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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS is 8 and plays for a local club.  He can reliably get 5 or 6 juggles, but not much more than that.  His coaches seem to put an emphasis on juggling as a measure of improvement, but I don't have a good sense as to what a realistic goal is for a kid in the 8-9 year old range. [/quote]

On a top U9 team, the coach said the kids needed to be able to do 100
Now on U10, the coach says 175.

I'd guess about 50% of kids have made the goals.

Juggling isn't just about gaining skill...it shows the coach who's willing to put in the work when they're not at practice, since getting good at juggling has little to do with skill level, and is all about repetition and hard work. [/quote]

It's great to see the bar being held high for kids, but my personal opinion, as an adult who can juggle until I'm too bored to keep going, is that 100 for an 8 year old might be overambitious. I'm sure some kids can do it, but many will struggle and if there are consequences for not being able to do that many at that age, then the stress for the child isn't warranted. Instead, I would tell each kid that they are competing with themselves (as opposed to with teammates or with others in the wings who will take their spot if they can't reach the goal). Let's say an 8 year old has a record of 18 juggles. Not bad, not great. I might say, "Okay, let's see if we can add another 50% to that in the next month." This means the kid will probably hit 30 in the next month. The following month, they'd be at 45 and the month after that almost 70. From 18 to 70-ish in three months feels reasonable. Ambitious, in fact.

Meanwhile, a teammate who might have been at 36 when this started will have reached around 120 in that same 3 months.

The player who can do 70 may still have better soccer IQ and vision than the kid who does 120. The important thing, as someone else mentioned is that there's really no such thing as a great player who's a lousy juggler. So, it's kind of a requisite for any chance at being exceptional. But the flip side to this idea is that there are plenty of outstanding jugglers who are lousy players --- some of whom even go onto become competitive freestylists and Youtube sensations.

So, to the OP, I would suggest that juggling is critical and shouldn't be ignored. But by the time your child is 11 or 12, it becomes more of a way to command respect from opponents when they see him juggling during warmup. Assumptions are made about strong jugglers and there's actually a form of relaxation and confidence that comes with your opponent feeling like they have to give you space in the game because of the probability of your being able to dribble, pass and shoot as well as you juggle.

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