Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #438: Ways to improve grassroots soccer

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Belz is joined by Kirk Kinsey, director of Flagstaff Revolution, a grassroots club in Arizona, and Jesse Howe, the director of coaching at the Calvert Soccer Association, a grassroots soccer program in Maryland. All three of us are working in the trenches of rec soccer, trying to help more kids learn to love the ball and the game. Jesse just got back from a national symposium on grassroots soccer in Minneapolis, and he gives a brief report on that, and then we just talk through a lot of the challenges and some solutions that work in coaching U6 and U8 rec soccer. It's a long conversation and we cover a lot of topics, but I bet you'll enjoy it, find things to disagree with, and maybe even find a few things to agree with!Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! You get exclusive episodes on average twice a week, plus access to the Discord and live call-in shows, by signing up here for as little as $2 a month: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast, where we talk about U.S. soccer. We are going to talk about grassroots soccer today, the foundation of the organism American soccer that produces the national teams we root for. First, let me introduce our guests. It's going to take a second. Jesse Howell is a longtime friend of scuffed. He and I both made an appearance in the national anthem behind the crest video from the time we restored Dosacero in Sincere that rainy November night. He's a huge fan of the men's and women's national teams, a world traveler and the assistant director of coaching for the Calvert Soccer Association about an hour south of D.C. Thanks, Bell.

Longtime supporter, a fan of the pod, love everything you all put out. I'm not able to participate in the Discord as much these days, but devour every episode, preach the scuff gospel to all who will listen. Thank you, man. And you're also the guy who sent Vince the mentality tweet poster, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. It had to be done. He's yet to put it above his fireplace, but. Whether it hangs in his house or not is not the issue.

The fact that it got the laugh and the smile is kind of what I was going for. And then we also have Kirk Kinsey, who hosts the counterpress, an LAFC podcast, but perhaps more importantly for our purposes today, he is the director of the Flagstaff Revolution, a kind of unique club in Arizona that manages to pull off pretty sophisticated training at a low cost to players and families, as I understand it. Hey, Kirk. Hey, thanks, Bels. I'm happy to be on.

I am the director of Flagstaff Revolution, really proud of the club, and especially the kids for how far they've come. We've been running it for about five years now. And it's been fun to watch kids that weren't footballers before. And if you just put them in the right environment, then they tend to take to the training and start to love the game. So happy to be here. I have to say that I told my kids last night that I was coming on the show and they were mad that they had to go to school because they wanted to try and make a cameo.

They went to school though. We're not going to have any interruptions. It's good for them to be at school, you know. I've been thinking about how to frame this episode and as we got closer to it. I realize it just there's so much to talk about like so many way directions we could go. So it's just going to have to be sort of three of us here. We all love the game. We're all coaching or helping coaches at the youth level.

We've got Maryland, Georgia, and Arizona represented. And we're just going to talk about some ideas to make grassroots soccer better. Does that sound okay to you guys? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And kind of how I mentioned previously, Bells, I think we've got macro and micro level conversations in which we can really touch on. on the macro youth level of soccer in general is like in a bit of crisis mode.

Participation is at an all-time low. Historically, travel teams are exploding, serving wealthier communities with those D-1 scholarship aspirations. Meanwhile, poverty-stricken America has rates of youth sports, participation that are absolutely plummeting. So on a micro level, we're also focused on the style of the game. What we can do right here and now is youth soccer leadership representing Maryland, Georgia, and Arizona to push U.S. soccer as a whole up towards that time.

top tier, of which we all aspire, of course, along the likes of France, Brazil, England. Yeah. Seems a long ways away, though, doesn't it? Certainly does. Okay. Well, Jesse, you just got back from a symposium in Minneapolis, a grassroots soccer symposium put on by U.S. youth soccer, right? What was the focus there?

What is the Federation trying to get people or trying to help people get done, I guess I should say? Yeah, that's right, Bill. So I flew to the Twin Cities, your old stomping grounds, if I remember correctly, this past weekend. Before we start, I wanted to ask both of you, how would you define grassroots soccer? Kirk. Yeah. So grassroots soccer for me is definitely younger ages.

