Toddler Childrens KIds Football Coaching

WHAT TO EXPECT IN FEBRUARY…

Dear Parents and Children,

We are delighted to announce the arrival of our Sport4Kids Player Pathway! Further to the previous email from our CEO Steve Jones, we wanted to share more detail on how the pathway will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months. What can we expect to see in January and February?

Promotion Window The Promotion window is here! The Player Pathway details the skills that each child will be learning at each level. When a child progresses enough they become eligible for a promotion. The first wave of promotions based upon the Pathway are taking place in January across the younger groups including Tots, Kickers and Strikers classes.

We have had promotions across all age groups throughout our kids football classes in Camberley, Farnborough, Kingston, Maidenhead, Langley, Old Windsor, Egham, Sunbury, Guildford, Chertsey and Windsor. A big congratulations to our players, families and coaching team.

This months graduates will be receiving their promotions and certificates over the coming weeks – a huge well done to all of our budding Beckhams!

S4K Player Pathway Skills Development Records For our older levels, including Strikers and Academy groups the next step is the roll out of our S4K Player Pathway Skills Development Record for each individual player. The booklet lays out in a simple way the different skills and how each skills is developed from standing still to performing in match situations. It give the opportunity for parents to see what skills are being worked upon and help your child practice the routines in between classes. It is a handy reckoner and gives you and the coach a common language to monitor the progression of your child. You child will love ticking off the boxes with their coach.
The Record Books will be distributed across our development centres over the coming weeks and allow families the chance to track the progress of their children through the S4K Player Pathway Curriculum.

The booklets allow our S4K children at each level the chance to understand the skills required to progress to the next level. In the early years, parents can practice the skills with their Tots and Kickers in and around the house. As children reach the Strikers and Academy age group, the record provides them with a list of skills to practice at home to enhance their ability.

In the same way that children need to practice piano to gain the dexterity and muscle memory to play like Beethoven, they also require the same level of dedication and practice to become the next Ronaldo. The 10, 000 touches philosophy passed down by the Dutch Coerver coaching method is central to our S4K coaching philosophy and the Skills record provide the perfect guide for our children to develop their abilities.

What’s Coming Up?
S4K Player Pathway Assessments We will be aiming to roll out Player Pathway assessments staring at the beginning of March to see how well the Record Books and the player development is progressing. This will be a free trial of assessments that will initially target our Academy age groups and allow our coaching team to communicate areas for improvement for each child. The assessments will take place after the skills sessions and will take 15 to 20 minutes that covers theory, practical and exercises. We will then roll the assessments out to our additional age groups.

Wall Charts Moving forwards, we aim to roll out a wall chart for each child (complete with stickers) to display on their bedroom wall. These will build on the feedback from the Record books and assessments and are planned to be available in Spring 2015. They will provide children with a highly motivational way of tracking their own progress and taking pride in their skill development. Stickers will be given out by the coaching teams as they see the progression in each child. Mums and dads will be welcome to give our Tots a hand and help them with their chart. A new chart with a new set of skills to achieve will be provided for each level upon promotion!

Online Resources We are in the midst of creating training videos for our members to access in order to assist with home coaching. These will assist families in understand how to use the techniques that our S4K coaching teams use to develop skills outside of our classes. We aim to have the first wave of these instructional videos in place by the Summer of 2015.

We are all tremendously excited about our latest innovation. The Player Pathway is truly unique in that it maps out the key capabilities that children need to develop to progress from Tots level through to Academy and Football Club levels. The pathway aims to provide parents, children and coaches with a transparent curriculum for monitoring every child’s progress from Tots to Academy.

If you have any questions or feedback, as always, we would be delighted to hear it.

Best wishes,

Dr Mark Gould
Head Coach