The roles of a coach

When you see the opposing teams we play you'll notice something different. They all have two or more coaches on the sidelines. As a parent you may wonder why this is so. What does a coach really do? I know when I was a parent I was unsure. So let me list it out for you so you can see why I am asking for help from you all. I don't necessarily need another person to get their F-license and join me on the sidelines, you'll notice that all the roles that have an asterisk next to it can be done by the civilians amongst you.

• *Attend monthly coaches meeting (Every first Monday night of the month)
• *Communicate with the parents via e-mail, blog or phone, when and where the games and practices are
• *Attend practice twice a week
• Train the boys
• *Set up scrimmages with other teams
• *Sign up for tournaments
• Attend games
• Coach the boys from the sidelines
• Deal with injuries
• *Communicate with other coaches prior to games
• *Warm up the boys before games
• *Print out match day forms
• *Gather players from other teams if we are short
• *Print out rosters updated with players moving up for the day
• *Enter the scores
• Evaluate the referees
• Pay the referees
• *Get reimbursement for referee fees
• *Get reimbursement for trainer fees
• *Scrounge up money from parents when we go over training budget (Thanks Josephine)
• *Coordinate the fundraiser (Thanks Josephine and Janice)
• *Manage the finances
• *Enter all the children in the USClub soccer website, (Birth certificates, photos, etc,)
• *Get the passcards from Northern Counties
• *Get photos from the parents
• *Generate photo ID for the boys
• *Get the passcards laminated
• *Drive up to Ridgewood to retrieve cards when our players get red-carded
• *Recruit more players
• *And write all these messages

So think about these roles and decide if you could help me out on some of them. I need a manager or even a group of assistant managers who can lift the burden from me. Remember, I didn't ask for this job. I stepped up so that the team wouldn't collapse on Marios and Roland's exit. But I'm doing it almost all myself and letting important things like recruiting more players slip due to a simple lack of time.

Extra Trainer Dollars

Thanks to all the parents who paid the extra trainer fees. Josephine collected $1,650 so far.
That pays for the $990 extra training costs for Julio and will also cover the $97.50 Leo will charge us on Monday assuming weather cooperates for the final practice session before the winter session starts.

That will leave me with a little over $560 in extra training fees available for next season. I also expect to get money from two more of the parents. I'm not sure about Damien or Justin's situation so I'm not expecting money from them at this point.

We can discuss the money in more detail at the parent's meeting.

Since this extra training comes out of our pockets, that's why you have to make the checks out to me rather than Wayne Soccer Club. I just received an e-mail from Doug Struyck, the efficient treasurer of the club and he has told me that he does indeed keep separate funds available for teams in this case. We can discuss doing this at the meeting and see if we want to burden him with this as well or account for it ourselves outside of the club's system. (He didn't like my little joke about the donation, by the way. I didn't mean to imply that they would do anything inappropriate. I just figured it would be an un-needed complication.)
If you want more details of this money, look to your right and click on the link called practice attendance to see money going in and coming out. I'm no accountant so don't make fun of my system, it works for me. Also, click on the roster to see who paid what.

What a season!

I can't tell you how proud I am of this team. The season looked really difficult from the beginning. With a screwed up recruitment process we only picked up one new player. I was stuck as the only coach and made a lot of mistakes from the beginning. We played with almost no subs the entire season. Some games we played with 9 or 10 players. And there we were in the premier flight of the league. It looked like a recipe for being blown out most games.

 

I gave the parents who made it to my parent's meeting my coaching philosophy: "I want the boys to have fun, exit the season better players than they entered it and not to get blown out all their games or to blow out their opponents." Let's see how we did meeting those goals.

 

• You'll have to ask your boys if they had fun, I know my two boys did.
• I can tell you that most learned a lot this season. The practice attendance was really quite good, (see below for details) and they learned some great drills with Leo and Julio as the coaches that they put into practice in the games. I saw tremendous improvement in Sebastian, Roberto, David and Liam.
• We were only blown out by one team but even in that game they played keep-away for only the last few minutes of the game.
• And we finished the season quite respectably: Three wins, six losses and a tie.

 

The big problem that plagued us throughout the season was a lack of substitutes. It didn't help having two injured players and two who were committed to another team. But I am really disappointed in the lack of support I received from the club in this area. I was constantly offered help but those offering it didn't follow through. I will be dealing with the club over the winter to try and get some help here. I will hold Rene's feet to the fire to have him get me the help he promised.
The only good side to this problem was that the players got plenty of playing time and were in terrific shape by the end of the season.

 

Let's have a parent's meeting after Thanksgiving to discuss the past season, the winter training, the spring season and any help you would like to offer me. Please vote on when you can attend and I'll set it up for a time that works for everyone. Vote on which days work for you and I'll pick the most popular.

Great Game!

I loved seeing our boys control this game! No subs but everyone played well. This was the same team that beat us 4 - 0 in the first game and the difference was an increase in skills and better stamina for the boys. They were not winded and three of them even played the game right after.

Let's see them all finish the season strong today with a win against Montclair.

