CRISIS team meltdown!

[Val]

Originally Posted by djasha68

I have played many times with my team, stopped when I did my FA course. I found myself using my strength to my advantage, every now and again I would be taking on the whole team, I found I just could not help myself. Never thought it was wrong untill I saw a Football Association video. Whilst you have the ball at your feet you are taking it away from the kids, its their game not yours, your their to help them improve. At the end of the day your going to do what you want to do at training, personally I would rather let them play and watch to see if they have learnt anything from training.

We all coach differently, and what we have to do as improving/aspiring coaches is figure out what we do best, and make sure we do more of that. And the things we don't do as well, we have to avoid that. I personally don't have that problem, but if you have identified it as a tendency, then you certainly follow through with your self-assessment.

[citisoccer]

Ok.
First, never yell at girls. It wont get you anywhere. You need to find a way to motivate them, which is one of the hardest jobs of any coach. You ned to get to know what makes them tick, but still maintain a "coach only" realtionship. You dont want them to see you as a friend, but as a role model that finds a way to get the best out of them. A good guess would be use the 4 drillings that they have received to motivate them. High school girls dont like being embarrassed.

Second, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO PLAY FOR....regardless of record.
If you are there to build a program, you need to start looking at the grand scheme of things. WHO CARES WHAT YOUR RECORD IS ? From scratch, your goal should be a plus .500 ball club in 3-5 years. Remember, you need to set high levels of expectations and maintain them. If you dont, you will settle and in the long run, NEVER build a program.

Third, you need to immediatly have a parents meeting. Girls whose parents dont show, miss a game. The parents will show, or you will weed out the wankers. Discuss REALISTIC goals considering program level, funds, experince, and overall effort. Missing high school practices for anything other than injury is unnnacceptable. Tests and papers dont just pop up and vacations dont occurr at random in the school year. Things do come up, however you should always have time to plan practice accordingly . Maybe I am able to expect higher standards being at a private school.

Just a few ideas. And I wonder, how much do you plan your practices? In your situation, you should have a specific plan that accounts for every minute of available time. Work drills in that force players to work, but are also fun nature. You have girls, and mostly girls that arent soccer players.
You need to plan those practices using motivational games and scenarios.

[bih23]

I think you are having some issues in regards to practices, respect, and motivation.

I don't know how you run your practices, but there has to be a teaching component, there has to be a drills component, and there needs to be something fun (a game situation helps) The teaching component builds you respect. The drills improve individual skill. The game situation prepares your team and is fun to do for a practice.

As mentioned, the teaching component in practices help a long way in terms of gaining the players respect. If you don't teach, that can be a pretty big issue. Especially if you are a coach who is big on running, fitness, but don't have much to back it up with in terms of teaching. But your situation sounds even worse, it just seems the practices are not structured at all, and its just a fun time, players fooling around. I don't see how you can not see how that would be an issue.

Finally, you can't motivate without structure. Part of structure is the daily tasks players have to accomplish and then overall goals..that is how you motivate. Otherwise, it all seems like a joke. And obviously its also easier to motivate if they respect you for your standards and structure.

It all comes together. You can't cheat on the practices, and being a coach, and then expect respect and all the othe things.

[dethfire]

well said both of you above. i will admit my practices would certainly seem haphazard by some of you. I am an inexperienced coach. what I find difficult is this, I will make a practice plan, but the number of girls who turn out any given practice can waiver drasticlly. So usually I have to scrape my plan and go impromptu. Also the range of players is extreme. I have a few girls that are good and I want to challenge, but the rest seriously are overweight, unathletic and never played a soccer game in their life. So I find myself doing super simple drills that bore the hell out of the few good girls and still seriously challenge the poor players. Some of them are really not smart either. I tried explaining a simple passing drill and it took 30min to get it right, and some still didn't understand. and it was just pass and move the end of the other line, ahhhhhhhhhhh. and when we do a small sided game, the few good girls just do circles around the 15 poor players and they try to pass to the poor players but they can't trap, pass or anything, it's aweful. and all I do all day is simple pass and dribble skills to try to get them better

also, most of the girls just don't take things seriously. we got hammered last season and I tried making that a point of modivation, but it doesn't help, they say they still had fun last year and see no urgency to work hard or get better, that is just the culture I am dealing with. I am at the private school that no athletic girl goes to. so most of these girls never played a sport in their life, don't take i seriously and can't be modivated. there is no peer pressure because they all feel the same. they all walk and don't care if they are singled out or mess around.

[jm2209]

After reading the previous 3 pages you have been given alot of good advise...

I would like to suggest a few things;
With the girls who are over weight i would suggest doing fitness tests, such as multi stage, agility, flexibility etc... i would also take height and weight so you can then calculate VO2 and BMI, now im not saying tell everyone the results but if you have overweight players it can be a target that you set to bring down there bmi.
This will get the players fitter and healthier!

With regards to morale if it was me i would consider setting jobs such as carrying the balls, cones bibs etc... filling the water bottles, cleaning the changing rooms... this will give the girls some ownership of the club and some responsibility... I would also go though a 3 strikes system if people are rude, forget boots etc... set a clearly defined disapline structure that all players must abide by or they are out! I would hope this would start to give you the autherity back.

Training drills can normally be adapted (quite easily) it is a thing that lots of new coaches struggle with, and i would suggest you get an assistant with more knowledge to help you out, ideally one of the older girls within your organisation?

Without going into everything... if you document there progress and fitness etc... it will give you something to base the way you deal with the girls, i.e. if you have a girl who reaches level 16 on the fitness tests but doesn't run in training, it gives you facts to deal with why she is not working as hard as she can!

Let me know if anything has helped!