Baldwin Whitehall Soccer Association’s U6 Soccer Program

Welcome to Baldwin Whitehall Soccer Association’s (BWSA) U6 Soccer program. This resource will give you all the information need to get an idea of how the association is moving forward in developing players. This resource contains of a new seven-week programme of progressive session plans for players aged under the age of 6 old. Each session plan has distinct activities/games that will cater for players of different soccer experiences, from the new in the game to developing to competitive level. Importantly this program has been developed to deliver the ‘aims’ that BWSA feel necessary to grow the game in the area, by using an enjoyable and game centred approach to coaching soccer.

Aims of the program: The aim of the BSWA U6 Soccer program is to serve a number of purpose...

·        Every player to be included in every session, no matter their ability or experience in playing soccer.

·        For players to be introduced to the game and educated them on the game.

·        To start develop the techniques of the players.

·        For players to continue to play soccer beyond this age group.

·        Most importantly for them to have fun and enjoy playing soccer.

Our sessions aim to maximize the learning time of the players. This is done by grouping the players and giving them a circuit style training session, so that they can rotate around stations and learn about the session’s topic in different environments. This enables the coaches to select players who are struggling in the groups and giving them specific coaching points (either individually or as a group) to help overcome the barriers to their learning. Once they have developed their understanding of the skills they are learning about they can be re-introduced back into the activity for an opportunity to show their understanding. The U6 program is designed to help develop each player’s competence, confidence, performance, character, creativity, and understanding of soccer.

RESPECT Campaign

In order for BWSA U8 program to achieve its aims, the players need to display an appropriate attitude and behaviour commitment to making environment of the club enjoyable for all. Therefore BWSA’s coaches will be following the RESPECT Campaign (See Below) in order to ensure this. If players fail to follow this procedure it will result in appropriate sanctions for their actions.

Suggested Running of the Under 6 practice

The suggested running of the group practices for younger age groups, is running station based activities to move away from loads of scrimmages taking place. The reason for this is it may be easy as a coach/organisers to just allow them to scrimmage the whole session, however are all the players included and are effectively learning/developing from this session?  If a session just involves scrimmages, then the more talent players may get loads of touches on the ball, however the lower ability players may have very few touches and become bored. This may result in the players eventually stop playing soccer. The reason for Youth Elite Soccer being involved with BWSA, is we can help provide ‘meaningful’ activities that will help included all players to develop the fundamentals skills to play the game. 

Therefore in order for this to happened at BWSA….

u  Coaches should arrive early to set up and go through any issues about any activities. Have a smile and be welcoming, to get the players excited to be playing soccer.

u  Coaches should follow the suggested work area for Colewood Fields and session plans for each week to help develop the players and give them a ‘meaningful’ practice and coaching time.

u  Coaches should deliver the coaching points (the number of coaching points delivered, depends on the players’ age and learning abilities. The aim is not to overload players, but ensure they are challenge).

u  At each session, the coach(s) focus on two to three coaching point from training the topic per station. This will hopefully ensure that the players aren’t overloaded with too much information at once.

u  Coaches ought to work together between stations, to recap the pervious coaching point and then introduce the next coaching point. This will hopefully aid the development/understanding of the training topic for the players by gradually building the coaching points block by block. This approach will help players to not be overloaded with too much information, but at the same time not forget the various coaching point need to perform the topic skill .

u  Coaches may find it more useful to demonstrate the instructions of the station. This will help to incorporate the different VAK (Visual, Audio and Kinaesthetic) learning styles of the players, through them hearing, seeing and doing what is being asked of them at each station.

u  Be creative and entertaining at every possible opportunity. This helps to keep the players from becoming disengaged and disinterested.

u  Use visual aids where possible. E.g. coach demonstrations, cone prompts etc.

u  To help make the session/stations more interesting towards the players, coaches may find it useful to tell a story that relates to their age group.

u  Coaches should follow the coaching formula (see below) and provide demonstrations to help give the players a ‘guide’ on what the coach is looking for.

u   Coaches should at the end of the session discuss; what went well for them, what could have been improved and shares ideas on how to move forward.

Coaching Formula

Story telling example……

u 

u  Station One- Monster's Inc. Obstacle Course

u  Description-

1.     Players all have a ball, that coach names Mike Wazowski.

2.     The players must dribble their ball to the other side and trap it with their foot, so Mike Wazowski can meet his friend Sully.

3.     Then on the coach(s) command the players dribble Mike Wazowski back to his home.

4.     The players dribble again on the coach(s) instruction to the other side so Mike Wazowski can meet another friend from Monster’s Inc. However this time the coach(s) adds obstacles for the players to dribble around (can be bibs, cones) that represents a  bad character from Monster’s Inc (E.g. Randall).  

The suggested outline for the running of a BWSA sessions are as follows…..

 BWSA Scheme of Work Outline   

Key Characteristics of the Scheme of Work:

·        The most common topic in the scheme of work is Ball Manipulation (Dribbling). This is to encourage these young players to be confident on the ball and become more competent moving with it. Also Passing is also a common topic, this is to encourage players to become good at working in a team and move away from a kick and running after the ball culture.

·        In ‘Week seven Activities’, there is a mixture of topics. The aim for this session is to recap all the key fundamental skills (Passing, Dribbling and Shooting) learnt throughout the scheme of work and for coaches’ to see the development of their players. During this week, coaches may request a particular activity they found helped development their player well. However there must be at least one shooting activity, one passing activity and one dribbling activity.  

Author: Thomas William Skinner (2014)

               BA Hons in Sport Studies

               Youth Elite Soccer Coach