E M A G G N I V L O THE EV March, 2017
Issue 39 Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Coaching Newsletter
Effective Teaching For Youth Soccer Players Attaching more effective guidelines to your coaching and following best teaching practices will make you a stronger and more organized coach. In examining and using Rigor, Relevance and Relationships or Scaffolding in your sessions, you can begin to measure a player’s success, while making planning appropriate sessions easier. For example: In Quadrant A (Acquisition), players learn and store bits of knowledge and information regarding the skills to play the game. Quadrant B (Application) requires players to use their acquired knowledge to solve practical problems in small-sided games or involve extra players on attack or defense in an exercise. In Quadrant C (Assimilation), players extend their acquired knowledge to use it automatically and begin to analyze situations on the field and create unique and various solutions in a match. When working in Quadrant D (Adaptation), players have the competence to think in complex ways and apply their knowledge and skills when confronting puzzling unknowns within the game and creating solutions. Quadrant D is accomplished without the coach and his or her instructions. Recognizing the quadrant each of your players are in will make for improved training and provide a road map in progression.
In regard to positive feedback, it must be utilized as it relates to a goal of your training, Mike Barr Eastern Pennsylvania exercise or game. Feedback Youth Soccer must be specific and useful Technical Director to the player, user friendly, tangible, on-going and consistent. The feedback should not be overloaded with too much information and appropriate to the developmental level of the player. The feedback should be timely and specific. Often times the feedback should be given at an appropriate time in a game or practice and not necessarily during the game or practice (tool kit). The player must understand the feedback. Feedback is the most important part of teaching. It would be beneficial for an observer to record a coach’s feedback during a session and have the coach examine his or her feedback in relation to goals. Your feedback should lead to change but not have the player rely on constant advice from the coach. Utilize the question, “based on my feedback do you have some ideas on how to improve?” Provide actionable information in each feedback.
Inside: An Interview with Biff
DIGITAL COACHING CENTER (DCC)
UPCOMING COACHING COURSES National E License - YMS
March 10 - 12, 2017
Lower Makefield, PA
National E License - Dillsburg
March 17 - 19, 2017
Dillsburg, PA
National E License - Horsham
March 24 - 26, 2017
Ambler, PA
National E License - Reading
March 31 - April 2, 2017
Leesport, PA
National E License - Glenside
June 2 - 4, 2017
Glenside, PA
National E License - Lancaster
June 9 - 11, 2017
Lancaster, PA
National E License - Birdsboro
June 9 - 11, 2017
Birdsboro, PA
National License - Lancaster
March 17 - 19, 2017
Lancaster, PA
National License - Downingtown
Downingtown, PA
April 7 - 9, 2017
@EPaCoachingEd For more information, details and registration, please visit EPYSA.org
Game Watcher ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE
MAJOR SOCCER LEAGUE
BUNDESLIGA
LA LIGA
Mar. 18, 11:30AM West Ham v Leicester
Mar. 11, 4:30PM Union v Toronto
Mar. 17, 3:30PM Dortmund v Ingolstadt
Mar. 18, 11:15AM Ath Madrid v Sevilla
Mar. 29, 3:00PM Liverpool v Man City
Mar. 11, 5:00PM Minnesota v Atlanta
Mar. 19, 12:30PM Gladbach v B Munich
Mar. 19, 12:30PM Barcelona v Valencia
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MEET THE COACH Biff Sturla- Lower Merion Soccer Club Biff Sturla has been a coach at Lower Merion Soccer Club for 35 years and president for the last 19. He played for the club when it was still known as Gladwyne Soccer Club and Harriton High School. Sturla then went on to a four-year career at Hobart College. A former ODP coach and current head coach at his alma mater, Harriton, Sturla has also been involved in coaching education, teaching both E and D courses. How old were you when you began to play? Do any of your former coaches stand out to you? I didn’t start playing soccer until junior high as there was no club soccer for younger players. My favorite coach of all time was Nort Seaman. He was my junior varsity lacrosse coach at Harriton. He was able to get players to work hard, love playing the sport and love being on the field with teammates. He really built up players’ self-esteem. My soccer coaches didn’t inspire me nearly as much, and I honestly felt I didn’t really learn the game of soccer until I got involved coaching youth soccer and taking the ‘E’ coaching course back around 1984. As the leader of Lower Merion Soccer Club, considered one of the top clubs on the East Coast, to what do you attribute your tremendous success? We hire coaches with strong soccer backgrounds for all 57 of our travel teams. For our youngest age groups, we hire people with good soccer backgrounds and a strong ability to create a fun, educational atmosphere. We do our best to make sure we have really good staff coaches work with our youngest players. The programs we offer to players ages 4-9 have coaches with good soccer backgrounds, but an even better ability to connect with young players, build enthusiasm, self-confidence and a love of the game. You need coaches
