Summer Camps Vs Club Coaching

I am doing a few summer camps over the summer and started my first one today. The coaching is totally different. The main differences are basically the ability levels of the children and coupled with that, their motivational levels. Now this is just related to the camps that I coach on. I am sure there are camps out there that are full of more committed and higher ability players.

Anyways, the camp I am on this is pretty much 99 percent recreational kids. They are not a bad group of kids in terms of listening and their behavior. But in terms of their ability to play soccer, it is very frustrating. I love working with good kids, and I want to coach the best kids that I can - as I am sure any coach out there wants to.

Firstly, the kids on camps can find it extremely difficult to pick up what most coaches would consider rudimentary moves and turns etc. When I demo a move and then ask the kids to try it, some of the kids lack of coordination, balance, and proprioception baffles me. My lads in the spring could do a move within one minute of me showing them with no further instruction pretty much. Now whether the move was efficient is another question, but a least they were moving their body and feet in the right way and had a good grasp of the technique. The kids I have had today, were moving their legs and body in just completely the wrong ways compared to what I had demonstrated. Now this can be frustrating, but also beneficial for a coach I feel, because I then have to try and think of different ways that I can get the kids to understand and learn what I am trying to show them. Nevertheless some kids do not get it and I have to move on, otherwise I would literally be there all day.

I do wonder to myself sometimes why kids like that do struggle to get things. I suppose it can be for multiple reason such as lack of physical literacy, exposure to the game, lack of experience, or even maybe lack of focus, commitment and concentration.

Moving on to the lack of motivation for the majority of camp kids, this can be frustrating. Some of the kids, quite frankly, are there to get them out the house and active during the summer and have no interest in soccer at all. For this, I do try to understand the players perspective and try to make it as enjoyable as possible for them. It can be quite challenging though - especially when I have got them for 3 hours each morning. I try to play a lot of fun games that relate to the topic, and get lots of repetition in what I want to achieve.

Sometimes, I even just bribe the kids with 'world cup points' :-D

Anyways, that is it for now.

Rickie