U12 2011

This Tuesday I attended a meeting with Alex Chiet (7:30PM to 10:30PM!). The meeting was only for club head coaches and technical directors, but Alex had invited me as we had corresponded about LTPD and he knows I am a supporter.

It was a great meeting. There were about 25 head coaches/TDs attending, people as far away as Belleville.


Some points:

The courses structure is changing. Starting immediately for 2012, people who want to coach U12 and older teams do not need to take all 4 courses, and will only need to take the Soccer For Life course (last one) plus a short MED course (Making Ethical Decisions). The cost for SfL course by the OSA is $125, and whatever overhead costs are added by the giving club. This is a fabulous chjange and more people will want to become coaches now by removing a big barrier. Current diplomas will be grandfathered for existing coaches, but recertification will be coming at some point.

With regards to LTPD, it comes from above, Sports Canada and applies to all sports. Also, FIFA's Grassroots initiative is similar.

You may have seen in the newspapers LTPD being criticized by some people who don't really know what it is (e.g, a club president who was denied his silly medals after his teams won several leagues). LTPD focuses on the kids skills development, and fitness for life, and not on winning. The current approach is all wrong. We in Canada can surely attest to the total failure of the current mentality in soccer. LPTD will eventually get rid of standings, promotion/delegation for the younger ages (under U13) as well as current 'winner takes it all' tournament structures.

LTPD also favours a 3:1 practice to match ratio, and emphasizes fun matches, just as I have been doing for years. Lots of fun playing time, sounds familiar? :-)

LTPD will eventually eliminate the 'medal/trophy/winning' mentality that has gotten this country's soccer into this deep hole. It is not against competition, quite on the contrary. It will achieve better performance, and more skilled players, by doing the right things with the kids.

OSA did a lot of data searching. A chart was shown showing the tracking all ages over the last 5 years. I can't remember the exact numbers but, for example, for the U15 year in 2005, out of about 15,000 in year 1, only 3,000 to 4,000 stick with soccer by age 19. The numbers start much larger for younger ages, but have similar shapes, a bigger dropouts as the kids get older. These are really sad numbers. The charts show huge steep and gradual drops. This is what LTPD also tries to change (sports are for life, fitness for life)

To my pleasant surprise, out of the 25 people there, only one was against it, I don't know from which club. Most of the rest were very supportive, some quite vocally, including the Capital United HC who was sitting in front of me. He said loudly this was 25 years too late! How long has it been that Canada qualified to the WC? ;-)) Another passionate defense came from the HC of the Hotspurs, he says people forget that this was for the kids development, not about a team winning. This is about the kids learning soccer, and not a coach winning either. It is for the players.

Getting rid of standings relieves a huge pressure from coaches, as we know quite well (and hopefully will eliminate those bonuses for wins that some clubs pay their coaches!). There are coaches out there who scold their kids for losing a game or doing bad plays, as we saw this year. The person was was defending "winning" said that he had asked his 15 year olds if they would like getting rid of standings and most had said no. That is because they have been in this system for too long are conditioned to it. He also said that hockey (always bloody hockey) is quite successful in Canada and has always been about winning. He was immediately rebuked by another HC who said he was also a senior hockey coach and said that now much smaller hockey nations like Sweden and even Germany (and even the US in terms of hockey) are catching up, by using LTPD approaches, and Canada is falling behind. That is quite true too. The rest of the world has changed. Hockey is changing too, and change is difficult..

Other points: Success for the kids is not measured by a team winning a tournament or placing first. Success is measured by how the players improved during a season. Players will be assessed by individual improvement along a season (and we have some outstanding examples in our team). Winning comes naturally, that is the long term goal.

There are many other aspects of LTPD, including getting rid of chronological age systems, and looking at developmental age instead. I have always found so silly that players born in say Dec 1999 could not play with players born in February 2000. There is NOTHING wrong with mixing different ages.

Change is not easy. LTPD will be phased in through many years, it has already started at U9 this year in some leagues, I think including EODSA, and will progress from there, so unfortunately, not many immediate changes for us.

They seem to be doing something right.

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