Resources

Mike, both Lauren and I are very proud of our resources as they were compiled with a real desire to help coaches help our young children. Your feedback will spur us on to even greater efforts so that we develop more confident coaches working alongside ever more confident children. Best of luck. Pete and Lauren.

Mike, thanks for engaging with our forum and it is another interesting question that you raise. You are right about having to learn as you go along as sometimes the theory is great but how you deal with children with totally different personalities, wants, needs and different ability levels is a tough gig for anyone but the more you work with children the more you can cope and survive (initially) and then , as time passes by, the enjoyment increases as you begin to anticipate and predict issues and can head them off before they become a major problem. Our Play Phase section is a good place to start (but I will bet you have already been on this part of the website) as it tries to demystify the coaching of young children and give some really clear advice.

Firstly, and I can't stress this enough, be consistent in your approach. Every coach will have a different personality and will work in a different way but being kind, attentive and interested in the children as young people as well as anything they can do with a football is so important so please remember this. The start of your session sets the tone. Greet the children with a big smile, let them know you are pleased to see them (even if you are nervous inside) and have an arrival activity ready for them to try. This can be a small sided game (it's great to start with a 2v2 so don't be afraid of doing this). There might also be other throwing and catching activities that the children can choose if they want to. I'm not sure if you work alone or with an assistant coach but if there are two of you then you can have two activities and you each look after one and children can decide where to go (the choice and ownership has already started!!)

Try to ask yourself when planning activities - if I was a child of 5 taking part in this would I like it, would I be engaged, would I be having fun? If the answers are NO then I would seriously look at changing them and making them more child friendly and I intend to add more Play Phase games and activities to the section as the weeks and months go by. Having a carousel of activities can work as if there are 3 or 4 different activities you are likely to meet the needs of most children and the children move around after a short period of time so they get variety.

This might be enough to think about so I will stop now but I am sure other coaches who are going through a similar experience may jump on and add their own ideas - I really hope they do. Regarding books and articles I will put together some titles of books that have informed my ideas and post them on here but most will be about developing young children rather than coaching manuals as I believed if I knew more about the world of the young child I would be better equipped to work alongside them. Really great to meet you Mike and good luck with your young group - make it great :-). Best wishes Pete.