Friday 25th March was my second day volunteering to coach soccer to the girls at Eastside Elementary School. I did the usual signing myself in and talking to the teacher first. We then walked outside to the field because it was a lovely day for soccer. There was not as much girls this week as there was last week so I had to change my schedule a little to what I had planned. I said hi to everyone and we got started.

                We split everyone in just three groups today because of the amount of girls there was. We started warming up by jogging on the spot for a couple of minutes. We then did star jumps, bunny hops, we kicked our butts and did high knees just to get our heart rate up. When we were doing this I asked the girls if they remembered what we did last week. They knew we did passing with the inside of our feet and played a game.  After quizzing them I told them we were going to practice a different soccer technique today. When we were stretching I told them all about the technique called dribbling and why dribbling is important in soccer. They gave me a few examples of when they would use dribbling in a soccer game. One girl stated that she would dribble the ball if she had space to do so. After this we started on some dribbling drills. I set out some cones in a line. Everyone lined up behind each other with one ball. They had to dribble in and out of these cones using the inside and outside of both feet. The goal here is so that the girls can get a fee for the ball. At the start of this drill they kept on hitting the cones so I changed it up a bit by making the cones further apart from each other. They seemed better at this because they didn’t hit the cones anymore. They started looking up at where they were going instead of looking at the ground or the ball. This shows that they were getting more comfortable around the ball. After this drill I moved onto a different drill. This drill had the girls dribbling the ball around the whole area. They had to keep their heads up and not bang into each other. Once they got the hang of this I would shout a command they would have to follow. For example if I shouted ‘right foot on the ball’ they would have to stop the ball with their right foot and pause for a few seconds then continue dribbling. Another example would be ‘head the ball’. They would have to stop the ball then lean down and touch the ball with their head. They did really well at this drill so I rewarded them with a game at the end. They all had fun dribbling and passing in this game.

Overall I think my second day was also very successful. These girls have now learned how to pass and dribble the soccer ball when just two weeks ago they could not. I think they had fun today because they kept laughing and giggle throughout the session. Hopefully they have just as much fun when we do shooting next week.  

Friday 25th March 2016

2 hours

Eastside Elementary School