Coaching High School Soccer: Secrets Revealed
When coaching high school soccer, it is the behavior and approach of the coach that has a major impact on the performance of the players. The coach can build a mentally tough team only when he has devised a plan that supports a positive attitude aimed at winning.
In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. It’s the body language, outlook, and expressions of the coach that can outline, add force to, or damage the players self esteem.
In coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is about meeting challenges with positive self control. So, it is the coach who should be the starting point in practice and competition both.
In order to make sure that the coach does not get either too high or too low, he or she should pursue a disciplined post match routine. An experienced coach will apply ideas, chronicle, and descriptions, videos, etc to shape the collective approach of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in their game.
A coach should display control in football coaching, when dealing with emotional setbacks notwithstanding personal feelings, with a view to create a mentally strong team.
When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.
Coping with failures and mistakes in coaching high school soccer is another area of responsibility for the coach. The coach’s reaction to failure is the key to player’s motivation and desire to work hard to correct mistakes. The coach has two choices.
One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Influence them to recommit themselves to the attempt with transformed motivation.
Making use of the failure as an evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that he cannot meet the expectations, can be the second choice. Players will get de-motivated because of this emotional overreaction.
To make players mentally strong, one way which can be adopted is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. The players can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.
We call it self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always encouraging the players to self reference. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”
The players should think all the way through and account for his or her version of reactions which are a fundamental part of the learning process.
Whatever methods that you’ve just learnt, go ahead and start applying in coaching high school soccer.
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Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Kids Soccer Drills.
on July 2nd, 2010 at 3:25 am
One issue that kids often run into in the summer and fall months is the heat. Risks of dehydration and heat exhaustion are a big deal.