Week Two

Monday... Only 7 players showed up today, 2 of which were new. We had a good work out, though. Pretty much all of the students I talked to about not coming told me transportation (or lack thereof) was the reason they missed practice. This is reason #58 for why coaching middle school sports can be frustrating and reason #142 for why coaching middle school sports in the city can be frustrating. (Actually, it would be top 5 in both...)

Right now the tension in practice has been between getting kids excited about soccer and also setting standards for how our team will and won't be run. When a player comes and walks during our warm-up jog and then walks through drills without even attempting the drill I am inclined to ask them to head home and try again tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to encourage/keep enough kids committed to the team to actually have a team.


Tuesday... Got confirmation of the fields we were hoping to rent for our three "home games" this year - also have our refs lined up too. (Last year I actually had to ref two games - in my work clothes and shoes - when the home teams failed to get refs.) Now we need to order nets and corner flags ($$$).

In practice today, I decided (with two weeks to go before our first game) that I should start to see who could be our Goalie. On one end of our field we have an iron fence and on the other we have chain-link. The chain link fence has an empty city block corner with bushes and the iron fence has a main street, so we set up cones in front of the chain link fence (in case balls missed their mark). I gave two 8th graders a shot at goal, mostly because they are our tallest players and have long arms. Neither has ever played Goalie, but both showed some decent ability and used their length well. I'll probably use both guys in every game (one half each) until one of them demonstrates that he is the better choice.

Only seven players made it to practice. We picked up a couple new players but also lost a couple.
Wednesday... Eight players in practice today. Another new player, but also another player gone. Several players have been absent from practice this week because of transportation issues. Very frustrating because there's not much I can do to help with that situation.

During our shooting drills today more kids wanted to try out being Goalie - I think it was because I brought the Goalie gloves to practice. I let one guy (besides the two from yesterday) try it out. Though only a 6th grader, he did pretty well. I probably won't let him play Goalie, since he's our most experienced player and we need him scoring goals, not stopping them.

The number of players is a small concern to me right now. I won't be really worried until this time next week if we are still only getting 7-9 kids (or worse) to practice. We have 5 more practices before our first game and a lot to introduce and learn.

Thursday... Eleven players showed up at practice today- again a mixture of a couple new players and others not showing. I think we have now had 16-17 different players show up at at least one practice. We would be set if they all came at the same time, but it looks like we will be hovering around 11 all year.

Last year we were fortunate enought to have a handful of players that either had minimal soccer experience or were pretty good athletes. This year we have less that fit that category, but where they lack in those areas they make up for it in their desire to learn a new sport.

We don't practice on Fridays and Monday is a holiday so we now have only 4 practices before our first game. Oh boy!