Skill Awards Program II
It takes many thousands of hours of practice to become proficient at anything. Historically, the world’s best soccer players developed their skills by playing with neighborhood friends in “street soccer” games and by self-training their tricks and turns alone. Formal competition generally started around age eleven or twelve.
In today’s over-organized youth soccer world, free play is an endangered species and most youngsters don’t touch their soccer balls in any purposeful way between their regular training sessions. The net result is a vast majority of players who either quit the sport early (70% by age 13), or lack basic technical and tactical “literacy.”
Youth soccer coaches find themselves facing a dilemma.
With only two training sessions per week, re-creating the spirit of street soccer provides the best opportunity for young children to experience the delight that often leads to emotional attachment and the journey towards self-development.
Completion:
- There are four levels to the program and each level is progressively more complex.
- When your son or daughter or player can complete a skill five times in succession, check the box.
- When all four levels are completed, a coach should e-mail the player’s name and address to Tom Turner at [email protected] to receive an OYSAN Skill Awards bag tag.