603 Grove St Montclair, NJ 07043 (map)

Northeast: Garden State Parkway to exit 151, Watchung Avenue in Bloomfield. Head west on Watchung Avenue across Broad Street. Turn right at the second traffic light after Broad Street, Grove Street. Proceed north on Grove to entrance to school on the right, just before the second traffic light from Watchung Avenue.

No Practice Today!

Too much rain for practice today, Wednesday, Nov 16th.

See you at the game on Saturday.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Let's start with the ugly: Saturday's game. Nearly everyone played poorly goals were flying fast and furious and we experienced the horrible feeling of the other team not being able to score any more goals on us because they were leading us by seven. Fortunately this was only near the end of the game.

There were a few brights spots. After their #17 scored two amazing goals, I placed one person on him full-time. Ed and Jake took turns and we shut him down for the rest of the game. And we scored twice! We also had a few opportunities to score more that we wasted so the game wasn't a complete rout.

Now the bad: Joel was suspended for two games:

Based upon the referee report for game #85384 which took place on 11/5/2011, Games Conduct has assessed the following penalty:

    Joel Castro has been assessed a two game suspension effective with the first game following the incident.

The reason for this penalty is as follows:

    GUILTY OF VIOLENT CONDUCT

A ridiculous penalty but one we will have to bear. Danny and Sam played goalie in the last game and we have two decent backups. I am able to retrieve Joel's card after Saturday's game so that he can finish out the season with us on Sunday.

Now for the good: Kathy and I attended last night's soccer dinner dance. We were the only people sitting alone at a table meant for ten so it looked weird at first. But we didn't mind too much because there was a bright shiny soccer ball as a centerpiece which we knew we would get no matter what. The dinner was looking better already.

Then we bought some raffle tickets and put them in the various baskets. And we won two off them! We won the one we wanted, our own basket put together by Josephine and Janice. The other one was for two living wills. Maybe we can trade that for one regular will since we still don't have one. (I know, I know terrible of me.)

So, between the two baskets and the soccer ball, we pretty well broke even for the dance. Nice to have something good happen this weekend.

See you at practice on Wednesday.

Trainer money, Practice next two weeks and winter practice

Parents,

We have been using a lot of trainer time this year, more than budgeted by the club. They budget $1,750 for the fall season and we have used more than this. By the end of the fall session we will have spent $2,955 on training. Next spring should be similar and we haven't even talked about the winter training schedule yet.

The good news is that the boys have been improving due to all this attention and, as you can see from the chart at the bottom of this blog, most boys have been taking advantage of the training. The bad news is that this extra money will have to come out of our pockets. If we had put in a better showing at the dinner dance, we would have some extra money to pay for the extra training but we didn't even make our quota of filling a table. Only Kathy and I are going so far.

Bottom line: I need to collect another $150 per child to pay for the extra training bucks and we'll have to do what we can to use less professional training in the winter and spring. Perhaps if a parent can help me on the sidelines I can do away with most of the game-day training. And I am always happy to have a parent lead the occasional practice day to focus on something they want particularly for the boys to learn. Perhaps winter training would be perfect for that. I'll return whatever we don't use or ask for a little more near the end of spring season to make up the shortfall.

Josephine has graciously volunteered to collect the money in check form. Please give them to her at the next game. Make the checks out to Bruce Fieggen so that I can pay the trainers directly.

I set up two last practices for the boys under the lights this season. They are on the calendar and are Wed 11/16 and Mon 11/21 from 5:00 - 6:30 at Barbour Pond 1 or 2. That is the grass field.

Also, the club has set up six sessions of winter practice at Turf City starting Feb 17th from 4:00 - 5:00 PM. These are Friday afternoons. This will appear on the calendar shortly.

Saturday's game and other things

I loved the way we played during today's game. It was a tough competitor, one of the best in the flight and we held them close until near the end. We were also playing against a terrible referee who allowed the other team to foul ours incessantly, yet freely gave us red and yellow cards.

We lost Joel but Sam and Danny played well in his stead and will step up next week. Sebastian was a monster out there, stopping nearly everything that came his way. Liam made his debut today, playing a little shaky but he was able to provide that needed rest and played for Roberto when he was hurt and Joey when he had to leave early.

We played a lot of through balls to Franco and Zaeem and Davis and they almost put a lot in the back of the net. Anyway, congratulate your boys for me, I am very proud of them all.

In other items, I need to know who cannot make the 11AM makeup game on the 20th. If it is someone we normally count on, I will ask for a different date. That will probably be a week night. If not, we'll do it then.

Also, I didn't get a lot of people interested in indoor practice for the last two weeks of the season so we'll just plan on getting in a little practice before the games so make sure they arrive at least 45 minutes before the games.

Make up games and practice

Last week's coach sent us an e-mail with a plea to make up the snowed out game on November 20th at 11AM. Given the amount of snowed out games, we may have little choice in the matter. I'm hoping you can all make it. Vote on the first poll.

You voted unanimously to change this Saturday's game from 6:00 to 3:00 so I will make that change on the calendar.

We also need to decide about practice once daylight savings starts this weekend. It will be dark by 5 so the boys will be unable to practice at Schuyler any more. I will try for Barbour Pond but I was told early in the season that this would be impossible. So, do you want to pay for indoor practice or would you rather say that is the end of practice until our indoor sessions start in the winter? Vote on the second poll.