U7 Academy (under construction)
What is an academy?
An academy is more than a soccer
program. It is a philosophy, a culture and a way of doing things. The
Lightning Academy motto is “Respicio et praesto ad vitam” which translated
means: “Respect and responsibility for life.” Ideally we expect sport to
transfer lessons of character and life skills development to our children.
In reality the Academy realises that the adults involved must consistently
teach and demonstrate these traits using soccer as our testing ground.
Respect and responsibility are central components through- out the academy
program. Following these dual standards the establishment of an academy
program will also ensure that there is long-term continuity in the
development of those who participate. Kanata Soccer is fully committed to
the Lightning Academy and recognises the importance of the appropriate
long-term development of youth.
Why did the Academy get formed?
Kanata Soccer is committed to Long-Term
Athlete Development (LTAD), the new Canadian model of sport development.
This is represented through the Canadian Soccer Association with their
Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) model – a sport specific adaptation of
LTAD. These models are based on scientific facts associated with growth,
maturation and development. They are concerned with providing player
centred programs that are age appropriate in their content and applicable
specifically to Canada and Canadians. The Academy program is Kanata
Soccer’s interpretation of the developmentally appropriate soccer
requirements for participants under the age of twelve as represented in
the LTAD and LTPD models.
What is the goal of the Academy?
The goal of the Lightning Academy is to
begin to nurture over the long-term our member’s desire to pursue the
realisation of their full soccer potential. Other aims that flow from this
goal include 1) the production of a larger quantity and better quality of
representative soccer players; 2) better results for Kanata Soccer at a
representative level within the district, region and province; and 3) more
elite level soccer development opportunities for individual players. While
the Academy hopes to help produce better soccer players, the program is
rooted in the fundamentals of activity for life. Kanata Soccer understands
that it is important to have programs in which our members can reach their
full potential. However, the majority of our members – including our elite
participants – will eventually play the game for fun and for health
benefits. There are core values within the Academy program that contribute
to developing the traits necessary to realise one’s full potential and at
the same time promote activity for life.
How does the Academy go about nurturing
full soccer potential?
Participation in the program is not a
right, it is a privilege. Participants who do not follow the standards of
respect and responsibility set out in the program will be asked to leave.
Individual player development – We
place players with qualified coaches who are best suited to meet the
developmental needs of each player. Training will revolve around the
individual skills necessary for both mastery of the body and the ball.
Opportunities do exist for the occasional game in which the Academy
players will play against year older Academy players.
Player environment – Using our
facilities and equipment to full advantage, we offer players the best
development program allowing them to realise their full potential by
focusing on the whole person and not just the soccer player.
Who can participate in the Academy?
Players born in 2001 must register for
House League but can also do an additional night of soccer per week by
signing up for the Lightning Academy. The 7-year-old Academy gives players
and their families a glimpse of what is to come in the older age level
academy programs. It is the introduction to our more performance-driven
programming at Kanata Soccer.
What is the level of commitment
required to participate in the Academy?
The Academy sessions run for an hour on
Friday evenings. Immediately following this session is Friday Night Street
Soccer. This program is open to all Academy players, is free and
participation is voluntary. Parents are also encouraged to participate in
this event as the goal is to provide a low structured and no coaching
environment in which the players can simply enjoy playing a game of soccer
for the fun of it.
What about the coaching?
The development of the players is in
the hands of a combination of Kanata Soccer paid technical staff and
volunteer coaches. As a volunteer, if you are interested in participating
in the Academy as a coach please contact Kanata Soccer. Before being
approved as an Academy coach, you will need to have completed your Ontario
Soccer Association’s Children’s level coach certificate. This is also the
basic requirement necessary to coach in the Kanata House League program.
What is the future of the Lightning
Academy program at Kanata Soccer?
The Academy will continue to grow. In
2008 the program expands to include 10-year-olds. In 2009 we will offer
this program at the 11-year-old level. By 2010 this program will be in
place from the 7-year-old level up to the 12-year-old level and become
integrated with our representative program.