So probably U-12 and below, oftentimes recreational, just like the entry level to the sport, right? And then I think there's like another level to it where you could say like grassroots clubs. And that's how I qualify my, my club where we don't have, we don't have an academy. We don't have something like we don't have a place for kids that are about to turn pro to go. Right. So any of that, like if you don't have a professional academy, I consider your grassroots club. That's my own thing. But I'm sure people equivalent with that is equivalent with many things.

Yeah. No, I mean, the definition that's been in my head is recreational soccer for the younger ages. Like you said, below U12. but I'm not sure if that's the correct definition. So I would agree with both of you at the most part. You know, I think grassroots could replace the nomenclature of recreational soccer eventually. I wouldn't mind that happening. I think unfortunately rec in some circles has negative connotations.

I mean, there's kids that really aspire to those travel teams and academies and such. And some are even teased and made fun of by their peers because they're playing. rec soccer and there shouldn't be, you know, any negative connotations that go along with that as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. So what were the themes? What were the big themes there? Yeah. Can I lead off with the boots on the ground segment, please?

First, Bells? Yes. Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Love these. You know, I love it when, you know, usually Vince is kind of having these and occasionally Tara. So I went to the, um, the Minnesota United versus San Jose game on Saturday night.

And I'm not sure if the weekend symposium was pre-planned around a Loon's home game, but the organizers offered every attendee a free ticket. They put 20 bucks of food and bev on each ticket. They rented out the entire roof deck. They had three full buses coming to and from the game. So an awesome time, to say the least. And I should preface this by saying that I'm fairly agnostic when it comes to club soccer. I'm much more interested like U.R. Bell's in the national team programs, the pipeline, the player pool.

So I was, you know, before going there, I was like, all right, San Jose, can't wait to see Kate Cal line up on the left wing. This is going to be cool. Watched him in the U-20 World Cup. Like, all right, let's see what this guy is going to pull. Get there, settle in, you know, chat with some really nice guys from Oregon and start, you know, pull up the fought mob. And I see that's Matthew Hoppe on the left wing, actually.

And I'm like, wait a minute. I had no idea that actually, that he was joined MLS and playing for San Jose. Also, we had Jackson Yule, Will Trap. So this group was loveling referred to by my partner, Amanda, as the USM&T castoffs classical. There you go. Timu Pruki up top as well, which I know is a Norwich legend and a Waki Fave. So anyhow, true to form, Hopi got into a shoving scrap with a San Jose defender about 15 minutes in. I missed a gold and clear-cut opportunity 20 minutes later, but it was pretty active throughout.

And Cade had a great chance in the 67th on a little tidy buildup from Hoppe. just outside the box. He would have had the hockey assist if the Cal's shot had gone in. But very entertaining. A one-one draw, plenty of opportunities on goal, and just got to give a shout-out to live soccer. It was just a great experience sitting there, taking in the action, beer in one hand, brought in the other.

That's awesome. Nice. Yeah, it's a great stadium, isn't it? And I wouldn't mind seeing Timu Pookie in the flesh. You know, he's a little washed for Norwich now, but he still knows out of ball. So tell us, tell us, thank you for that boots on the ground. I'm the only one at SCUF2 doesn't have boots, so my boots are never on the ground.

So, but tell me, tell us what, like, if you can sort of summarize, like, what's the overall direction of what they're trying to get across at a symposium like this? Absolutely. So this is my first time at one of these events. So I really came in to it with a really open mind. There was folks there at every level of youth soccer. From all the state organizations, from USYS on a national level, you know, app developers and former coaches and former players and everyone, everything. Almost 200 attendees.

So really, really well attended. And on the whole, it was really fantastic symposium conference, however you want to call it. Learned a lot, made a ton of connections. But there was zero talk about possession-oriented play, building out of the back, you know, all these grassroots soccer topics that the three of us are extremely familiar with and kind of would want to talk about. So more focus was on inclusivity, mental health, access, transportation. I'm going to go ahead and read just a few titles, workshop titles from the symposium right now. So shaping your community, team culture, conflict and leadership.

