"So you have girls with close to a 3 year spread in age? How is it working balancing the size, skill and speed differences? What about maturity and "place in life" issues. Very interesting. "
Great questions and since you asked I will tell you the whole story.
1) Yes the girls in our core group range from 95 to 93.
2) Having coached both groups (95 and 93) separately and at the same time for 7 years, the younger group has gotten much of the benefit of our lessons learned with the group 2 years ahead of them. So they played the same formation and were coached in the same way which made them very compatible with each other on the field. We ended up with a situation last summer where both team's opponents for friendly games bailed on us with no notice so we decided to have the two teams play each other for fun. After four 20 min periods in 90 degree temp the teams were tied. We couldn't believe it! so we thought that was a fluke and did it again the next weekend because they had so much fun playing against each other. This time the older team played way harder having their pride hurt a little. The younger group responded by increasing their game and again the score was tied 2-2 I think. We did it one more time on a practice night and again tied! That’s when we realized the younger group, which has many players that have played 7 plus years of year around soccer, was just as strong. We had several girls in that younger group that really wanted to play 4 days per week and loved playing against the bigger, stronger, faster players than players their own age so we started having some of them play with the Fire periodically. Now 9 months later, actually many of the younger ones are physically bigger and several of them are faster and stronger than many of the older players. With many of our older players not wanting to play high school soccer last fall, and not wanting to split up for 3 months we created our own friendly G93 league for the fall last year and ran it ourselves. We had 6 P1 to P4 teams participating. Since we made the rules, we had no issues bringing in several of the younger players to guest play with the Fire just to see how they would do in those games, and we were shocked. They did outstanding, even against GU16 P1 opponents. Four Thunder players played with the Fire in the Turf Cup college showcase last November at Starfire. With their skills helping the Fire play stronger, we beat the NW National G93 B team 3-1 and played very even with Reign’s 93 B team. We even held WPFC A team to 0-0 tie through the first half. In January we had a few older players leave the Fire which created space and we transferred 5 of the younger players to the Fire roster for the Fire’s spring season, since the younger team’s WSYSA season was over in the fall this was approved by wsysa. Those 5 girls helped make the Fire stronger than they had ever been and gave us a great bench also! We had several other Thunder players that are strong as well but we could only play the 5 with the Fire.
3) Playing up is not for every player, it depends their physical development rate, their maturity level, their years of competitive training, which vary for every young lady but after 14 season coaching select/premier soccer now we are doing ok at evaluating that for each player I think. Mentally the younger ones also had no problem competing, but they are excellent students as well with many years of training. The older girls accepted them because the younger ones earned their respect on the field and we have exceptional older girls that by their nature are very accepting. We also observed that the younger girl’s skills doubled in the time they played with the Fire this season. That is in part due to the higher level of their teammates on the Fire team, and higher level completion but we also do more advanced field training and video review training sessions before every Fire home game so they were getting a lot of practice and a lot of tactical training when playing with the Fire.
4) Your last question is the most important one I think and something we are aware of and actively working on. There are some maturity gaps and differences in their places in life but we are a very different team and very different coaches than typical premier coaches which I think enables us to handle these differences without problems where other clubs/teams may struggle combing multiple age kids. Having kids that are very compatible in their goals, soccer abilities, values, and character is essential in making this work and greatly reduces the differences between the players. Our more personal approach and coaching philosophy, combined with the quality of the kids we have chosen have made this less of an issue. In fact, the older girls are helping us to mentor the younger ones and are setting a great example for them because they are college bound responsible teenagers that have already made the tough choices all teenagers have to make. They already mingle socially and there is very little separation of players in our group by age, perhaps because they have grown up with each other. With our own daughters involved in this, we are very intent on making this a great experience and an experience from which our own daughters and all the girls we coach learn valuable life lessons to help them find happiness and success in their lives. We only choose players that we want our daughters to be around and whose parents want this environment and mentoring for their kids as well. We do projects, team parties, community service, trips, week long team camp, etc… which help the girls form real bonds, a sense of “community” and togetherness that overcomes the age differences. Coaching only 1 team is another huge advantage for us because we can focus all of our energy and time into these girls on Fire CPT and give them more experience and attention than they will get anywhere else.
Yes indeed very interesting and we understand, a little outside the box! We are extremely excited about this team in 2010 and having players and parents who all want the same thing and are so compatible. We feel quite blessed as coaches to have the opportunity to work so many great young ladies and the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in their lives ?
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Topic: NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR GU15 TO GU17 GIRLS IN THE SOUTH END! (Read 543 times)