Coach Recruitment
Like most community sport programs,
Kanata Soccer is driven by a strong volunteer base. Coaching is no
exception. The Club is willing to invest money in paid coaching at the
Academy level. The coach development program at Kanata Soccer is
structured so that volunteer coaches get a chance to learn and practice
their skills. Coaching is a trade and like any trade the best development
results come through a mentor-apprentice relationship.
The Ontario Soccer Association is
responsible for the technical/theoretical certification of coaches.
Through Kanata’s Academy program we take the technical/theory coaches
learn in their clinics and turn that into on-field practice under the
watchful eye of expert coaches. Like players, coaches learn best, retain
more and get better by doing. The Academy coach development program could
be compared to a teaching hospital where medical students, interns and
residents get to apply all of their book knowledge in real life
situations. Therefore, the Academy program is a development program for
both players and coaches.
In many of our programs, volunteer
coaches make up the majority of our staff. These station/assistant coaches
are in direct contact with the players the most. Next come the lead/head
coaches who are smaller in number but directly responsible for helping
station/assistant coaches develop their skills by providing them feedback
about their performance in real time. The skills required to coach coaches
are different than those used to coach players. Coaches selected to be
lead/head coaches are strong coaches of players but in most cases they
need to learn the skills necessary to coach coaches. The full-time
technical staff at Kanata Soccer is there to help lead/head coaches
develop their mentor-apprentice skills.
So the progression is as follows:
full-time staff coach the lead/head coaches; lead/head coaches coach the
station/assistant coaches; and station/assistant coaches coach the
players. It is inaccurate though to think that lead/head coaches and
technical staff do not work with the players. They do but the percentage
of time spent coaching players is reduced in relation to their more
primary duties of coaching coaches. As the saying goes, take a man fishing
and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
life time. We are trying to bring that to life through our coach
development program in the Academy.
Below is the break down of the minimum
numbers of coaches necessary to run the programs and the certification
level they need. If we do not have the minimum number of coaches we cannot
run the program.
01’s 00’s 99’s 98’s
Minimum # of volunteer coaches needed
to run program 81 81 81 81
Minimum OSA coach certification for
volunteer coaches Children’s Children’s Youth Youth
# of Lead coaches per program2 (in
addition to volunteer coaches) 1 1 1 1
# of Head coaches per program 0 0 1 per
squad3 1 per squad3
1 This is the minimum and if there are
the full 60 players in the program then a minimum of 12 are required which
gives a player to coach ratio of 5:1
2 The Lead Coach is a paid coach
(either Kanata Soccer technical employee or high level volunteer on an
honorarium)
3 Head coaches at the 10-year-old level
will need Children’s, Youth and Senior level coaching courses in order to
qualify as such with the League
The Club also provides its Academy
coaches through the coach development program with in-house training. This
training is focused around soccer-specific methods of long-term
development. Kanata Soccer is committed to the new Canadian sport model
called Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) and has created its own
Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) model focusing specifically on
long-term development as it relates to our community and our sport’s
needs.
As coaches in this program are being
assessed and provided with feedback in realtime, it is therefore important
that prospective Academy coaches have some or all of the following traits:
- A desire to learn and improve
- A willingness to be assessed
- A level of comfort in being critiqued
For those coaches who progress through
the coach certification program in soccer, these traits will become more
and more important the higher up the certification ladder they go. Like
instilling good habits in the players, Kanata Soccer thinks it important
to do so with our novice coaches as well.
Coach Training
Like a player goes through stages and
progressions as they improve, coaches also experience similar patterns in
their development from novice towards expert. Therefore, there are certain
fundamental and generic skills that a coach must possess before trying to
build the instructional skills and sport-specific knowledge necessary to
coach soccer.
Ages 15-18
Ages 10-14
Ages 4-9
Kanata Soccer Volunteer Coach
Development Pyramid
Behavior management skills refers to
the methods necessary in order to keep participants safe and on task.
These must be developmentally appropriate and personalised in nature as
what works for one coach with a certain age group may not work for
another. Before a coach can teach a player anything about the game of
soccer, he/she must first be able to get and keep the player’s attention.
