Rec League Coaching Information

Pre K Coaching Philsophy:

The idea of goals or a field will be pretty foriegn to your players.

Our goal is to have the players have fun while running and kicking the soccer ball.

The idea of the field and structure of the game can be casually imposed by dividing the group into color groups (with colored pinnys) in separate cone fields. Then you can play one or more of the Pre K soccer games within that group, and then after that you can do a casual game in the same field. You will have to tell them about goals. Do whatever it takes to keep the game fair.

Pre K coachingTips.

Try starting with a simple warm up, but repeat it every practice, like jumping jacks. Just having them try 10 becomes an expected way to begin practice. Do a good example yourself but don't worry about their form. It is fun to throw something sun in at the end, if you make it special, the kids will remember it and want it every week. Something like "5 SuperJacks" at the end of the Jumping Jacks.

It is really good to learn the kids names as quickly as possible. That way you can tell them specific instructions while playing with them. It is really hard to do, the best way is by just saying their names all the time the whole time, until you know them all.

The whole thing of lining up to start is good to encourage...

Pre K Coaching Games:

Race Car :

Make a race car track with cones. A box or an oval is good. Tell the kids they are Race Cars (or Airplanes, Wild Animals, Cats, Princesses, whatever...). Tell them to kick the ball around the track. When they are going around tell them different directions such as "go fast", "go medium" or "go slow".

Body parts:

Make a cone box. Have the team kick the ball within the box. Say a body part and have them touch that body part on the ball. You can do foot, foot, bottom of the foot and try to have them stop the ball with the bottom of their foot.

Then you can say "elbow", "knee", "head", "chest", then you can have a funny end and fall over by repeating it quickly. You can do this a few times

Relay Races:

Withing your cone box, make a noticible track with tall (or otherwise noticable) cones, then have the kids break into two teams and do a relay race, the course may be to run up to a cone, turn around it and then run back. If they are super advanced they could pass to hand off the baton. Why not say the word "pass"?.