“I want to see my daughter succeed.”

“I’ve got my daughter’s best interest at heart.”

We’re all in this together!

Parents want their daughters to succeed.
The girls themselves want to succeed.
Coaches want the girls to succeed.

Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Sometimes a parent’s instructions are correct. (Sometimes they aren’t; see examples below.) But you’re giving your daughter a fish.

Practice days are when the coaches teach the game and guide the girls how to play:

what to do
why they should do it
how to do it
when to do it
where to do it

Game days are for the players to be creative, have fun and show what they know. They’re fishing on their own now, not always successfully. Refer to the “judgment and experience” quote below.

During games, coaches are still teachers, but we limit our teaching to comments to players before or after a play (what the coaching schools call “coachable moments”). We don’t tell the player with the ball what to do during a play, or “in the moment.” That moment is hers!

School: When kids are taking tests, how often do parents stand in the classroom and shout out the answers to their kids? That would be ridiculous, right? But “shouting out the answers” has come to be accepted as routine behavior on youth sports sidelines. Let’s not be routine; let’s strive to be better!

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” Fortunately, we’re dealing with soccer, not drugs or pre-marital sex. Bad judgment in a soccer game won’t have long-term implications on your daughter’s future!

Please allow your daughter to make her own decisions. Directing her while she plays won’t speed her development, and it just might lead her to feel that she’s playing to satisfy you and forget that she loves the game.

“I want to see my daughter succeed.” Let her play, explore, and learn to solve problems.
“I’ve got my daughter’s best interest at heart.” Let her play, explore, and learn to solve problems.

We’re all in this together. “Players play, fans cheer, coaches coach and refs ref.” We each have our own roles.

Players: We ask the girls to try their hardest, learn from their mistakes, be enthusiastic, and supportive of the other girls.
Parents (fans): We ask parents to be their daughter’s biggest fans, and the other players’ 2nd biggest fans. Link: 3rd-party articles about supporting young athletes
Coaches: We’ll strive to both support and teach your daughter while treating her with respect.

We’ll have some ups and downs. And we’ll have some moments where we all wonder what a player was thinking or why she did what she did. But we’ll allow the girls to learn at their own speed while enjoying their soccer experience.

Thanks for your support of the NASA Tophat Academy program!

The potential for conflicting instructions from parents

“Shoot!” A frequent error. There are plenty of times when a player is near the goal but shooting is a poor choice. The most common is when the player is near the goal line between the corner flag and near post. The player has a tiny shooting angle, and a well-positioned goalkeeper will make the available shooting space even tinier. The better options are to pass to a teammate who has a better view of goal (could be a “drop” pass to a back), or dribble to create space for a better shooting angle.

“Get the ball!” If we only have one defender goal-side of the attack, her role is to delay the attack and wait for help, not try to win the ball unless it’s a sure thing. If she hears “get the ball,” she’s probably going to try to do so. Poor choice: if she doesn’t win it, the other team gets a breakaway. We want to pressure and delay, then “get the ball” only after the attacker makes a mistake or other players have had time to recover behind our first defender.

“Pass!” If a player has space in front of her, she should only pass if a teammate is in a better position than her. Ideally she should “commit” the nearest defender so the pass erases that defender from the play. Passing too soon (before a defender commits to the ball) doesn’t really accomplish anything.

Others: On occasion, we’ll ask a player to try to achieve a specific goal, or put certain conditions on players. They may make decisions that seem unusual if you weren’t part of the player-coach conversation. Examples:

We may ask a player who isn’t comfortable in a certain position to only focus on the offensive side of that role when we’re playing a weaker opponent. She’ll gain comfort and experience in the attacking aspects of the position, even if she does no defensive work. The next time we play her in this position, we can add defensive responsibilities without having to worry about overwhelming her with too much info at once.
We may require a forward to play a pass to a back, “open up” out wide and get a return pass before she can go to goal.