Instructional skills are common to any
field of pedagogy. They include but are not limited to the categories of
observation, explanation, demonstration, rehearsal, feedback and
evaluation. Great soccer players do not always necessarily make good
coaches as they lack the tools necessary to instruct. The ability to
instruct is as much of a talent as the ability to play the game.
Soccer-specific content is the
technical, tactical and other theoretical knowledge that must be imparted.
The soccer-specific coaching methods are instructional skills often
associated particularly with the coaching of soccer (e.g., grid work).
Player Identification and Placement
The Academy program believes that all
children under the age of twelve have aspirations to excel in a sport. In
order to find the few exceptionally talented ones that have the true drive
and determination to realise their full potential, a program must start
with a large base of participants. Gradually, as the years pass, players
will weed themselves out of the pursuit for soccer excellence as they
realise this journey is not for them. Therefore, Kanata Soccer believes it
is wrong as the leadership of these programs to be weeding them out
through cuts.
Kanata Soccer believes that the best
environment for learning and improvement is one where players are matched
with and against others of like ability. Such an environment gives young
players the confidence and comfort to go out and try new things. Taking
risks and pushing comfort zones is important if players hope to realise
their full potential.
The goal is to make development
inclusive, fair and holistic. Below are a number of other areas in the
Academy program where we are looking to instill this philosophy. They are
contrasted with descriptions of a more widely seen approach in organised
youth soccer.
Academy Program Approach Wide Spread
Approach
Everyone has the same right to be in
the program, regardless of physique and ability Usually the players
selected are physically more advanced (i.e., stronger, taller) and are
seen as early maturers
Everyone gets to play the game,
regardless of physique or ability. There is little room on the field for
younger, less skilled, underdeveloped or late maturing players
Everyone gets the opportunity to
experience different positions on the team during game play – including
goalkeeper Players specialise in particular roles prematurely. Play is
always the same and substitutes rarely get an opportunity
The 01’s do not get tested. Upon
arrival at the first session the coaches will begin the process of
separating the players into groups of like ability. This will generally
take the first 2 to 4 weeks to accurately complete.
Philosophy of Play and Development
The Academy program content is based on
Long-Term Player Development (LTDP) and therefore tries to do provide what
is appropriate for the age and stage of development of the players
involved. The way soccer is played at the grassroots level could be
compared, for example, to the way hockey would be played at the grassroots
level in Italy. If you were to watch a group of Canadian children play
hockey, the game would look more like what we expect to see at the older
levels. If you were to watch the Italian
kids play hockey, it would very
different from the Canadian kids’ version. The way Italian children play
hockey and the way Canadian children play soccer would be based on their
exposure to those sports in their countries at the older levels. Most
Canadian children do not watch high level soccer live or on tv. Their
experiences with soccer are what they learn from day one when they show up
to the field. You would be hard pressed to find Canadian children that
have not went to a high level hockey game or watched one on tv. In doing
so, they have heroes to emulate and skills and styles of play they can
aspire to achieve.
There are a number of countries around
the world that could be considered soccer powers. While their chosen
styles of play and development methods may differ slightly from country to
country, there would be a number of common factors between them that could
be used to represent what ‘good’ soccer looks like. Here is a partial list
of those things:
- All players touch the ball. They tend
to make short passes and dribbling runs. The goalkeeper usually throws the
ball in order to build the next attack.
Contrast that with the typical Canadian
grassroots soccer picture:
- Players rely mainly on long passes
and play faster than their skill level allows. The goalkeeper clears the
ball by kicking it long in the air with his/her foot.
A second common factor in good soccer
play:
- The ball generally advances from
defenders to midfielders to forwards with the game based on communication
and cooperation.
Contrast that with typical Canadian
grassroots soccer:
- Little thought is given to building
the attack. Usually the ball goes directly to the forwards via long passes
instead of passing through the midfield
A third common factor in good soccer
play:
- The point of attack is changed
frequently, with an eye toward creating space for forward play
Contrast that with the typical
grassroots game in Canada:
- When attacking, the ball generally
goes straight down the middle of the field. There is no use of the width
of the field and there are few changes of direction (switches from left to
right). The ball is rarely played backwards towards team’s own goal even
if that is where the most open space is.