A new coach's starter pack. That was a good one. I'll talk about that later. creative approaches to grassroots growth. And then some other things that you might imagine, reimagining youth development, a referee opportunity. Some other workshops are really geared towards nonprofit fundraising, which definitely struck a chord with me,

such as, let's see here, conversations with purpose and payoff. It's kind of like fundraising and such. So like I said, an administrative focus almost. Yeah, yeah. This is for the administrators of the rep, and the clubs. Absolutely. I don't want to, I wasn't there at the conference, but I do feel like a lot of

times when you attend these kind of things, it is a little bit lofty. It's all, and it is focused on administration and, you know, leadership. And I think that's great. Like I'm sure, I'm sure there was good information and the people that are doing them that are running these courses are earnest, but I do feel like there's a lack of like very pointed and practical things. So like, Jesse, you said, like, how do I teach my kids to build out of the back? What do my kids need to know do before I can teach them that? And granted, there's probably not a whole lot of actual coaches there. So it's geared towards more of the bureaucratic side. But I feel like at some point, we have to bridge that gap between those lofty conversations and just practical things. And maybe

that's my real answer for what grassroots soccer is, is just like the boots on the ground, right? Who's actually running the trainings? Who's actually providing things that are practical? And I think as I've kind of looked for different things from my club and our rec program, our grassroots program, I should say, sorry, Bills. It's okay. I don't, I don't care. Yeah.

That sometimes the training courses are the same way where it's like, oh, yeah, well, this is kind of how you structure. training session, but they never actually give you like, if you want a kid to be able to receive the ball across their body and keep their hips oriented to the field, this is what you need to train them with. So, sorry, that's a bit of an aside, but, uh, well, yeah, it gets to the, you know, it gets to like, maybe the main point for me, which is like if you're not, if you're, even if you're doing all this, I mean, inclusivity is super important. We talk about it all the time. You know, mental health is important. Access is important, of course. But, Like if the, if what happens in practice is kids are playing red light, green light without a ball or running laps.

Yeah. It's like it all kind of is pointless. You know, they're not going to love soccer. I mean, some of them might, against all odds, learn to love soccer. Of course, that'll happen. But generally speaking, that's a, that's not a good recipe. And even if everything else is perfectly in line, it's not going to work. So we've got to like, we got to get down to the brass tacks a little bit.

I love that. And I completely agree with that with both of you. But first bells, you know, if we don't fix some of those issues, right, and get that retainment of our younger athletes, you know, progressing through the pyramid and enjoying the game, then we're not going to even have to worry about inclusivity or mental health. Because we're not necessarily even going to have the athletes at that older level. And I agree with kind of what Kirk was saying a little bit earlier as well, that there are some of these really lofty aspirations that come up at these types of events. And it feels, go ahead, Kirk. Oh, well, I was just going to say, like, I think that's part of the reason that the pyramid is the way that it is, right? Because the base isn't well fleshed out and there's just not a whole lot of opportunities for kids to, or for coaches, volunteers, whoever, to learn those things, that the people that can bridge the gap between the bottom of the pyramid at the top of the pyramid are the ones that can go hire a personal trainer for their kid or parents that are just home with their kids all the time and can do the Tom Beyer stuff, right, where they can train. with the ball at home. So for me, like, part of building a more inclusive system is just pushing down training. Now, it's much easier said than done because then you have people who are resistant to the help, right, to being told here, here's something that you can do, right?

Because now there's adult egos involved. Right. Nobody wants to be told what to do. And that's a real challenge. Two things I want to just nip in the bud real quick. the Tom Beyers thing. I've had people on Twitter say, just send everybody a copy of Tom Beyer's book.

I don't know. Have you ever tried to send a book to somebody or recommended a book to anybody? Even a close friend, a family member? That doesn't work. Nobody wants to read a book. Somebody else tells them to read. You know, like you're going to get like 0.05% conversion rate on that.

