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!
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