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Soccer Club wraps up successful coaching program

April 3, 2018   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Coaches with Orangeville Minor Soccer have wrapped up a two year coaching development project that helps them learn best practices when it comes to teaching young players the nuances of the game.

The project was financed with a grant provided by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, under the Ontario Sport and Recreation Communities Fund.

“We received a grant for $35,000 over two years. We partnered with the Hillsburgh and Erin District soccer group,” explained Orangeville Minor Soccer Club director, Chris Boom. “This was to deliver coaching development to youth and volunteer coaches. We are also trying to increase the number of female coaches.”

Currently, almost half of all players in Orangeville soccer are female.

A total of 42 coaches went for the training over two season including several that went to multiple courses to lean more about how to coach kids.

There are four different coaching courses in the curriculum.

“Coaches learn how to properly motivate the kids and recognize the techniques that need to be taught. We hired a coach mentor to come in and he would run practice sessions every week night for the different age groups in our house league programs and our house league coaches would come to those he would provide a curriculum and teach them how to teach the kids,” Boom explained. “We did that for two summers. Over the winter we hosted courses either in Orangeville or Erin. “For the smaller kids it was four hour sessions for the coaches, then fundamentals for the eight-year-old.”

Coaches learned a lot of different coaching techniques as well as other things a coach needs to know such as watching for concussion injuries if a player takes a hard hit.

As coaches start working with higher level divisions or rep teams they must take additional courses to keep their skills up to date.

“We really recognize the advantages of bringing these courses in – getting coaches involved early on. We have coaches that have never coached or never played the game before and we want to give them a comfort zone. By having a mentor coach the pressure is not on them to run their own session. These coaches that went through it (the program) are much more knowledgeable and they feel more comfortable. The coaching mentors teach the coaches the proper techniques to pass the ball, kick the ball, receive the ball, then give the coach the opportunity to teach the kids while he’s watching and give any course correction,” Boom said.

Each division of soccer changes as players get older and the course adjusts so coaches can teach properly at each age level.

“We’re trying to get more female coaches involved. Around 45 per cent of our Club are female players but only about five or six per cent of the coaches are female. The program is all about providing the coaches more knowledge about the the techniques of the game and more of a comfort level in coaching. And that increased the number of kids who get proper training.

The new summer soccer season gets underway in May and runs through to the end of August.

There’s still time for anyone who wants to sign up by contacting Orangeville Minor Soccer before the start of the season.

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