It's not going to work. Sending Tom Beyer's book to people is not going to do anything. And number two, I have a working theory. and I suspect you probably both agree with me, but I'm just going to float it before we get into some sort of structural details about the situations you're both in, is that if you can teach a kid to control the ball from U6 to U10, so if they get to the point where they are comfortable with the ball,

they make the ball do what they want it to do, which is just an absolutely freeing development in a person's life, you know, I mean, at least in a soccer sense. When a kid realizes that they can make the ball do what they want, changes their whole orientation towards the game, I think. If we can get that from U6 to U10, which I think we can with not that much adjustment of the way these practices are run,

then we can get kids from U10 to U14 to be able to rondo. And if you can rondo and enjoy rondowing as an 11-year-old, my guess is you're going to love soccer for the rest of your life. maybe what I'm thinking about is like a long play, you know, if we can just develop a generation of people who love soccer for the rest of their lives, then they can, they'll Tom Byers with their kids when they have their kids 20 years from now, you know, we can't force people to do that. Completely agree. I think, you know, breaking it down into these really manageable, small, minute goals and something that I could bring to my coaches during my edge coaches training and say,

this is the one thing I'm going to look when I visit your practice is to see if, you know, for mastery and for practice at the U7, at the U8, at the U-9, at the U-10 level. And just give them, you know, a few really succinct to bullet points like you said, ball mastery, right? You know, then we can talk a little bit more what that looks like and kind of expand on that. But having that overarching goal is important. Yeah.

And I do feel that like this is where grassroots misses it most of time. We're talking about coaches who are just parents. They're willing to volunteer, so they do. They have the time or whatever, but they don't always have the know-how, right? They're lovely people, but they just, they've never played or they played. And what they did at soccer practice when they were a kid in the 90s was they passed a ball to a coach. The coach laid it off and they ran on and shot only on their dominant foot, right? And then they went back and they got their ball.

They went back and stood in line. and then they kept ripping shots of the keeper in that sequence. But kids do enjoy that drill for what it's worth. Oh, so much. They love it. Yeah. But I'm with Jesse on like you have to master. And you, Bells, you said it too.

Like you have to do some ball mastery at the beginning. But nobody knows what that looks like just off the top of their head. You have to be taught. You have to be shown. And there are plenty of materials out there. You can go to Corver. You can go. there's a hundred different places where you can go to get that stuff.

But a volunteer parent isn't going to go spend $400 to learn about, all right, well, what does Corver do? Like, what are all their games and what, like, what's their philosophy on how to teach kids to do this? So the organizations have to do it. But again, you run into the problem where they're staffed by volunteers too, so they don't really know. Yeah.

There has to be some kind of like perfect overlap of useful and, uh, you know, implementable that I don't think has been. Yeah. Discovered yet. Let's talk about, let's talk about what the situations you guys are in because they're,

they're both unique in a certain way, but they, you know, it'll help us understand where you guys are coming from. The Calvert Soccer Association, Jesse, how did that get started? How is it funded?

It's, it's, it's rec soccer, but it's also, there's also a club and academy component. How did, what is that? Is it like a local municipality started it or what?

What's going on? Yeah, great question. So it is just soccer. It doesn't encompass any other sports, first off. And so CSA, Calvert Soccer Association, it's a volunteer nonprofit organized in 1984 and with a mission that we're all familiar with providing an opportunity for the youth of Calvert County to play soccer. So it's a 501C3 nonprofit funded almost entirely by registration fees, which are kept quite

low, in my opinion. that's $99 for either a fall or a spring season than another $45 for a uniform kit, which can be used for several years. As far as numbers go, in the spring, it's about 1,050 rec athletes. That's from about, let me think. So that's a U6 to U18, actually.

It goes all the way through high school. We have that. About 250 travel, and that's from U8 up, and then 80 Junior Academy, of which I'm currently a coach. for the U7, U8 team combined in the fall with my son. And then with a really healthy dose of U4 Tykes program

and a U5 futures program as well. So we're talking close to, you know, probably 15, 16, 17, 700 athletes. Robust. I mean, that's, that's a, you're in a position of some great influence there. Absolutely. So how do you, I mean, I want to hear,

do the whole same thing with you, Kirk. But just, just real quick. Jesse, and if you have any questions for Jesse, jump in. But like, how do you, how do you do coaching training? Do, do coaches in, and I'm mostly concerned about the rec portion here, how do you, do they have to do a certain kind of training or how does that work? So, well, we've, I've kind of tried a couple of different methods and I'm open to ideas as well along the lines of this conversation because I don't think I've found the perfect formula yet.

as we've already discussed at the grassroots slash rec level. We're typically bringing in the parents of the kids when we can wrangle someone in. Oftentimes it's last minute. We have to send that email out or even make that call and say, hey, your son or your daughter's team is not going to play this season if we don't get somebody. So that's kind of like the baseline, unfortunately. So going back to your question about training. So at the beginning of the season, we offer a Saturday prior morning session at our pitch and just kind of going over really the fundamentals of how to run the play practice play curriculum that we follow.

