Coaches get all the grief but parents are the major issue in youth sports.

Anonymous wrote:Advice didn't take seriously enough.

* Don't trust anyone because almost all other parents see your kid as the competition

This can be true. We came across very jealous/ prying parent on our own kids team at U10. We set up some extra practices for our kid with another coach in the club, and one parent complained about it. It's weird, but this could be true and/ or other parents might bad-mouth your kid in not such an obvious way to the coach or other parents.

Anonymous wrote:Advice didn't take seriously enough.

* Don't trust anyone because almost all other parents see your kid as the competition

Advice, Part 2: Move from clubs or areas (like NOVA) where this is true in every aspect of life, because the children are surrounded by bad parents.

Advice didn't take seriously enough.

* Don't trust anyone because almost all other parents see your kid as the competition

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is U13 or older, what pieces of advice did you hear more than once when they were younger, regarding skills etc development that you wish you had taken?

Technical skills with both feet above all else. All the other stuff can be taught/learned or will just come later. Or it won’t come at all. From my experience from coaching/watching kids for many years, once you pass about age 13, you can’t pick up the technical skills as easily. All the other stuff is accessible later if your kid has the ability and right training environment.

Not that you can't learn later, it's that you're way behind your peers and they're not waiting for you to catch up.

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is U13 or older, what pieces of advice did you hear more than once when they were younger, regarding skills etc development that you wish you had taken?

Technical skills with both feet above all else. All the other stuff can be taught/learned or will just come later. Or it won’t come at all. From my experience from coaching/watching kids for many years, once you pass about age 13, you can’t pick up the technical skills as easily. All the other stuff is accessible later if your kid has the ability and right training environment.

So juggling is base skill use to build ball feel(touch), concentration, consistency and developing balance. When you are juggling you are on one foot. Have your kid stand on one leg and see how long they can do it. Many can not even stand for 45 seconds on one leg. Think how this slows down their speed of play.

When you get good at juggling you can do it for 10-15 minutes but it is not really fun or enjoyable. You can really feel your muscle.