By Tim Bradbury, Director of Coaching Instruction, Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association
Each New Year brings a sense of promise and hope. Perhaps it is inspired by many people creating New Year's resolutions and promises to themselves as they recognize the person they want to be. For Eastern New York, 2019 also started with a sense of hope as our instructional team was expanded with two new additions, both already holding their US Soccer instructional license. This brings the educational team to a mass of 16 quality coaches, all with an intrinsic desire to learn all they can about best practices in adult education and how to best share methods on teaching the game.
These 16 staff spread between Long Island and Albany can provide any of the following educational offerings to any clubs or leagues:
• Full suite of US Soccer Grass roots licenses
• Full suite of United Soccer Coaches diplomas
• US Youth Soccer TOPSoccer courses
• Custom-built clinics and classroom presentations on topics that range from zonal defending, systems of play, best practices in player development or parent engagement.
In addition to the above grass roots courses, Eastern New York will also offer two US Soccer C licenses this year, one in Schenectady and one in Westchester.
A considerable part of my feeling of new hope is born out of the fact that many of these grass roots licenses are extremely USER friendly and have been designed to meet the needs of both the players and busy parent/coaches. They deal with a play practice play methodology that ideally fits the needs of our youth players now.
The courses are easy to access, easy to register for, practically based and there is really no reason at all why any club or league that wish to do so should not have an educated parent coach teaching the game to players of all ages by the end of the summer.
Whenever I talk to parents they all want an educated coach for their child and seem aware of the importance of getting their child to fall in love with sport. They all recognize the vital life skills that an educated, holistic coach can bring. From communication, cooperation discipline, through conflict resolution, skill acquisition to dealing with winning and losing all parents want their child to be placed in a sporting environment where these life skills are front and center.
I ask all clubs, leagues and even individual parents to pledge that 2019 can be a landmark year in coaching education and that we can with all the tools available to us make a vow that every player in New York will have the benefit of having an educated coach teach the beautiful game this year.
Anyone reading this can reach out to me at tbradbury@enysoccer.com to book a course for your league or club.