So You’re Going to Coach Youth Soccer

Your summer is winding down, the days are getting shorter, and you’re readying yourself for your child’s upcoming school year. The anticipation and excitement that comes with a new school year is brewing. And what’s also brewing is the anticipation, excitement, and perhaps even anxiety, that you’ll be coaching your child’s soccer team in the upcoming fall season. You’ll have 12 or so elementary school-age children under your charge for ten weeks of practices and games and you want to be the best coach you can for these kids.

Maybe you volunteered for the job willingly. Or maybe you stepped into the coaching role because no one else would. But regardless of why you’ll be coaching the team, you’re going to want to approach the season with not just the right practice plans, you’re also going to need crystal clear intention and a set of coaching principles for coaching kids at this age.

Setting Realistic Expectations

The first thing to do is to dispel yourself of the notion that you are going to lead this team to victorious glory. This isn’t to say your team won’t finish the season with more wins than the other teams, but if that does happen, I can say with some certainty that it will have nothing to do with any preternatural coaching talent, tactical know-how, or in-game management skills that you may possess.

In fact, very little if any of this is about you at all. And it’s best to just do away with any notion that it’s your job as coach to lead this team to a winning season. Trying to do so isn’t important, nor is it helpful. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not Pep Guardiola or Emma Hayes. You’re not even close. But the good news is, you don’t need to be. In fact, your job is very different from theirs. They are paid millions of dollars a year to get the most out of some of the highest performing professional athletes in the world. You are the parent of a young child, volunteering to coach a group of kids on weeknights who might be tired, amped-up, irritable, goofy and everywhere in between. Suffice to say, these kids won’t be showing up to training sessions with the same world class athlete mindset of, say, Kylian Mbappé or Trinity Rodman. One of the most important parts of your job is to meet these kids where they are.

Establishing Your Principles

Right-size your objectives for the season and orient your thinking around high level principles. Your goals for the team should be the following:

1. Cultivate a healthy team culture

2. Develop skills and confidence

3. Enable enjoyment of the game

Simple, right? Well, not really. I mean, it can be simple, but it also requires that you step into this role with the clearest of intentions and principles — principles that you can communicate and reinforce throughout the season to both the players and their parents. It’s not an accident that Cultivate a healthy team culture is listed as the first principle. Without a healthy team culture, and the team very much includes parents, delivering fully on the second and third principles can be quite difficult, if not impossible.

Subsequent posts will dive deeper into how you can weave these principles into your coaching and truly deliver an exceptional and enriching experience for the players and their families. For now, get clear on your intention for the coach you want to be. Align your objectives around team culture, skill development, and enjoyment of the game. The rest will follow.

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