This article was provided by Coaches Network

By Dr. David Hoch, CMAA, CIC

Regardless of the sport that you coach, there is never seemingly enough time to get ready to play the first game.  On average, you may have two weeks with two-hour practice sessions each day and you have so much to teach and install.  It may seem like an impossible task and it is in some situations.

It is essential to maximize every available minute to in order to be thoroughly prepared.  You can’t afford to waste any time and there is only one answer if you want to reach your full potential as a coach.  You have to plan and organize down to the smallest details.

The following suggestions will help you with this difficult and sometimes overwhelming task of planning and organization.

1. Prioritize and determine what is essential, the bare minimum which has to be covered prior to the first game.  This would include offense, defense, special situations and skill work.  Then make a list of what can be added later as you go week to week, because you can’t cover everything in a limited time frame.
2. Review the scouting reports and game plans from last year for your first two or three opponents on your schedule.  While these teams will have some new players, you should get a pretty good idea for what you have to prepare.  Particularly for your opening game, you will not have a current scouting report.
3. Establish the order of what you are going to teach and install during these first two weeks, and also try to accurately determine how many minutes will be needed to cover the essential items.  Even if you practice on a Saturday, you could have as little as 1,440 minutes over two weeks to use.  That’s not a lot and this should emphasize the importance of careful planning.
4. Take into consideration when planning these first two weeks of practice that tryouts will also take some time.  Will it be two or three days?  While tryouts are necessary, they also do further limit the amount of time available for teaching and installing systems of play.
5. Plan to fully utilize your assistants to help teach and lead drills during practice sessions in order to be most efficient.  This means giving them specific duties and responsibilities with the drills and during the total 2-hour practice session.
6. Involve your assistants in the planning of practice sessions.  While it is a good learning experience for these individuals, it will also result in getting diverse points of view and perhaps more in-depth ideas with respect to what, how much and when items should be covered.
7. Meet with your assistants after each practice session to analyze how it went, what needs to be reviewed and what adjustments have to be made for the next day.  Since players learn at different rates, some instruction and dills may have to be repeated.  This may also mean that you may have to make minor changes to your two-week plan.
8. Be candid with your players and explain that you will be installing only the most basic systems which will be necessary to get through the first two to three games.  Be transparent and let them know that with limited time, you can’t cover everything.  Assure your players that you will be adding and making adjustments as you go along.

When confronted with limited time, it is essential to do a great job of planning.  This step will take time and effort.  However, attention to detail will result in better organization.

By Brendan Hall

From the Hudl Blog

In just a few short years, this small-town Kentucky pro­gram has gone from hunter to hunt­ed. How? With the details from in-depth data reports.

Through the rolling hills of Western Kentucky in the rur­al town of Benton — found three hours west of Louisville and two hours north of Nashville — a rabid fol­low­ing sur­rounds the Marshall County High School girls’ soc­cer team.

Stands are packed for home con­tests. Every game is broad­cast over the radio, with a full play-by-play crew. Facilities for the team, in the words of assis­tant coach Andrew Pagel, are ​“fan­tas­tic”.

And in the short time since they adopt­ed Hudl Assist’s inter­ac­tive reports, the Marshals have seen explo­sive suc­cess. They won a third straight region­al title this fall (the program’s 19th over­all) and reached the round of 16 in the state tour­na­ment, los­ing to the No. 3 ranked team in Kentucky.

“We were chas­ing teams two years ago that we beat in the post­sea­son,” Pagel said. ​“Last year we used Hudl Assist, we jumped on it and the ana­lyt­ics helped us tremen­dous­ly. This year we’re the hunt­ed — 16 – 2, 17 – 2 — and we’re the favorites, and we’ve used it to fine tune and stay ahead.” 

For Pagel, these tools give the Marshals ​“a chance to run our high school soc­cer pro­gram a lot like a small col­lege.” What does that look like? 

 

Possession as a defensive weapon

Pagel knew ear­ly in the sea­son that the team was strug­gling. One rea­son why was a defense that often sim­ply blast­ed the ball up the field. This result­ed in an aver­age time of pos­ses­sion some­where in the 19 to 22-minute range over an 80-minute game. Every team has their own unique ​“sweet spot” for opti­mal time of pos­ses­sion. For Pagel, and head coach Mike Boone, the tar­get is in the 29 – 35 minute range. 

After he paired this data with the vol­ume of shots the Marshals were allow­ing, which broke down to once every two min­utes or so, Pagel issued a chal­lenge in the form of an equa­tion — how can they keep the ball for six more min­utes a game, and there­fore cut down on three shots from the opposition? 

