U13 - Very energetic session

Tonight's practice with our U13 boys was very energetic and productive.  Now the challenge is to carry that to tomorrow's session and into Thursday's game.

Coach Paul opened up the session with an aerobic circuit he assembled.  The boys did 3 circuits in 15 minutes.

We spent 25 minutes on three passing sequences that involved more running.  The last 2 sequences finished with penetrating type passes and we challenged the boys to run hard to keep the ball in-bounds.

Our next 25 minutes was spent on various 1v1 player races, 1 with the ball and 1 without.   The second involved goals, but both involved more running and challenges to their desire to work through fatigue.

Without breaking each drill down, they all involved the players understanding the level of work required to succeed.

When we got to our small sided game we worked on getting to the ball FIRST on restarts.  The attacking team was challenged to redirect the ball forward and the defending team to redirect it away from their goal.  There is a level of physical interaction required on restarts and we reviewed that and put them through at least 20 repetitions of balls being played from the keeper.  The game was played with regular rules on a smaller field with less than 11v11.  To keep the ball moving and the defending team working to win the ball back, we pushed for 2-touch soccer.  This will be continued tomorrow evening.

I will not comment on improvement or better awareness until after Tuesday's session.

I look forward to Tuesday.