who sincerely care about the kids and have a good soccer background as opposed to someone who has an accent, played professionally and is only there to collect a pay check. We also do not focus on just the ‘A’ teams. We have had strong players start out on a ‘D’ team or ‘C’ team and eventually move up to the top team. Our LMSC Sabertooth Rats team were U-15 boys state champions and regional champions last year. Two of their starting players were ‘D’ team players at U-10. Five of their players started on B, C or D teams but moved their way up over the years and eventually earned a trip to the National Championships. Having such a large club how do you accommodate for so many teams and such few fields along the Main Line? Fields are definitely our weakness. We spend well over $80,000 a year in field rentals. Unfortunately, our township is fully developed and additional fields really can’t be built. Plus, in the spring, we lose fields to baseball and lacrosse, which are both strong in our area. Our club and our travel teams do a lot of fundraising to cut costs so that we can rent turf fields in the fall and spring. Fields are always our number one concern. There just is not enough space for all of our teams. You are recognized as one of the premier coaches with young travel teams. What is the secret to working with young players? I have been coaching at LMSC for 35 years now and have been a head coach in the high school ranks for 22 years. Even after all the years, I still greatly enjoy working with youngsters and giving them a chance to grow up and develop as successful people and successful soccer players. Enthusiasm is huge. If the coach appears to really care about the games, the players and the practices, then the players will care about the games and practices. “Enthusiasm is contagious” always
applies. Coaches also need to be students of the game. I have completed all my coaching licenses from U.S. Soccer, have attended about 18 NSCAA Conventions, read tons of coaching literature, etc. But I know that there is always more to learn. My coaching methodology is constantly changing. I try to pass along various coaching articles to our LMSC coaches and pass along notes from the various clinics and seminars that I attend. Do you still enjoy coaching high school and is there something special to returning to your alma mater to coach? I greatly love coaching high school, especially since Harriton is where I played as a teenager. Our practice field is the same field I played on back in the 1970s. High school is a place where students are under a lot of pressure, trying to figure out what college to go to or what career to pursue. There are tremendous social pressures as well: dating, drugs, learning to drive, dealing with drunk drivers, etc. I try to talk with my players about experiences in my life as a Harriton graduate so that they will be aware of certain situations that might arise in their lives. I also tell them about the many successful people that have come out of Harriton during the school’s 60 years. Sometime high schoolers get overwhelmed, and they need someone other than a parent or a teacher to talk with. Making a difference in students’ lives can be very rewarding. Harriton is a phenomenal school that places students in great colleges. But, like all schools, there are students out there who could go down the wrong path without guidance.
MEET THE COACH
Biff Sturla- Lower Merion What do you consider to be the highlight of your coaching career so far? That’s tough to say. For one, I have had seven different teams win state championships (12 titles in all). Some coaches have had success with one or two teams, but having seven totally different groups of players win states is something I have taken pride in. One team won three regional championships and took second place in the nation. That was certainly a great highlight. A big highlight for me is seeing former players of mine grow into great adults. I had a team in the late 1980s, the LMSC Gorillas, that won the U-13 state championship in 1990. We had a 25th anniversary reunion in 2015. It was great to see those guys, many now parents, transformed into great men. I still stay in touch with many of them. Another coaching highlight was in high school play, beating Mike Barr’s Strath Haven boys’ team four times in a row. Another highlight is seeing many of my former players become coaches. It is nice to see so many of them give back to the game. My daughter Hanni is now my assistant coach. She is also a senior staff coach at LMSC. Another highlight will be when I get to coach my grandson Kain in four years. But first, he has to learn to walk. How do you feel about the recent Player Development Initiatives from U.S. Soccer and what problems did that create for your club? Some of the stuff U.S. Soccer did was great. I especially like the Build-Out Line for 7v7. My U-9 team plays out of the back and our player development increased a lot because of this new rule. U n f o r t u n a t e l y, w a y t o o m a n y opposing team coaches had no idea how to make that happen. Too many coaches have their goalie put the ball on the ground and clobber it down field. Or, they roll the ball to a defender who clobbers it down the field. My team makes a lot of mistakes passing from one defender to the goalie to the opposite
defender. It has cost us quite a few goals. But we are developing players, and they are learning to play great possession soccer. The parents cringe when we play the ball around back to the goalie, so I remind them that our games are not being covered by USA Today. I like the 7v7 setup for the younger ages and the 9v9 setup for the next level. When I was first coaching in the early 1980s, all age groups played 11v11 and players were only getting a few touches on the ball. Back in the early 1990s, LMSC became one of the first clubs to have intramural divisions switch to playing 4v4, 5v5, etc. Do you still have volunteer coaches within the club and are most of your travel coaches paid coaches? All of our travel team coaches are paid coaches. We have 57 travel teams, comprised of about 45 head coaches. They all have strong soccer backgrounds: several high school coaches, several college coaches, one former U.S. National Team player, a few national youth players from other countries, etc. Our intramural coaches are all volunteer parents, but our youngest intramural divisions are run by our paid staff coaches with parent coaches assisting the staff coaches. We have a curriculum for all of the youngest ages and a set philosophy of “possession soccer” for player
