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I’ve got a GU14 team and my DOC gave me a roster of 17 girls. It is a Flight 2 team, which means they aren’t the best of the best but they aren’t bad either. We just started up our training again and I’m having a difficult time with a few of the “screw off” kids. These also happen to be the kids I did not want on the roster, but the DOC was HC of this team and did not want to cut them.
These few screw offs have a very negative effect on the rest of the girls and things tend to get more and more silly as time goes by. I’ve sat them down and explained to them that training is the time that you become a better player and that if you want to become a better player you need to be 100% focused during training. That doesn’t seem to make any difference to some of them, they just continue giggling and what not.
So my question….do I just start yanking the screw offs off the field when they start screwing off? How harsh should I be so that they understand that ths behavior is not acceptable? I hate having to do that because I would think that they would WANT to become better players, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. Also, I don’t like getting off to a bad start with the group to where they hate their new coach, but something has got to change. Also, I do not have an asst coach on a regular basis, so it’s just me with the 17 girls most of the time.
Any advice would be great….thanks!
Justin,
I had a similar situation coaching middle school girls last year, but we only had 12 players on the team, so I didn’t have the luxury of being able to bench/cut people that weren’t not focused on soccer. I would absolutely take the problem players off the field as soon as they become an issue. Taking it one step further, don’t even put them on the field until they have shown you they want to be there. The larger problem will become if you don’t immediately deal with the problem kids, having their behavior rub off on the ones who currently are behaving.
You can’t make anyone want to play and get better, they have to decide that on their own. It sounds like you’re doing your best to keep them interested and engaged but they will ultimately decide how much interest and effort they are going to put in. I wouldn’t worry about them hating you as a coach. It’s always much easier to start off as being a strict hardass and then loosen up as people become more familiar with you than the other way around. And the other players will respect you more for not tolerating any of their BS either.
Hope that helps.
David
Thanks for the advice David!
I’ve trained a bunch of teams at the U11-13 age group and have never run into a group of girls like these ones. It’s like they think training is “comedy hour”…..everything is funny to them. I don’t do boring drills with long lines or anything, but getting these 4-5 girls to take things seriously is becoming quite a chore.
Our next session is on Fri night so I plan on telling them at the start of training “It’s time to be dialed in on soccer now…..no screwing around for the next 1:30. If any of you decide to go into your giggling routine, you will be taken off the field and you can watch the rest of the training session from the sideline”.
Hopefully that does the trick.
Please give an update on how things go.
Training went well tonight! I sat them down before we started our warmup and told them the deal….”If you screw around, get a case of the giggles, or disrupt taining in general….I will remove you and you can watch the rest of the session from the sideline. It’s not fair for a few of you to ruin it for the rest that are here to get better”.
They responded really well and we had a good session. Hopefully they can continue this way and focus on becoming better players and I don’t have to deal with their giggles.
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