5 Essential Tips for Coaching a Youth Football Team

Coaches get just as much enjoyment and learning as the players do. Coaching youth football lets you bond with kids, watch them grow and develop as players, and it teaches you how to work with a team of individuals effectively to work towards a goal.

This sounds like a company's mission statement, but coaching a sports team is kind of like work: it takes planning, organization, and handling of many different personalities. Add on the fact that these people you're working with are energetic and rambunctious kids, and you see just how tough coaching kids football is.

Let's give you some tips for handling a group of kids and working towards team and individual goals as a coach.

1. Get Some Help

Assistant coaches exist for professional football teams and professional players, so why shouldn't they exist on a youth team? Assistant coaches can help corral your team of youngsters, maintain order, and help you run practice.

Whether you enlist your friends or parents of some of the players, assistant coaches can take some of the load off your shoulders, so you can focus on coaching instead of on babysitting. This will also allow you to run multiple drills at one time, which is crucial for running an effective practice.

2. Focus on Fundamentals

As youth players, football is still somewhat new to them. In order for them to grow into proficient and smart football players, they need to master the basics at a young age.

That's where you, their coach, comes in. This is the time where you need to hone in on the fundamentals of football:

• Passing
• Dribbling
• Ball Control
• Clearing
• Shooting

Teaching your players these essential skills will make them able to focus on more complex football skills and strategy as they get older.

3. Get the Parents Involved

These kids are still kids, which means their parents have a huge influence on how they do. Speak with the parents and help them understand the importance that their kids are practising, eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and getting encouragement at home.

4. Personalize Coaching to the Players

Kids need to feel heard, understood, and loved by the adults around them. It's important to get to know each player on your team individually. You need to understand their strengths and their weaknesses and cater your coaching to those things.

This will help each child improve in their own way and grow as individual players instead of just focusing on a couple of the "best" players on the team.

5. Positivity

It's easy to fall into the trap of "tough love" coaching that many of us experienced growing up. Studies show that kids with aggressive or negative coaches become aggressive and negative themselves, and they eventually stop loving the game.

Staying positive, even in the face of loss or difficulty, will build a child's confidence and fuel their positive love for the game.

5 Tips for Coaching Youth Football

Coaching youth football is fun, rewarding, and challenging all at once. Hopefully, these tips reduce the challenge so you can focus on positivity, fun, and personal growth for you and your players.

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