Starting the season: Basic information

Wahoos 

2013 Spring Soccer at the Northeast Pensacola Y

This is the public information page for the YMCA youth soccer team in Pensacola, Florida, known as the Wahoos (ages 7 and 8).  Our team is not affiliated in any way with the local, professional Wahoos team.

Our team is part of the Spring soccer season at the local Y on Langley Avenue (Northeast YMCA). I am the volunteer coach. My son, Jude, is one of the players on the team. This is his third season of youth soccer (summer at the Y; fall at the Pensacola city league).

Basic info team parents will need

Practices: Every Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., at the Langley Ave. YMCA.

Games: First game is Thursday, Feb. 28 at 5:30 p.m.  We're on an odd schedule this season, with most games on Saturdays, but several on other days. Check here for the full schedule in a later posting.

Format: Teams will play with 8 players on the field at all times. That's a goalkeeper and 7 other players. I will most likely use a 3-2-2 formation most of the time. That's 3 fullbacks, 2 midfielders, and 2 forwards (plus a goalie). I will rotate players through positions, so that every player gets to play at least 2 positions in each game.  I will also try to give all players a roughly equal amount of on-field playing time in each game. If a player gets short-changed in one game, I'll try to make up for that in the next game.

My Coaching Philosophy

I'll try to make practices FUN -- especially during a couple long stretches of the season in which we have several practices between games.  And, on game days, I will not be focusing on beating the other team, but rather on teaching the kids the game of soccer and good sportsmanship.

As a recreational league, with young players, the Y has a policy of focusing on learning and fun above victory.  Of course, I'll try to give them a good chance to win each game, because it's not fun to lose too often, and we want the kids to love soccer. But, if we aimed mainly to win, I'd have to put the players in fixed positions, rather than rotating them around, and we'd probably focus more on sneaky trick plays, rather than good techniques. Most parents would not be happy with those approaches.  So, I'll teach skills and some higher level stuff, like positions and formations and a few simple plays.  But, we're not aiming to outscore our opponents by 10 to 1 in every game.