development that all of our staff coaches follow. What EPL or MLS team is your favorite and why? I am a huge Arsenal fan. I think the Premier League is really exciting. Almost all of my U-9 boys have a favorite EPL team so there is a lot of trash talk after each weekend of Premier League games. They all love the Champions League as well. I was fortunate in 1994 to have tickets to nine World Cup games, including Bulgaria defeating Germany in the quarterfinals and Ita l y b e a ti n g Bu l g a ri a i n th e semifinals. I’ve also taken my daughter over to England twice to see EPL games. We saw Arsenal at Manchester United in one game and saw Birmingham at Wolverhampton in another. The neat thing about that game was that both teams were in the relegation zone. The two clubs are located within 10 miles of each other so the crowd was insane. Both teams needed to win to climb out of the relegation zone. You would never see such excitement in the USA, where two teams at the bottom of the standings would just play boring games in front of apathetic crowds. American sports, including MLS, would greatly b e n e fi t f r o m a promotion
MLS Returns With Ambition MLS expansion club Atlanta sold more than 30,000 season tickets in the lead up to the start of its first season, which kicked off Saturday, March 4. That number was the latest exclamation point in what has been the most ambitious, and perhaps strongest, league debut yet. With a big name coach in Tata Martino and a bevy of talented youngsters in the fold, Atlanta has emerged as the latest indication that MLS is making moves in the American sports market. But will it ever earn a place alongside the Big Four? The conversation comes up often. Aside from the promotion/relegation debate —pro-rel in the parlance of MLS Twitter—it’s probably the most common topic in and outside MLS circles. In fact, I discussed it recently with a friend of mine who lives in Charlotte, one of the many cities lining up for their crack at MLS. He said in 10 years MLS could be the big thing, at least bigger than the NHL. Just look at how much soccer has grown, he argued. I disagreed with him, and not because I grew up a hockey player and fan (I also played soccer through college for what it’s worth). For all the positives coming to the league—namely Atlanta but also the Orlando City’s, Sporting KC’s, Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers of the world—MLS still gambles too often in the wrong areas. It doesn’t have much of a foothold in New York City despite having two
teams based there. Chicago remains one of the league’s albatrosses, with poor performances and a stadium well outside the city. And who knows what the dynamic will look like in LA when the city welcomes a second team next season? (Not to mention David Beckham’s ill-fated Miami pursuits). In other words, the league’s three biggest markets have question marks attached to them, and we haven’t talked about the plights of New England, Philadelphia, Dallas or DC, all of which struggle for relevancy in their home cities. Now, that would explain the league’s middling, albeit improving, television ratings, but it doesn’t speak to the overall health of MLS. In fact, the lack of big media coverage has made local beat writers all the more important, while forcing fans to seek out team specific information rather than get it in passing. What’s left are incredibly intelligent and engaging fan bases. This in turn gives MLS owners all the more reason to work with their team’s supporters, which they do on a regular basis. If anything, this fan-friendly has established MLS as a potential major player more than anything else. And yet, there are mountains to climb, even if Soccer has grown in popularity. With the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and the Champions League readily available on American television, viewers have
access to the best product w i t h o u t seeking out Dillon Friday the MLS Sports Journalist Pennsylvania alternative. Eastern Youth Soccer T h a t ’s o n e Marketing Coordinator factor that has slowed the MLS train. Another is video games. A good portion of soccer fans grew familiar with the sport and players through EA Sports FIFA. A gamer new to soccer will always select a Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, et al. instead of, say, Real Salt Lake. That means something. But that shouldn’t stop you from supporting MLS or encouraging your friends to. You certainly shouldn’t trash it. Saying the league is not as good as the Premiership does not mean it’s bad. While it may never catch European leagues or the NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL in terms of popularity, MLS can offer one of the best in-stadium experiences on a regular basis and plenty of intrigue. It also remains the best chance to get a view of U.S. National Team Players and future players. Let’s stop taking a selfconscious view of MLS and instead, enjoy it. It’s good and getting b e t t e r, and I’m glad it’s back.
Congratulations to Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer’s 2000 ODP on their National Title
US Soccer PDI: Formations for Small-sided Play
The U.S. Soccer Player Development Initiatives (PDI) outlined rules and methodology for small-sided games. The Under-8 and younger age groups will play 4v4, the U9&U10 age groups will play 7v7 and the U11&U12's will play 9v9. Above, we've put together playing formations for 7v7 and 9v9 to help acclimate coaches who may be new to small-sided games. The PDI is available in its entirety on our website here.