Solid Foundation

Today I par-took in a provincial pre-b license course in NWT, and it went relatively well. It was nice to work in a small group (there was myself and two other coach's who I coach with for the u13 boys group here), and it was ran by Huw Morris and Terrol Russell who came over from Saskatchewan. They provided me with some great feed back to help improve my coaching style, and the help optimize getting the most out of the players at training sessions. It was also nice to have a few of the u17 players come out to partake in the drills, but as they were doing so, it was another observation for me that the players here (no fault of their own) were not provided a proper foundation from a young age that would allow them to compete at a higher level in the long run.

In my last blog I had made mention that in Yellowknife, there is quite a divide in the soccer community and because of this doesn't provide the players here with a proper development pathway from a young age so that the basics of the game can be learned, and so that when they are put into an environment with a more demanding coach, they don't face quite a shock. After the two other coach's and myself ran our sessions, Terrol ran a couple of drills for the the players, and the other coach's and myself were able to see an immediate shock in the players expression on how a high intensity training session would be ran. When the other coach's and I talked to each other about this, and if we took the same approach to running our sessions, one of their responses was the players wouldn't show up again.

This got me thinking how important it is to get these players in Yellowknife who aspire to play at the next level (or even being able to compete with other provinces at things such as tournaments in Alberta or nationals) they need to be placed in a proper training environment from a young age. Having been involved with the North Mississauga Soccer Club for over 2 decades, Terrol reminded me a lot of their current assistant technical director Jhon Ardila (and the rest of the mentor coaches) and how he runs sessions for the players in the Center of Excellence program who range from u7-u12. There is a demand on the young players as they are in the competitive player pool, but it is nothing that is unrealistic. All of the players are able to train in such an environment, and over the season and years great strides can be seen in their game, both as individuals and as a team over all. 

The reason why I believe that it is important to start putting these players in such an environment at a young age is so that they develop a mindset from a young age that they need to work hard and at high intensity level from a young age, so that this way when they get older, a more demanding coach isn't a shock to them, and they don't have an attitude of quitting the game because a coach wants more out of them during training. If the players here in the NWT are able to learn this from the early ages (provided they are in the high performance program) they will see great strides being made in their individual and team games.

In order for this to happen though, there needs to become unity among all the clubs in Yellowknife so that they have a proper system to develop the players who would like to play at the high performance level. If there was 1 club for youth, they could have a houseleague program for the less serious and weaker players to play in and develop, while the players who have some talent and want to progress further with the game have somewhere to go with proper training and a bit more demand so that they are used to constantly working at a more intense rate. With this foundation, it will help them learn as they get older that when someone wants them to work harder (not just in soccer but all areas of life), quitting isn't the answer but instead giving it an honest effort will show them that they are capable of attaining much more than they believe they could.

"While some may think they didn't get the opportunity that life offers,often they miss it because it comes disguised as hard work, sleepless nights and sacrifice"

Starting Fresh- Youth Soccer in Yellowknife

Been awhile since I have written one of these, but I'm back! As some of you may know I have moved from Ontario to the Northwest Territories for work, and along with that I have gotten myself back into coaching as well (it's hard to stay away when you love it). I plan on updating this more frequently now, but this blog will be a brief over view of the soccer "culture" that I have observed here so far.

Fees for Coaching Courses
In comparison to courses that are ran by the OSA, it is a lot cheaper up here in the north in comparison to coaching with the OSA. I recently registered to take my pre-b license and unlike the astronomical fees of $250 (minimum) charged by the OSA, the exact same course here is offered for just $50. The NWTSA only looks to cover the cost to bring the facilitator in to run the course (my instructor will be coming from Saskatchewan), and the course is going to be ran in a much smaller setting (obviously there a much less coach's here). Another great thing is that for any other courses that I may decide to take such as my B, they will pay to send me out of province and cover all my expenses.

Politics
If you thought the OSA was a mess, despite being a small city sadly politics exist here too. I am living in the city of Yellowknife (population of just under 20,000), and yet somehow there are 6 different clubs with 5 of them being "competitive" clubs... To put this in perspective, I'm from Mississauga which has a population of over 700,000 and there are 6 main clubs and 3 micro clubs. Each competitive club here only operate in specific age groups, with none of them having the same age groups. One clubs has u9-u11 (one group of boys and one group of girls with the 3 age groups combined), the next club u11-u16 with the with the u11's to u 13's as one group an the u14's-16's together, another just has a u18 team, another is the 2 adult teams that represent the province at Nationals (they automatically get to go as there is no other teams to play). Worst of all, the only real game action that these kids get to play is in by playing in a poorly ran house league program that as very little organization (the indoor facility in town that they had the most say in has boards...) and there is ZERO development there. Soccer is played by a lot of kids in the city, but in order for these kids to actually develop, it would be essential for the entire soccer community in the city to come under one umbrella to build a proper foundation.

Player Development 
Today was my first day running a session with the u11-u13 group with the club I am coaching at, and lets just say there is A LOT of work that needs to be done (I will get into more details about this at a later time). These kids haven't really had any proper training, with a lot of them being introduced to a bit of "quality" training at the u11 age group, but by then they have picked up some bad habits and have not learned any of the basics to the game. Tonight there was not one player during the warm-up who was on their toes (all flat footed), terms like check away weren't known, and during the scrimmage... well let's just say the sense of positioning wasn't there, and EVERYTHING was always going forward with very little passing. Another problem that may hinder their development is that due to the location of Yellowknife, and the lack of organization, there is no league for these "competitive" (or high performance as they call it here) teams to play in and if lucky they get 1 tournament for the year in Alberta.

Conclusion
As I said this was going to be brief as I have to get to bed to work early in the am so I will wrap this up now. I will provide more updates with how the soccer life here is going but I will end it with this. I HAVE A LOT OF WORK AHEAD OF ME, BUT IT'S A CHALLENGE I AM READY TO ACCEPT!