Player Evaluations & Discussions to Cut/Move Players to a lower team

[Ryan RichParticipant]

Gary et. al.,

I wanted to pick the collective brain here about how to handle player evaluations effectively using objective measures? For the most part, we all operate in a pay-to-play club system so if feel giving data to support decisions based on our style of play would go a long way to help not only make decisions about player retention but also to present to parents.

My initial thought is to track (maybe 3-4 a season) various states directly related to our style of play and what we consistently practice at training. For example, possibly keeping track of the number of completed passes or number of times a player receives across their body. We do a player position rotation where kids at U9-U10 player GK/defender and midfielder/forward so averaging the numbers over the season (since in the attack, players will inevitably have a lower pass completion percentage).

Do any of you do this and use this kind of data?

[Eric DykesParticipant]

Not sure if your club has a player pass, but in SoCal the players are allowed to play on any team each given week. We practice our groups together and the players that are showing improvement get a shot at playing with the higher team and players that miss, need a slower speed of play to master a concept etc. play down that given week. If your upfront from the beginning then things go well. If you surprise the family and one day they are moved down or cut then your not going to have a happy family.

Passing data would be awesome but difficult to track. Do you track each pass currently? and if so how do you do it?

[Ryan RichParticipant]

I track game stats for the team currently and post them on our blog each week after our games.

I don’t track individual metrics currently. However, I think if I do, it will have be recorded video and then I’d have to watch video of it. I’m trying to find the easiest and most effective way to measure individual performance based on style of play:

– percentage of opportunities an individual retains possession vs. gives it away

– pass completion percentage

Can anyone think of other ones based on the style of play…or you can say I’m being ridiculous trying to do this too!

[Michael SpranoParticipant]

Hi Ryan,

For me personally there are just too many variables to make something like a pass completion statistic very useful (even averaged over a season), so it boils down more to “I know it when I see it.”  For a variety of reasons, some kids just don’t seem to get it.   They don’t orient their bodies the right way, they don’t think ahead, they don’t get their heads up, they consistently make poor decisions with the ball relative to their skill level, and consistently fail to move off the ball to create good options for their teammates.   The cumulative effect of all of this is a pattern develops over the course of a season where you find that the overall quality of your team’s play suffers when certain players are in the game, and improves again when they come out.  This is particularly evident when playing 7v7 like both of us do, because the impact of a single player is magnified – and becomes even more so as time goes and the rest of the players continue to progress.

Mike

 

 

 

[GaryKeymaster]

Historically, no formal player evaluations.

For parents:
Brian has had an open-door policy for parents that want to talk about their kid. So throughout the year, the parent can get feedback. But of course there is a limit. When they ask me, I too share.

But, parents must also be ‘managed’.
That means I’m not brutally honest. Because in most cases, that would be totally crushing.

For players:
They get straight up feedback every single training session and match. Year round we’re telling them what they’re doing good and what their deficiencies are.

But as for the hard data/statistics like you’re suggesting … no, never done that.
Much comes down to what Mike said; “we know it when we see it”.

[Author]

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