We try to give them some ideas and we try to take some of the trepidation out of the equation that many of them feel going into this. although we're in our south of D.C., this is not a soccer hotbed by any means. It's a world away culturally. It's a land of crab feasts and cornfields, right? Absolutely. There's plenty of both of that. Absolutely. But it's just, it's a different equation than what a lot of people think of them, they think, oh, like D.C. soccer, like, Rush, like D.C. United Academy.

That's not what we're dealing with in my part. Okay. So development, what I've actually, what I did this past fall, which we have much smaller numbers in the fall, is that I just invited coaches out to my junior academy practices. And we start a week prior. So it was really easy for them to come out and do so because they didn't have any evening practice conflicts. And I kind of did it just like I would do a teacher training because I'm a former elementary educator. I had them, you know, just kind of follow me around, ask questions when they needed. And I would talk to the kids.

And then I would give, you know, I would talk to my group of coaches and say, this is why I'm doing this, right? Or I would preface my comments to the kids was saying, you know, this is why I'm going to do that. And then I would just try, once again, try to take the biggest thing is trying to take the trepidation factor out of it. Because a lot of them are just extremely nervous. They have no idea. They don't have a soccer background. They don't have a coaching background. They don't have a teaching background.

They're like, what am I going to do with this group of seven-year-olds for the next hour? And I just say, this is easy, right? They show up. You get there early. You know, we've got small-sided fields. You throw them in automatically. The first kid who comes in, you know, he's, you know, he's just kind of practicing a little ball mastery. That's generally the coach's kid.

The next kid who comes in, that's going to be 1 v1. Another kid who comes in, that's 2 v1. And I'm just, you know, I'm greeting parents and greeting children as they arrive as well. And then, you know, all up until a 3-3 game is playing. We get more kids and we've got a second field, keeping it really small-sided. And one thing I think, we'll talk about this later in our conversation, I'm sure, that has been missing from this entire equation is that that pick up soccer, that freedom of expression, that Brazil has, that England has, that a lot of these, you know, top notch soccer countries have that we just don't have here. It's so organized, right, in my opinion. So giving them the opportunity at the beginning of practice, I think is really important.

And then once again, I'm talking about coaches training here. And then throughout, you know, giving them a few different activities. And I just try to frame it at the grassroots level as we're playing games with a soccer ball, right? We're playing sharks and minnows or any million of a million variations with a soccer ball. We're playing tag with a soccer ball. For the really young athletes, we're playing red light green light or Simon says with a soccer ball. And making sure that they understand that every activity should always involve a ball at an athlete's foot. Always, even if they're running to go get a drink of water, they should be dribbling over and then dribbling back to the group.

And then finishing up. Do the coaches buy in? Do they buy into that? Like, do they mostly do that? So at least at the training, I will say, it is a bit of a revelation for them. And I feel like there is, you know, a while, like a feeling of relief, visible relief washes over many of them. And they're like, oh, this isn't so bad. Like, I can do this.

Like, I can set up fields and get them playing and then have. a couple of games for 30 minutes in the middle and then come back together and then talk about what we're going to, you know, the skills that we practice during our games, we're going to try to utilize those in our practice ending scrimmage as well. So I've had a ton of success. And that's the model I'm going to do from here on out, bringing them in early, coming to my practice, and then allowing them to ask questions. Jesse, do you think, sorry, like a light bulb just went off from me because we have the same thing where it's like, you know, emailing people the night before a game.

Your kid's not playing tomorrow because there's no coach, so somebody has to step up. But one thing that you said was that they feel a lot of relief once they come to your training. Maybe that's part of the solution here is that we have to have organizations that put together these materials. And again, we're talking about volunteers, so it's hard to do, but that put together a video

and send it out and be like, listen, I know you're nervous about coaching because you feel like you don't know the game because you don't. but you don't need to know the game to introduce a little chaos and have one kid on one ball and set up some cones and let them play a silly game. Do you think that might help the situation? Yeah, absolutely.

