Next weekend is the beginning of soccer play for my U10 soccer team, and I’m not too far off of a U6 baseball team starting practice, too. It’s a favorite time of year for me as I completely enjoy spending my evenings watching the kids fight for their team.

I have since, after my first season coaching, endevoured every off-season to do what it takes to be a better coach. I am still learning how to take a bunch of kids and turn them into a team. It’s probably the hardest thing to do is to take a recreation team and turn them into a cohesive group. Some seasons it works and some seasons it ends in disaster. The funny thing is the best team I think I’ve ever had finished the worst I have ever finished, and the worst team I thought I ever taught was minutes away from a championship win. Through this, I have learned it’s not about what you think through practice it’s what the kids took and learned.

My best team, I see the best defense I have ever been able to put together. With an amazing 1v1 player who had the heart to go all game guarding the other teams best player and a few super good offensive weapons that went and got that one goal we needed to win each game and helped keep the ball away from our goal. We also had the best Goalee I’ve had the opportunity to coach.

The worst team I ever had was one that never gelled as a team. The team leader hated the rest of the team, and half the kids were scared to mess up. It was a giant mess. I actually walked away after the season and didn’t even want to talk soccer for a few weeks.

What all this has taught me is that you have to get a team that likes the team to have a good chance at the season. I’ve seen amazing teams fall apart because kids on the team couldn’t get along, and I’ve seen teams that shouldn’t have made it past the first round of playoffs win the championship because the team played like a team.

I was listening to a podcast that the speaker was discussing when he was coaching his sons first soccer team what he did. This person is a well-known sports broadcaster and not a soccer player or athlete themselves. So, to prepare for the season, he used his connections to go spend a day at a highly sought-after children’s soccer club. He said he went to the man who was in charge and asked what do I do to be successful this season with my sons 10U team? The answer was something that surprised even me. Make sure they have fun. That’s all. Stop trying to overdo the practices and drills and make it all fun.

I took this thought to heart what can I do to make sure they have fun. Now kids relate winning to fun, but in all honesty, winning is a by-product of fun. So, how do I incorporate this into my everyday practice. Well, I teach the kids how to work as a team and stop worrying about who is the star and who has the star on their team. I got pretty upset the past season about teams having star players and how, at this age group, the team with the beat player wins most times. This thought got caught in my teams head, and they got scared of the star players, and it showed in their play.

This year, my focus is on team and teamwork. 1 player may be able to score a goal or two, but if a team plays together, they can outdo 1 player by a group effort. Watching professionals play, you see the ball moving between players and then boom goal. Now, stars do open up the game here and there, but a team working together will always beat a team that differs all play to the superstar.

I hope I can get the idea of playing as a team across this season and on. I want badly to teach these kids that it’s more fun to play as a team than have the burden of a team on one kids shoulders. If nothing else, I hope this season is one that I learned to look at the team as that of a team and not just complain about not having a superstar. It’s a team game, and I have to teach a team, and in my heart know a team wins not a star.