“We try to use the math, and it’s easy to sell that way,” Pagel says. ​“We can say, look at their time of pos­ses­sion and look at ours, that’s why we need to make this extra pass to the right back, ver­sus dump­ing the ball into our forward.” 

Pagel likes to be pos­ses­sion-ori­ent­ed as opposed to a defend-and-counter style. He was raised clas­si­cal­ly on the tried-and-true 4 – 4-2 for­ma­tion, with a stop­per and sweep­er, ​“but that’s a dinosaur now.” The Marshals play a 4 – 2-3 – 1 with an off­set tri­an­gle in the mid­dle, and Pagel is devot­ed to the for­ma­tion, both for its abil­i­ty to over­whelm oppo­nents with num­bers every­where, and for the way it allows for quick counters.

Hard pos­ses­sion goals allowed Pagel to set the bar high ear­ly in the sea­son, when they over­whelmed infe­ri­or oppo­nents. Only 23 min­utes in that easy win? Not good enough. He encour­aged them to make that one last wide pass that gives them the 2-on-1 or 3-on-2 advan­tage up the oth­er side of the pitch. Time to work on tak­ing that pass from the left mid­field­er and link­ing up in the mid­dle, instead of look­ing through to a forward. 

“We can talk through all that, and then show them it,” Pagel said.

 

Less is more in transition

Attack tran­si­tions are one area of the game where more isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter. In one game, Marshall County had 101 attack tran­si­tions — way too high and indica­tive of a poor job keep­ing the ball. If you’re play­ing against bet­ter com­pe­ti­tion, and play­ing with more bal­ance, you’ll like­ly have any­where from 60 to 80 such transitions.

Pagel point­ed to a recent game against Murray High where the Marshals dom­i­nat­ed, but their per­for­mance left Pagel ques­tion­ing how well they exe­cut­ed. Sure enough, when he looked at the pass strings on the reports, he found the goal­keep­er respon­si­ble for a num­ber of unsuc­cess­ful passes. 

Of course this goalie, a return­ing cap­tain and the school’s all-time leader in shutouts, was no slouch. But all those acro­bat­ic dives, stops and catch­es are only part of what a goalkeeper’s game should be. They have to be able to keep pos­ses­sion, too, espe­cial­ly in today’s game where the keep­er can often act as a sweep­er. His goalie wasn’t allow­ing enough time for open­ings in the field to devel­op before try­ing to find a pass.

With these points tied to video, Marshall County’s goal­keep­er coach knew how to design bet­ter prac­tices to shore things up.

“Shutouts are good, but I also want to see how we can turn it into some­thing bet­ter,” Pagel said. 

 

A call for focus, with purpose

Sometimes a call from the side­line to bring some more ener­gy can sound emp­ty. At Marshall County, the mes­sage comes with a purpose. 

Opponents didn’t score that much on Marshall County this year, and when they did, they came at all sorts of times. But over the course of the sea­son, Pagel dis­cov­ered that between the 51st and 60th min­utes, the team sur­ren­dered a goal every oth­er game.

Needless to say, the team start­ed lis­ten­ing to what Pagel said ear­ly in the sec­ond half.

“If I say focus at this time, they know what I’m talk­ing about,” he says. ​“I’ll yell out ​‘Hey, let’s focus for these next 10 min­utes’, and they give a thumbs up. They know what it means. They know there’s that lull in the game that tends to happen.”

Towards the begin­ning of games, Pagel found the Marshals would have some­what of a drop-off after the 15th minute, typ­i­cal­ly when they begin sub­sti­tu­tions. Does that mean they should hold off sub­sti­tu­tions? Should they change up and stag­ger a lit­tle better?

Pagel loves look­ing for out­liers, and has found the process more refined through the use of fil­ters to iden­ti­fy trends against com­pe­ti­tion that is more on their lev­el. The more he tog­gled through indi­vid­ual game reports and clus­ters of games, the more he was able to unearth crit­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies like this.

 

A safer approach with pass strings

With a 62 per­cent suc­cess rate on pass­es in the defen­sive third, well below his goal of 70 – 75 per­cent, Pagel under­stood his team need­ed to be more cau­tious with the ball in their own end — but also that it wasn’t all entire­ly on the back line. The goal­keep­er and mid­field­ers bear some respon­si­bil­i­ty too. Seeing these per­cent­ages allowed them to have more informed con­ver­sa­tions about safe­ty, ver­sus risk with decision-making.

Just as high­er pos­ses­sion num­bers don’t always indi­cate more pur­pose­ful attack­ing, vol­ume of shots doesn’t always mean bet­ter offense. The Marshals aver­aged 5.1 pass­es per string this sea­son. Pagel said he’s ​“not always proud” when they aver­age more than six pass­es, because they could just be kick­ing the ball lat­er­al­ly or back­wards a lot, but it’s a great stat to keep an eye on. 