Children are not miniature adults.
While the goal of good soccer is to teach the team to work together, look
for and create space and move the ball mostly by passing, that is not the
reality for most players under the age of twelve. It will take a number of
years for young players to reach a level where they can consistently do
those things. For the majority of players under the age of twelve the most
developmentally appropriate concept is to learn to master the ball.
Individual mastery of the ball and the
creativity that comes with it should be the main priority in getting
players to the eventual picture of soccer played properly. Mastering the
ball makes all other skills easier – especially the tactics necessary to
learn how to cooperate as a team. The dribbler, not the passer should be
the player we are looking to make and encourage at the younger levels.
Every team should be filled with them under the age of twelve. We cannot
expect a young player to make passes with any level of competence if they
are having a hard time making the ball do what they want it to when it
comes to them.
It is common to see many grassroots
players in this country taught to ‘share’ the ball at the youngest levels
even though they are not developmentally ready to do so. Our players
quickly learn that the best way not to make a mistake with the ball at
their feet is to kick the ball away as fast as possible. While passing
makes up a large part of the game played properly, it is not fair to
expect young players to learn to share the ball with others when they
cannot control it themselves.
The Academy program believes that
soccer at the youngest age levels is NOT a team sport. The focus of the
Academy program at the youngest age levels is to work with the individual
within the team. Training and tactics (the limited amount that are taught)
focus on the 1v1 – player with the ball or player defending directly
against the ball. Any other coaching that is done tactically focuses on
team shape. Team shape is the concept of positioning. The goal is to have
players without the ball positioning in a balanced manner across the field
so that the player on the ball has the ‘right’ picture around him/her for
making decisions about what to do. As the player becomes comfortable and
creative on the ball and matures cognitively, more elements of playing the
game properly – tactically speaking – can be introduced.
Before a player can become comfortable
controlling the soccer ball, he/she must be comfortably in command of
their own body’s movements and abilities. With a lack of physical
education programs in the schools at the elementary level to teach what
the body can do and a scarcity of free play time to practice what the body
can do, Canadian children today are not as physically literate as in
previous decades. Physical literacy is competent and confident command of
one’s body and involves mastery of the fundamental skills which form the
foundation of all sporting activities. It is hard to imagine that a young
player could become a master of the soccer ball when he/she is not very
coordinated. How good that player becomes at mastering the soccer ball is
directly related to his/her level of coordination and physical literacy.
Thus, the very young player must first learn to control the body before
controlling the ball. The Academy program spends time ensuring that
mastery of the body is achieved in harmony with ball mastery.
The concern of the Academy program is
individual skill development – be it ball mastery or body mastery.
However, the Academy program’s individual skill development policy is an
holistic one. Kanata Soccer wants to see its young members developed in
all capacities, not just physically, technically or tactically. If sport
is the great life teacher that it is supposed to be, then the programs and
leadership involved are the guides and facilitators of this values-driven
material. It is important that we teach and expect the players to play
proper soccer, however, it is more important that we teach and expect the
players to live by proper values and principles. The long-term vision of
LTPD as interpreted by Kanata Soccer is to cultivate through soccer
participation young adults that are autonomous, responsible and
contributing members of our society.
Before learning to play proper soccer;
before learning to master the ball; and even before learning to master the
body comes the long journey of mastering values. The Academy program is
committed to teaching these life skills. This is reflected in the
Academy’s motto where respect and responsibility are the two cornerstone
principles on which we base our values-driven training.
The Academy program at Kanata Soccer is
an holistic individual skills-driven program using the team environment.
By working gradually on each part and adding them together in a
developmentally appropriate manner, we can create the whole picture that
we all want to achieve.
For more information please contact
Joel MacDonald, Technical Director Kanata Soccer Club. 613-836-5787 or
td@kanatasoccer.com
