Soccer Stretch: Dynamic Before, Static After
I get this question a lot: should they stretch? YES Follow up question: when and how? Before and after. Here’s how. Before practice they should perform a dynamic warm up, moving the body parts to be used in a controlled and increasingly intense manner. That means: forward, backward, at angles, in rotations, at increasing pace […]
Good Coaches Make Youth Sports Healthy
“Youth sports is out of control! We need to go back to the good ole days when everyone played for fun in their neighborhoods!” The old days were good, but they’re gone. Now, issues of safety, distance, parental work schedules, and availability of playing areas make neighborhood games something of a relic. And, I’m sorry. Fantasy […]
Legacy of Joe Paterno: Hold All Coaches to the Highest Standards
If you Google “coach” today, you’ll find the debacle of ex-coach Joe Paterno. But below this (after Coach handbags) you’ll land not on “sport coaching” but on personal or life coaching. These are people who will help you achieve your personal and professional goals. The word, I’m told, originated from the coach or carriage that carries people from one […]
Bishop’s Titans: Girls Soccer Champions in a League of Their Own
Lisa Bishop started coaching the CYA Titans when they were pint-sized and grew them into the girls who graduated high school this fall. So how do you say goodbye to girls who have been family for nearly a decade? You take them on a service trip to Costa Rica where they have an experience that will change […]
Young Athlete Says the Key to a Good Coach is…”He doesn’t yell.”
I met a lacrosse player yesterday who was aching to be released from physical therapy and get back on the field. This is his senior year in high school and college coaches have shown an interest in him. I ask him how he likes his coach. “He’s okay,” the kid says, but his frown tells me otherwise. […]
Coaching Well: Why Do We Coach?
This article was originally published in The Fairfax Times, June 2010. It so saddens me to read the endless stories of remarkably talented athletes like Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger behaving badly– these lives, full of potential, are then misspent by their worst natures. We are left asking: “How did we let these athletes get […]
Teaching Throw ins: Kids Learn by Doing, Not Watching
Kids don’t learn by watching. They learn by doing. It was amazing to me that these 8 and 9 year old boys stood so politely watching their coach demonstrate and listening to their coach describe what they are to do with their throw ins. The coach was kind and pleasant and fun, but he went […]
How to Get Girls to Communicate on the Field
Do the girls you coach clam up on the field? Mine talk all the time…on the sidelines and during warmups. But on the field? It’s like pulling teeth. In a newsletter I read recently, a fifteen-year-old observed that girls were happy to pitch in on impersonal, non-relational topics but were sometimes reluctant to disagree with another girl […]
Coach and Trainer Need to Work Together
Why do coaches stand by and watch trainers run practice? The travel team coach contracts with a training organization to bring a professional trainer in to run practice. She’s running great drills, putting them through their paces, explaining, correcting. Really connecting with them. The girls are laughing, playing, having a great time. Where’s the coach? […]
Where Did Soccer Mom Go Wrong?
Part 2 in the 3 blog series: “Redeeming Soccer Mom” Soccer Mom has generated quite a lot of interest and not all of it positive. I found this out when I googled her. No longer just a Mom driving kids to their sports activities, Soccer Mom now seems to be: A crazy driver nearly causing […]