“A good team like the No. 1 team in the state might get 12 shots, but three of them are goals, because of the nature of how they pen­e­trat­ed, and they walked it in,” Pagel said. ​“We got few­er shots but more goals because our shot qual­i­ty selec­tion was bet­ter. It’s not unlike bas­ket­ball — yeah, you’re jack­ing up a lot of three’s, but is that a good idea?”

Charting suc­cess­ful and unsuc­cess­ful strings also allowed them to be con­struc­tive with their coach­ing, prais­ing great plays while also won­der­ing how the suc­cess in one area can be applied elsewhere.

“You don’t have to just say, ​‘Why was this wrong?’ You can look at the suc­cess­ful ones and say, ​‘Attagirl, here’s what you did right’, and ask, ​‘Could we have done this on the one we messed up with?’” Pagel said.

 

Honing in on shot charts

Below is a shot chart from one of the tough­est teams on Marshall County’s sched­ule. Notice the orange dot out­side of the 18-yard box to the right — that’s a long goal that came on a rebound out of a cor­ner kick.

 

 

As the clus­ter shows, that one play­er was able to get off three shots from that same spot due to a lack of pres­sure. Once Pagel saw that, he moved a for­ward back clos­er to the box, after play­ing up clos­er to the mid­field line. It helped.

Marshall County’s own sea­son-long shot chart resem­bles some­thing of a Rorschach test.

 

 

It’s a good lit­mus test too. Many of those goals scored inside the goalkeeper’s box were made pos­si­ble by a strong for­ward with bound­less ener­gy, Carmen Gunn. 

But with this resource, Pagel could also remind his play­ers con­struc­tive­ly that those oppor­tu­ni­ties won’t always be there. Nice scream­er from 25 yards out? Great job, but let’s wait for a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty for a high­er-per­cent­age shot. Pretty goal against the run? Good heads-up play, but don’t expect the goalie to make a bad mis­take like that next time.

All of it adds up to an expe­ri­ence that makes play­ers feel like they already have the cheat sheet by the time they’re ready to play at the next level.

“We feel like the ones we send to col­lege, they will have the tools to run with video and have the pri­or knowl­edge,” Pagel said.

***

These are just some of the inno­v­a­tive ways a coach can use Hudl Assist’s expand­ed inter­ac­tive reports to hone in on the details that make a difference.

Interested in our Assist add-on? 

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By Brendan Hall

After see­ing how film study trans­formed the pow­er­ful high school girls soc­cer pro­gram he ran in Maryland, Steven Baxter is return­ing to his home state of West Virginia with all the right tools.

Not all mounds of clay arrive the same.

In tak­ing over the girls’ soc­cer pro­gram at Spring Mills High School (W. Va.), Steven Baxter is cut­ting down dra­mat­i­cal­ly on his com­mute time. He can prac­ti­cal­ly walk to prac­tice from his house now, a big change from the 144-mile round trip com­mute he’d made dai­ly dur­ing the sea­son to his pre­vi­ous des­ti­na­tion across the state line. 

The trade-off is the sub­stan­tial build­ing job he’s tak­ing on — big­ger than what he inher­it­ed a decade ago at Centennial High (Md.). In nine sea­sons, he coached the Eagles to three region­al finals and a state semi­fi­nals appear­ance in 2016. 

“I used to be like a kid in a can­dy store, and I could mold the puz­zle pieces togeth­er, focus on the tac­tics and things,” he said.

In this qui­et Appalachian town nes­tled in the heart of the Mountain State’s east­ern pan­han­dle, at a school that opened just five years ago, Baxter is vir­tu­al­ly start­ing fresh with a pro­gram that sur­ren­dered 80 goals in 2018. Holding the glass half full, there’s plen­ty of room for the Cardinals’ young pro­gram to grow.

But with that raw­ness comes a lot more work. There’s good bones on the pro­gram, with sev­er­al high-cal­iber play­ers. On the con­trary, when asked where there’s the most oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve the pro­gram, Baxter chuck­led, ​“The sim­ple answer? Everything.”

It will start in the back end, where Baxter prides him­self on a com­pact, lay­ered defense that makes spac­ing hard to come by. This time around, though, he has more resources at his disposal.

Baxter’s Moment of Clarity

In many ways the 2016 sea­son at Centennial was a water­mark year for Baxter, both for the Eagles’ run to the state semi­fi­nals, and for how much more game film he was using to imple­ment his coach­ing prin­ci­ples. Baxter fond­ly recalls the region cham­pi­onship game that year, where thanks to some film he acquired, he was able to tai­lor his strat­e­gy specif­i­cal­ly for a Westminster squad that was loaded with high-end talent. 

