License to coach
Concord Carlisle certification rule for youth soccer may signal a trend
By Nancy Shohet West, Globe Correspondent | September 20, 2007
It has long been a suburban rite of passage for parents. You sign your kid up for the town soccer league, knowing that this means eventually you’ll be tapped for volunteer coaching services.
So, you put on your sneakers and hang a whistle around your neck, figuring those passing and dribbling skills that served you pretty well in high school and college will come back to you quickly. How hard can it be to teach soccer to a bunch of preschoolers, anyway?
That’s what Pam Reed of Concord thought when she was asked to coach her son’s prekindergarten team.
"But what I found out is that it isn’t the same game when you’re working with 4- and 5-year-olds," Reed said. "It’s not about learning how to dribble and kick; it’s about getting to be comfortable with the ball. You really have to teach in a different way that’s more age-specific."
This new emphasis on age-appropriate coaching is one reason Concord Carlisle Youth Soccer, which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association, recently instituted a requirement that all volunteer coaches for the club’s In-Town Soccer Program earn their G-level coaching certification.
The club’s more competitive Travel Soccer Program initiated the same requirement a few seasons ago and was one of the first in the state to do so. As soccer continues to grow in popularity, the teaching of the game is increasingly viewed from the lens of how children learn and develop, and coaches today are expected to incorporate that new awareness into their approach.
Nick Miller, director of Concord Carlisle Youth Soccer’s in-town program, whose fall season began last weekend, agreed that models of effective coaching have changed in the past 10 years.
"As younger children have become a more significant part of the scene, the soccer community has learned a lot more about how to work with them," he said. "Younger players learn differently than middle school players, so we use different philosophies like, ’Let the ball be the teacher.’ We try to keep them moving, with a ball at their feet, rather than standing in lines waiting to do drills one at a time."
That kind of approach resonates with Matt Kidder of Carlisle, a father of three young children. As a special-education teacher, he has devoted his career to thinking about the different ways in which youngsters learn. Having coached at the high school level for many years, he had his first experience working with very young players when he led his daughter Chloe’s prekindergarten team last fall.
"It makes sense for us to think about coaching as it relates to child development," Kidder said. "Five-year-olds don’t think or act like 12-year-olds, so why teach them the same way?"
Kidder completed the certification course during the spring in anticipation of a return to coaching pre-K this fall.
"The course basically teaches volunteer coaches to use what is known about child development to make sports more fun," he said.
Though nearly all clubs encourage coach training, Concord Carlisle Youth Soccer is one of the first to make the G certification a requirement. The course takes four hours and costs $30. Clubs in neighboring towns regard the decision with a degree of envy.
"In Acton, we don’t require it, but we strongly recommend it," said Dara Duhamel, director of Acton’s in-town program.
Brendan Donohue, who directs Lexington’s youth soccer program, said: "We currently don’t mandate that coaches have their G license, but we do highly, highly recommend it."
Mike Singleton, director of coaching for the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association, the second-largest such organization in the country, expressed optimism that Concord Carlisle Youth Soccer’s decision becomes a trend.
The state association counts more than 185,000 registered players and 24,000 adult volunteers in coaching and assistant roles. Roughly 2,500 coaches take the G certification course each year.
"This should increase as more towns move to mandating licensure," Singleton said. "We are in the final stages of developing an online coaching course to even further promote coach education as well."
In Carlisle and Concord, resistance to the new regulation has been minimal, said Nancy DiRomualdo, administrator for the in-town program. Coach recruitment as of late summer, she said, was on par with previous years.
The club has 105 teams organized, based on the number of youngsters signed up, and coaches and assistants for just about all of them. A certain amount of attrition each year is to be expected as children’s preferences change; a previous coach whose child opts out of soccer this year is unlikely to sign up to help, DiRomualdo said.
"I can’t see why anyone would object to this requirement," said John Cunningham, the club’s director of coaching and player development. "If you’re going to coach, why wouldn’t you want to learn to do it properly?"
The central approach behind the G certification, Cunningham said, is to remember that young children do not play soccer like miniature adults or teenagers.
"For example," he explained, "it’s very hard to teach a 6-year-old to pass, not because of where they are in terms of physical development but because of their emotional development. Asking a kid who has the ball to pass to a teammate is akin to asking a kid to give up a toy. Their perspective is that they’re on the field to play with that toy. So passing is probably not going to work too well."
In essence, Cunningham said, "Kids in the pre-K age group view soccer as ’me and a ball.’ From about ages 6 to 8, it’s ’me and a friend and a ball.’ " Only after that age, he said, do they generally start acquiring more sophisticated teamwork skills.
Jessica Dudley of Concord had not played soccer much before she signed up to coach her 6-year-old son’s team last spring. Even before it was required, she was happy to undergo certification training, to build her own skills.
"The point of the program is not to teach you how to be a good soccer player; it’s to teach you how to coach kids," she said. "Most of the other adults in the program knew how to play soccer better than I did, but even they learned from the workshop.
"For someone like me who had not had a lot of experience playing soccer and had not coached before, it was great."
