Coaching soccer is a job that comes with many responsibilities and challenges. The job goes far beyond teaching the sport and winning matches. Coaches have the opportunity to be tremendous influences in young people’s lives. Great coaches use their platform to teach the value of teamwork, hard work and goal setting. They demonstrate discipline and demand without being demeaning.
They also model leadership and teach their players how to lead effectively. Those are the coaches that we want our kids to play for and learn from. Those are the coaches that not only help create great memories for their players, but also prepare them for future success. Those are the coaches of true championship programs.
While everyone would agree that training in those areas would benefit all young people, the reality is that coaches are very busy and sometimes the pressure to win makes it difficult to focus on these critical areas. For many coaches, especially high school coaches, they have many other responsibilities before and after soccer practice. Whether it be teaching classes or working at a full time job, coaches rarely have the opportunity to dedicate all of their time to coaching their team and running their program.
Planning practices, attending clinics, working on the college recruitment of their players, video analysis, game plans, meeting with parents, designing and implementing offseason programs, planning details of road trips and working with the players and coaches in your youth programs are just a few of the tasks required of a good coach. This leaves precious little time to do anything else.
The Soccer Toolbox is designed to help coaches with their many tasks and responsibilities. Many coaches are coaching because they have a wealth of knowledge about their sport. Others are coaching because the team needs a coach and maybe to played a little in high school. Regardless of your experience, good coaches are the ones that are always learning. We have collected many helpful resources from a lifetime of coaching and from many well respected sources. By sharing those ideas with you, It is our hope that we can provide you with resources that can help you develop your program they way you have envisioned.
You can expect to find tools to help you develop individual fundamental skills like: dribbling, passing,receiving, tackling, heading, goalkeeping, throw ins, corner kicks, shooting (finishing). We will also provide drills to help you teach your team how to attack, defend and transition. We will share ideas from a variety of successful coaches on the strength and weakness of various tactics.
Sports performance training is a huge part of any soccer program. Whether it be dynamic stretching, functional movement drills, footwork, strength training or aerobic and anaerobic conditioning the Soccer Toolbox will be your resource on a wide variety of training ideas.
Leadership principles, goal setting, mental skills, Motivational ideas, practice planning and nutrition are just a few other topics that you will find covered in the Soccer Toolbox.
Our goal is to provide you, the coach, with many different tools from a variety of sources that can help you develop a championship program. A program that your players benefit from and you are proud to lead.
