GISA’s Academy Team Philosophy for the U9/U10 Age Athlete

Coaching the Youth Player

The U9 and U10 year for soccer players is an exciting time for both players and coaches. Players are enthusiastic about learning new skills and they adapt well to new challenges. The U9 and U10 players play soccer because it is a fun sport that offers them the opportunity to play and compete without a lot of interruption in the action. If both parents and coaches structure the environment in training and games properly, the game of soccer should afford every child the opportunity to exercise a tremendous amount of freedom of movement, decision-making, and expression in each training session and in each match. Young players need to play soccer in an environment that gives players the freedom to simply have fun and explore the game with an unabashed creativity and spontaneity. Most U9 and U10 players who join GISA will thrive in our player developmental and child-centered approach which allows the kids to play without concern of reprisal for making mistakes. In GISA we are doing our very best to help players improve without taking any of the fun and individual creativity out of the game of soccer.

At GISA we believe strongly in paying special attention to the youth player because the U9-U10 years are critical years in which players need to develop a solid technical skills foundation. In order to help players improve their skills and at the same time enjoy the game to its fullest extent, young children need qualified and expert level coaches. To be a successful youth coach for U9-U10 players, the youth coach must know more than the rules of the game, how to coach and how to play soccer. The youth coach must also understand the players.  A general guideline for GISA’s Academy coaches is that practices have a 1/3 technical focus, 1/3 small games played with a technical theme focus and 1/3 game with a tactical focus.

Playing Time for the U9 and U10 Player with the Golden Isles Soccer Association

Soccer isn’t fun if your child isn’t allowed to play in games. Although GISA is known as a competitive club, all U9 and U10 players deserve the right to play in both halves of every match. In fact, who can say that any U9 or U10 player is really a competitive player yet? We view all of our U9 and U10 players as developing soccer players rather than competitive players. Therefore, our focus for the U9 and U10 player is centered on individual player improvement and collective team development. This means that we measure success by player and team progress, not by wins and losses. While everyone wants to win games, our most important goal for every soccer match in the U9 and U10 year is to make sure that ALL of our players improve and have fun at each game. Players cannot improve at the U9 and U10 age if they don’t play in games. While we don’t guarantee that every player will play exactly the same amount of time during each match, we do guarantee that each child will play approximately 25 minutes a game. Given the fact that most league games at the U9-U10 age are about 50 minutes long, your child will be playing in close to half of each game.

Positions

In today’s soccer game is a total game, meaning all players have to be able to attack and all players have to be able to defend.  Often when a child joins a GISA team at the U9 or 10 year, his/her parents ask what our policy is in regard to specializing in positions. Because the U9 or U10 player is a developing player, the GISA coaching staff believes that young players will enjoy greater long-term success and experience more overall enjoyment in the game of soccer if they are given the opportunity to play in a number of different positions throughout each season. To reiterate, we measure success at the U9 and U10 years in regard to player improvement and team progress, not by wins and losses. Young players can handle playing as a defender in one half of the game and playing as a forward in the other half of the game. Not only can young players handle playing more than one position, the experience of playing in more than one position is a great learning opportunity for each individual on the team.

The argument can be made that there may be disadvantages in regard to the outcome of each match when we move a particular player who might be the team’s best defender to a forward for the second half. However, we feel VERY strongly that the short-term negatives of such a move are far outweighed by the long-term benefits that will be reaped by the individual player and subsequently the team as a whole.  The coach can also use this philosophy in many different ways such as if they feel that a player might benefit from playing one position more this game to learn the role then the next game transition to another position for most of the next game and so on.  Each position offers players a different vantage point to view and experience the game. Each position on the field offers players different technical and skill challenges that are important for players to experience in order for the players to enjoy long-term success in the game of soccer. We feel that keeping players in one position for an entire season or even an entire year is detrimental to the development of the player.

Lee Swafford

GISA Director of Coaching