Without film, Baxter said, ​“We would have been over­whelmed and try­ing to fig­ure things out dur­ing the game.” Instead, they dom­i­nat­ed, out-shoot­ing their oppo­nents and tak­ing twice as many cor­ners, en route to a 4 – 0 win.

The next year, Baxter got his own Hudl account — the rest is his­to­ry. Baxter has brought plen­ty of film from his pre­vi­ous stop to show the Cardinals how he wants to play.

“Maybe I’ve got too much of an ego or maybe I believe in myself too much, but I know coach­ing makes a dif­fer­ence in every sit­u­a­tion,” Baxter said. ​“I’ve been with high schools since 2009, so I think I’m lucky to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have the great footage I’ve put togeth­er from Centennial to share with these girls. It’s just awesome.”

Of the many Centennial clips he pulls out to show his new team, there’s a com­mon theme — thor­ough, com­pre­hen­sive details poured into every move­ment. There isn’t a wast­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate teach­able moments through video analysis.

“I’ve been with high schools since 2009, so I think I’m lucky to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have the great footage I’ve put togeth­er from Centennial to share with these girls. It’s just awesome.”

Steven Baxter, Head Girls Soccer Coach, Spring Mills (WV) High School

Compacting the Defense

Any well-coached team will tell you that you must get com­pact and be orga­nized when defend­ing. It’s not uncom­mon for a high-per­form­ing team to defend with any­where from sev­en to nine field play­ers, depend­ing on their tal­ent and what kind of for­ma­tion they’re run­ning. Based on film from pre­vi­ous sea­sons, Spring Mills has some holes to clean up in the defen­sive third. At times, their defend­ers weren’t high enough up the field to sup­port the attack or pos­ses­sion, leav­ing 60 to 70 yards of spac­ing between the back line and the for­wards, with the mid­field­ers scat­tered about. They didn’t get back quick­ly to defend, leav­ing things wide open and disorganized.

Baxter is par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of one clip from his 2016 team that per­fect­ly illus­trates how good defens­es com­pact in the mid­dle third. In a man­ner of sec­onds after los­ing the ball in the mid­dle of the field, mid­field­ers and defend­ers have already cut off pass­ing lanes, both at close range and to the oppo­site side­line. They force the oppo­nent to make a neg­a­tive pass and play the long ball, which gets eas­i­ly overturned.

Baxter’s critical attention to detail is reflected in his video analysis workflow.

These may not seem like viral, high­light-wor­thy plays like the ones that pop­u­late your TV screen or social media feeds. But lots of these lit­tle clips add up to a sound defen­sive phi­los­o­phy that makes oppo­nents work for every inch.

Owning the Box

At Centennial, Baxter had a great run of goal­keep­ers over the years, includ­ing one who cur­rent­ly plays at Marshall University. At Spring Mills, he inher­its a long, ath­let­ic keep­er and sees plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties where she can own the space in front of her.

To explain what he’s talk­ing about, he calls up a goal allowed from that great 2016 Centennial sea­son that under­scores the impor­tance of being aware of the space around her. From where she was, 4 – 5 yards from the goal line, and with the scor­er near the 30-yard line, Baxter shows that the keep­er is com­plete­ly beat­able 24-feet wide and at the two feet below the cross­bar. If she was back on her line or even one step off, she prob­a­bly could have made the save.

“So, here’s an exam­ple of a kid who’s not in posi­tion, she can’t make the save because of where she’s putting her­self,” Baxter says. ​“It’s a coach­able point. You’ve got to rec­og­nize, when peo­ple are in shoot­ing range, if you’re one step off your line, you can do a drop step for a tough save, but you’re not giv­ing up the entire goal. You’re mak­ing them beat you with a good shot, not just putting it on target.” 

“Film don’t lie. I’m just try­ing to keep it real, because you don’t get any­where by sug­ar-coat­ing and cov­er­ing things up. Just look at the film.”

Steven Baxter, Head Girls Soccer Coach, Spring Mills (WV) High School

Armed with lap­tops in the class­room, film has allowed Baxter to bridge those tough con­ver­sa­tions with young ath­letes. It’s easy to deflect blame for any error on the pitch. He knows many of his ear­ly con­ver­sa­tions will be about own­er­ship. And there’s no bet­ter teach­ing tool than your screen.

“A lot of times peo­ple and par­ents, kids of that nature, they have a pre­con­ceived notion that it’s some­one else’s fault,” Baxter says. ​“But film don’t lie. I’m just try­ing to keep it real, because you don’t get any­where by sug­ar-coat­ing and cov­er­ing things up. Just look at the film.”

 

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