Coaching Football (Soccer)

Lee here.

A few months ago we signed up for Spencer to play football (you American types call it soccer). After a few weeks I started getting emails from WYSA (Wylie Youth Soccer Association) that more coaches were needed and that many children would not get to play because there weren't enough volunteer coaches. I decided to step forward and coach for the first time.

I'm not going to bore everyone with all of the details of the season but just wanted to give a few highlights and lowlights.

The season is 7 weeks long and consisted of 8 games. We played our last two games yesterday.

I was excited to coach for the first time but after 4 weeks with seeing little progress and trying to keep 8 5-year-old boys attention for practices I was ready to throw in the towel. It felt like I was wasting my time, especially as some of the parents didn't even bring their boys to practice. It was very frustrating.

We started the season pretty well. We were killing teams, mostly thanks to the 3 boys that had played the year before. One of these boys is pretty amazing. His dad obviously coaches him well at home and he is miles ahead of most of the other kids in the league. He pretty much ran our first couple of games.

Then we hit rock bottom. After wining our first 3 games we played a team full of kids named Leonardo, Ricardo, and so on. All of these boys were very good and our star player didn't show. We were annihilated  We didn't even score a goal. In the next 2 games it was obvious that the boys weren't going to recover quickly from such a thrashing. During this time we had one of our players drop out too.

So it came to yesterday. We had won 3 and lost 3 (unofficially, of course, as U6 doesn't keep score). One of our good players had strep, so he couldn't play. I started to get that sinking feeling again...

So, there's 3 players I need to mention at this point. Elijah, Baraki, and my son, Spencer. Neither of these boys had a particularly great season if I'm being fair. Elijah tries hard but never seemed to completely get to grips with playing. Baraki is a sweet little boy. He always runs up to me and hugs me whenever he sees me but, bless him, he just runs around the field, except it is more like dancing around the field. He shows no interest in getting involved but runs his heart out. If anyone scored a goal (whether our team or the opposition) he would scream and cry. Spencer is a lot like me. If things don't go his way he gets easily frustrated. This led to him asking to come off a lot and getting annoyed when I'd leave him in.

Yesterday morning Elijah became a different player. He'd get the ball and then run with it, and keep running with it. When the ball came to him he wouldn't take a second to think about what he was doing, he'd just kick it and run to the goal. In our morning game he scored a hattrick (3 goals). I think that this also encouraged Spencer because he started playing well too. He didn't score but he came close a few times. When the game was over we had won but, most importantly, Spencer wasn't upset. He was actually happy and looking forward to our second game later in the day.

In our afternoon game the same thing happened. Elijah played very well again, scoring another goal. Spencer would get the ball and run it past people towards the goal. On 3 different occasions he was through on goal but wasn't able to put it in the goal for whatever reason. He did, however, set up 2 excellent goals. The most agonizing moment was just after the other team had scored. Spencer took the kick-off and kick it hard. It flew over the other players heads, and bounced towards their goal. I was willing it in with all of my soul... until it bounced of the outside of the post and rolled out for a goal-kick. So close. So very, very, close. But it wasn't meant to be. Spencer didn't score a goal.

However, Baraki did. Granted he didn't know what was going on at the time, but he scored a goal nonetheless. One of the other boys took a free-kick from inside our half. He kicked it quite high and it glanced off the back of Baraki's head, looping the ball into the air and towards the opposition's goal. It seemed to take an age to bounce over the line, but it finally crossed the line. Baraki had scored. Spencer had played his heart out without getting the goal he so desperately wanted, and yet, almost cruelly, Baraki had scored obliviously. He didn't even know he had scored as he was too busy rubbing the back of his head. I had to shout to him to tell him the good news.

Yes I had some doubt about doing this again for a few weeks but I think I'll be coaching again next season and I'm certain that Spencer, with a little home-coaching, will continue to become a much better player.

It has been fun and a great learning experience for me. I'm going to miss each of those boys. They are all awesome in their own way and seeing their smiling (and crying) faces each week will be sorely missed.