The St James striker program

[Anonymous]

Hi does anyone have any experience with the winter programming for striker training with The St. James?
Was it helpful to your child? Do you think it was worth it?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi does anyone have any experience with the winter programming for striker training with The St. James?
Was it helpful to your child? Do you think it was worth it?

Thanks

We did it 3 times. Twice over the winter and one time in the summer. The lead trainer, Jack Stefenawsky was amazing. But I'm not sure if he's running it anymore.

When he did the sessions, it was very deliberate and he did very striker specific drills for the kids. Which was great. The better sessions only had 8 kids or so.

The bad sessions were when the sessions had 20 kids and the B level coaches ran the sessions. Then the previously good training went from individual shooting drills, 1v1s & 2v2s to big scrimmages where so many kids are involved your kid is only getting half the amount of practice in.

So, it depends on the number of kids participating and the coaching staff. Last summer, we had a friend participate and there were only 6 kids, which was amazing. My kid definitely liked it, but the results were mixed based on the number of kids participating. We saw some improvement, but it wasn't massive. Also, it depends if the St James FC travel kids are participating in the striker training or not. When they did, about 6-8 kids extra would come over to participate, in their uniforms and kind of take over the training.

I would reach out to ask if those kids will also be participating, if so, it will be more crowded and it will be more of extension of their practice sessions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi does anyone have any experience with the winter programming for striker training with The St. James?
Was it helpful to your child? Do you think it was worth it?

Thanks

We did it 3 times. Twice over the winter and one time in the summer. The lead trainer, Jack Stefenawsky was amazing. But I'm not sure if he's running it anymore.

When he did the sessions, it was very deliberate and he did very striker specific drills for the kids. Which was great. The better sessions only had 8 kids or so.

The bad sessions were when the sessions had 20 kids and the B level coaches ran the sessions. Then the previously good training went from individual shooting drills, 1v1s & 2v2s to big scrimmages where so many kids are involved your kid is only getting half the amount of practice in.

So, it depends on the number of kids participating and the coaching staff. Last summer, we had a friend participate and there were only 6 kids, which was amazing. My kid definitely liked it, but the results were mixed based on the number of kids participating. We saw some improvement, but it wasn't massive. Also, it depends if the St James FC travel kids are participating in the striker training or not. When they did, about 6-8 kids extra would come over to participate, in their uniforms and kind of take over the training.

I would reach out to ask if those kids will also be participating, if so, it will be more crowded and it will be more of extension of their practice sessions.

Coach Jack is over at VRSC

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for your response. I was also worried about the player to coach ratio.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi does anyone have any experience with the winter programming for striker training with The St. James?
Was it helpful to your child? Do you think it was worth it?

Thanks

We did it 3 times. Twice over the winter and one time in the summer. The lead trainer, Jack Stefenawsky was amazing. But I'm not sure if he's running it anymore.

When he did the sessions, it was very deliberate and he did very striker specific drills for the kids. Which was great. The better sessions only had 8 kids or so.

The bad sessions were when the sessions had 20 kids and the B level coaches ran the sessions. Then the previously good training went from individual shooting drills, 1v1s & 2v2s to big scrimmages where so many kids are involved your kid is only getting half the amount of practice in.

So, it depends on the number of kids participating and the coaching staff. Last summer, we had a friend participate and there were only 6 kids, which was amazing. My kid definitely liked it, but the results were mixed based on the number of kids participating. We saw some improvement, but it wasn't massive. Also, it depends if the St James FC travel kids are participating in the striker training or not. When they did, about 6-8 kids extra would come over to participate, in their uniforms and kind of take over the training.

I would reach out to ask if those kids will also be participating, if so, it will be more crowded and it will be more of extension of their practice sessions.

Oh, just because they will tell you there will only be a certain number of kids, doesn’t mean there will be. We’ve seen that happen plenty of times. Better off organizing your own private group training with a coach you know or get through a recommendation

[Anonymous]

We did it with coach Jack 2 years ago. Jack ran the goalie side, B team coaches ran the strikers. It was awful. Waste of both time and money.

[Anonymous]

If you are doing any of the winter clinics you should expect larger groups. I felt like the clinics during regular season were much better than winter due to the number of kids.