As coaches, it is easy to get wrapped up in the pressures of the moment and lose sight of the big picture. Now that we are three games into the spring season, I thought I would take a minute to focus on what’s important. The vision of AYSO is to […]

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I spent a couple of hours watching U7 and U8 girls play soccer at Grant Middle School yesterday, and I saw something I didn’t like. U7/U8 is played with five players on a field with goals marked by flags. The goals are pretty big, and there are no goalkeepers, so scoring should be pretty […]

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I ran across a great post on the Region 22 Coach’s Blog. In it, the Regional Commissioner for Region 22 explained that coaches should not tell their players to take a knee when a player is injured.
When I first got involved with AYSO back in 1991, I saw coaches command their teams to take a […]

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As the spring season approaches, I find myself wrestling with the perennial question, “What now?” The foundation of the coaching cycle is that all coaching is retrospective. That is, we watch our players in a game, decide what aspect of the game needs the most work, design and conduct a series of practices to improve […]

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As a coach instructor, one of the subjects that gets a lot of discussion is “What system of play should I use.” In soccer, systems of play refer to the arrangement of players on the field at the start of the game. While a lot of attention is paid to a team’s system of play, […]

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Welcome to our coaching blog. I set up this blog so that I could share some views about coaching with other coaches from our Region and elsewhere. Hopefully, you will share your comments with me so we can all learn together.
As the volunteer webmaster for Region 104, the items you see on the website reflect […]

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