By Teri Boggess
(Active Alex 11/2011 - Full Article)

Amid holiday hustle and winter dreariness, parents might forget to look ahead to spring.

But a lot of soccer takes place in the winter, including registration and offseason training, and the next few weeks provide an important opportunity for improving skills, maintaining fitness and developing a better understanding of the game that will make spring a breeze.

Skills First Building a good foundation of skills is crucial, says Sam Stockley, director of coaching at XL Soccer World in Raleigh. “Players cannot do the more complicated plays if you do not first have the fundamental moves – simple tasks first, then build on top of that,” Stockley says. “Kids want to start with a bicycle move or a (Diego) Maradona move. But the best kids are those that have one or two touches then pass. They will be the most successful.”

Those moves are best developed before tryouts and team practices begin. Participating in a winter program permits boys and girls to receive the most beneficial instruction on individual skills, says Amobi Agu of CEDA Academy in Holly Springs.

“We can hope that their practices and games can enable them to develop their technical mastery,” Agu says, “but there is only so much coaches can provide during the limited time during team practices.”

For Wake County youths, additional instructional time be found through winter training programs offered by XL Soccer World, CEDA (Children Empowered Demonstrate Achievement) Academy, the DreamSports Center and Apex Soccer , MVP Sports Factory’s MVP Soccer Academy in Wake Forest, My Soccer Fitness in Cary, Next Level Academy in Morrisville and Wake Forest.

Avoid Sedentary Weeks With holidays approaching – and cold weather arriving with it – some families might be tempted to put soccer aside until spring workouts begin. But if a player wants to be truly competitive in the spring, a winter program is essential.

Otherwise, those sedentary weeks could be costly. “You lose a lot of the fitness that you built up over the fall,” says Andrew Bradham of My Soccer Fitness, which offers a six-week winter program in Cary intended to help young players enter spring tryouts with better overall confidence resulting from better overall fitness.

The Mental Aspect Training for competitive youth soccer covers basic technical skills with the ball, physical training such as speed and agility, and tactical training to develop an awareness of the game, Bradham says. In addition, there is a fourth base area, the mental part of the game that sends an athlete confidently onto the field to take on opponents.

“Being a complete athlete, at the end of the day, you understand tactically how to handle opponents,” Bradham said. “ … You’re the one who has to take responsibility for yourself. You need to go out there and do it yourself.”

For the Good of the Whole Bradham has a keen interest in seeing young athletes take advantage of winter training because such programs didn’t exist when he was a young player. The former Green Hope High School player also competed for the Triangle Futbol Club and CASL and went on to play at Liberty University and then at Clemson University before eventually playing his way into the Minnesota Thunder on the United Soccer Leagues professional circuit.

He sees good offseason programs as an essential part of the nation’s soccer development. “If we can take the time to kind of get down on the knee with a kid and explain to them and help them understand with no other objective but improving, no game on the line, ... kids are going to be so much better off than when I played,” he says. “That’s one area that’s really going to help propel these kids forward and hopefully bring the game in this country further down the road than when I was young.”

Building Toward Success No matter what a child’s distant future will be in the sport, having skills, fitness and confidence going into spring will go a long way toward helping the child enjoy playing, avoid injuries and succeed in spring soccer and in seasons to come.

“These fundamental skills become minimum requirements that your player will need, especially if they want to continue to advance at the Challenge level and even further raising the bar and consider Classic,” Agu says. “If you want to see them on their school teams – in varsity or junior varsity – then this is the time to enable their development and have them gain additional skills with fundamental technical training.”

A Parent’s Responsibility The coaches remind parents that player development is a process that requires time, commitment and communication.

“These skills don’t come overnight,” Agu says, “and the results may even take a year or more to witness during the games. … The development is a journey that will require your commitment as parents to invest in what’s best for your children. So please understand that patience and commitment is needed from both yourselves and your children.”

Parents should work to balance their goals for their children with the young players’ needs and wishes. “Much of the desire comes from the parents, what they want for their kids, the scholarship,” says Stockley, however, “the desire has to come from the child, a hunger; they have to want to learn, to work to improve.”

Building the foundation of skills, fitness and awareness, Bradham says, “helps kids understand that they're in control of their destiny whatever they decide to do with the game.”

Soccer registration for some leagues remains open until the spring, but other deadlines arrive quickly. For example, registration ends Nov. 30 for some CASL programs, and tryouts will take place in early December. For details about winter training programs and spring leagues, check Active Alex’s Sports & Activities database.

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