Coaches
| 10.16.23

Losing season?

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A response to a struggling team. This might help you too...

 

Thank you for your note on this.
I wanted to wait to see how the game went this weekend?
 
RE the situation on the field.
Yes absolutely I can reach out to opponents and make that connection and would love for you to do the same (contact info should be in sqwad).
I agree with you on the mercy rule and the overall experience. It is a goodwill gesture but often more embarrassing all around than remotely helpful.
 
You are correct that we do not do a rebracket, but we do offer up swaps sometimes. If there is a team in the flight below (in this instance) that is very strong and clearly in the wrong flight, we would offer up a swap, but that is not the case here.
 
So what can we do?
1 - Facilitate conversations.
2 - Offer up additional playing time for your players - team time is a good one.
3 - Prepare for next season with more accurate flight creation to benefit your team.
 
4 - Offer up my own experience:
Set goals within games - whatever practice was focused on (if trying to switch play, for example) then how many times did we attempt and actually achieve.
I'll set a goal for 3 in the entire game (or whatever - you know your players). Then we objectively measure how we did.
So, I tie practice to the game.
I set individual challenges within that - "be in good shape when the player on the other side of the field has the ball" (so we can switch) - how many times did you do it/forget to do it? And then each player has a goal relative to the role they play in the game.
It takes some planning, but take what you're doing in practice and set two team goals from it.
If you follow the curriculum, you'll see that each week has a theme within a game set up, so you work on both attack and defense. Therefore, the goal for each game is simply built off of that. 
For example, Week 10 is preventing build up in the opponent's half. So goal 1 would be how many times did we stop them from building out? Goal 2 would be how many times did we build out? (because in practice, your players will play both sides of the ball so they get opportunity to defend and attack.
So when they get to the game they are familiar with the goals and 'how' to play. 
I believe in giving answers to players, so creating a way of playing for them that transitions to the game is one of the ways I do that :-)