Central Santa Clara Valley YSL - Coaches Corner: Byte Size Training Program

Welcome to the CVYSL coaching curriculum

Byte Size Coaching can give coaches the tools they need to succeed.

The Byte Size Coaching program is a customizable coaching website containing a balanced and progressive curriculum designed to benefit the players and coaches alike. It's a fact that because of time-challenges more than 80% of coaches have no formal soccer coach training.

Our initial target audience was for coaches of players from 6-years of age (or earlier) to 11-years of age. These programs are usually run by community soccer organizations as house leagues and rely on volunteer parent coaches, many of which are new to coaching and may not have played the game of soccer.

Over 60% of the children playing soccer in North America are under the age of 12. Paradoxically, over 75% of the coaches in North America coach this age group. How come? Small-sided programs are the basis of house league play and have one coach and an assistant or co-coach with squads of 6 - 8 players (as opposed to 11-a-side with squads of 14 plus players). As well, there is a high turnover of coaches in the younger age group. We believe that the Byte Size Coaching will begin to reduce that by making the coaching of soccer a more rewarding and fun experience for the coach as well as the player.

When using these practice plans don’t be afraid of inserting your own ideas to make the games and activities more fun, more difficult, or simpler depending on the progress of your players. Use your imagination, be creative, design your own games or practice using these plans as a foundation.

Feel free to explore practice plans of older and younger age groups to build your base of ideas. Even professional teams still perform some of the practices found in the U7 plans because they are simple and provide a change of pace from the more complicated activities. This keeps the training environment in a state of constant change and that in turn, keeps players tuned in.

We have now added to the original program by including Lesson Plans for Indoor practice. We have assumed that most of these take place in a relatively small school gymnasium and have scaled things accordingly.

We have added over 200 single pages of soccer activities that will provide fun for the whole of the family around the kitchen table or in the backyard with a soccer ball. We are just re-organizing the presentation of these Activity pages so feel free to scroll through them.

We are working hard on the curriculum for U13 – U18 players and the very youngest beginners in U4, U5 & U6 programs. Target deadline is the spring of 2005.

Back to the practice field.
Beware of any exercises that keep players in lines or waiting for their turn. If you have an assistant coach or two, get a couple of practice areas going at the same. Try to make sure you use every minute of your practice time to the maximum.

These plans cover all aspects of the fundamentals of the game and should provide you with a good base of ideas to work from. They should help you in your preparation for your team’s practices and consequently play a positive role in your team’s preparation for games. However, hopefully this program goes even farther than that and facilitates the development of your own ideas and training methods.

Learn to play... play to learn!