Kids and Football

As some of you may know, I am a leader at my church's junior youth group...

Every Friday afternoon we do something different, but almost everytime, before the night starts, there will be a small game of soccer for the kids.

Now these kids are from primary school so they love to play soccer...that being an overstatement. It's rather, they love to kick a soccer ball, not so much the rest of the game.

Instead of working as a team by passing and setting up points, the kids' goal is to generally kick the ball. They are are instantly satisfied with themselves if they can be so nimble enough to mosh through the crowd and touch that ball. Although, this satisfaction is short. If possible, they will whip their feet in and out of the area where the ball is until they can hit it again. This tactic wouldn't go to much further until a proximity to the goals are reached and then MAYBE the kids would consider some CONTROL in their kicking. Other than this the kids have no direction, they are scalar, and do not think about hitting the ball in another direction besides the direction their foot's position makes with the ball's position...

And unlike soccer, they don't seem to able to fully grasp the concept of spreading out over the field. Because their goal isn't to pass and work as a team, but rather a personal achievement of kicking something, they don't quite know why spreading out would have some kind of advantage over the other team. The field ends up being bare except for this one large clump of kids hovering up and down.

So moving on, last friday was Sporty Sports night at Junior Underground (thats the name of the youth group). I had the priviledge to be the Referee for a match of "Three legged soccer". So if you can imagine the chaos that is a soccer game of primary schoolers, that i briefly explained earlier, tying the the legs of two kids together, and making them play soccer is like wrapping a stack of small dogs together in pairs and chucking Shmacko's at them...craziness....

So, theres my observations of primary school soccer...until kids reach high school (or join a soccer club), some kids don't seem to fully grasp what the GOAL of soccer is, that is, getting the ball into the goals...

cya

doug.