. I didn’t allow players to waste time when given the privilege to take a spot on the pitch, no matter the score.
Kids see through empty praise or too much praise, like trophies for showing up. I tried to keep my appreciation for what they did in line with expectations. I wanted them to tune to the personal reward of hitting their goals and then setting a higher challenge. Cheers from parents or coaches were a bonus. When nobody was looking, would they be honest with themselves and be motivated to improve? I had a lot of players and their parents who later told me what a positive experience it was playing for me. I think it was because I kept it real.
Once a Coach, Always a Coach
Helping to spark the motivation of these boys was incredibly rewarding. Through each of 10 seasons, each of my players ended the season with enthusiasm and significantly better skills. They often dominated the later games in the season. Finish strong, I couldn’t have asked for more.
My son went on to play in competitive and travel leagues, making the State of Georgia Olympic Development Team two years in a row, missing it in his third year when he broke his ankle. In his early teens in Atlanta, he played in a tournament where teams from Charlotte, NC came down to compete. That is where I started coaching, and my son and I ran into two boys I coached and had been his teammates in the early seasons. I coached these boys at 6 or 7 years old in their first couple of soccer seasons, and now 6 or 7 years later they were playing for an elite team against my son. Meeting up with their parents and having them tell me their son was fortunate to be on my team was cool, but the best thing was the boys still called me “Coach Herbert”.
This article is really about understanding and adapting to the customers’ needs. In this case my customers were the boys and their parents. I enjoy finding patterns common to seemingly unrelated things, or how new approaches are often derived from concepts that have existed for a while. Continuous learning, iterating until an optimum value is reached, and basing decisions on a keen understanding of the customer have always been the best approach. It’s just now, with the pace of change, they’ve become critical and can’t be ignored any longer.