I think having that script and having that kind of top to bottom approach and giving them those tools that they need for success is of utmost importance. Yeah. I mean, I want to get into more about how. how you get that message, now you deliver that message and what exactly that message is. But first, let's talk, Kirk, what's the structure of Flagstaff Revolution? What's the genesis of it? You said it's five years old. Give us the whole picture there.

Yeah. So, I mean, kind of similar to Jesse's situation where, so we are a part of AYSO Region 257, which is like all of Northern Arizona and like the Grand Canyon region. We have about 800 kids that play in our rec program. We have a summer league that we run. It's really snowy here in Flagstaff. So we can't play in the winter. So we have a summer rec season that we do.

And then during the traditional club season, which is basically the school season, right? The school year, I should say. We run a program called Flagstaff Revolution. It was kind of a program that was a bit defunct. AYSO has this thing that they call their extra program, which is where you'll take an all-star team and you'll go play in a couple tournaments or something like that.

And we saw an opportunity, me and a friend of mine, his name is Jacob Garcia. Great leader loves the game and he's been a huge help through all this. But we saw an opportunity to say, you know what, we're just going to turn this program that was called Flagstaff Revolution

into a fully functioning club. And we're going to have birthier teams. We're going to like annually, like bring in new coaches, new teams, you know, whoever it is, new players, and we're going to try and bring those players back and install an actual curriculum. So we are a positional play club.

All of our coaches go to Tovo training from Todd Bean, who's the son-in-law of Johann Groyfe. So we send all of our coaches to that training to make sure that they are well-versed. That's kind of like how we bridge the gap between that. All of our coaches have memberships to 343, which is another great, like, positional play source of material.

I found that 3-4-3 is a little bit more advanced for some of the kids, whereas Tovo's like a few levels down from that and a little bit more accessible for new coaches. But once they get going, the 343 materials really start to help a lot more. You sort of layer it on once the, once they're already cooking. And it's all, you know, this is all just, you know, we have 13 teams and about 185 kids in this program. So it's easy enough for me and Jacob and a couple others, a couple other experience coaches to be like, hey, you are, you know, you're now you 11,

you're moving to nine on nine. Here's some things that you can start working on. So we just kind of like help each other out with it. And do you pay the coaches? Do you pay the coaches at all? No, no, they're not paid. It's all, it's all volunteer. So, I mean, that is a challenge because it's,

It's back to that same thing, right? People that volunteer to coach are parents or just in it for the pure love of the game. But they have day jobs. They have other things that they're doing. So, yeah. But you've developed at least locally a brand where, like, people know what they're signing up for when they sign up their kids. Definitely.

There's already, but go ahead. Sorry. Oh, so I started with my 2010 boys in 2019. That was like the first year. So we're now in our fifth year. And they, you know, we, I was, I was a new coach and just looking at like, I didn't like the other club offering in town. So it was kind of like, all right, I need to, I need to do something. And I kind of have a bit of inferiority complex myself, whereas like, I don't know what I'm doing.

I need to go learn all these things. And I think, I think the term that everybody's using now is sicko, right? Where I was just like, I had to read more and more and more. And this book and this program and whatever. And so I just kept pulling materials. and the boys kept getting better and better. And so that we kind of recruited off the back of them. And now our younger teams are doing so much more at a younger age.

You have U6.S.6 age level now? We are down to, yeah, we do have U6. Our U6 is U7s and U8s all train in like a co-ed academy program where it's just, you know, it's 30 kids on a field and it's just one kid, one ball, all ball mastery. That's it. if they play 3 by 3 or 3 v3 by the end of the year, awesome. But what we really want is just them on the field.

Tom Beiring it, right? Like we invite the parents out onto the field and like, that's kind of where we teach them how to teach their kids. Ah, what do you, how do you do? So real quick, how does that work? What do you do? You invite the parents on the field to do what? Yeah.

So, I mean, I think some of this stuff is as easy as like you give the parent a cone or a ball or something to throw. You tell their kid to go dribble around it and come back, right? And then that's teaching them to take the ball, take small touches, turn around the cone or whatever, and then they bring it back and you throw it somewhere else, right? Or one of the favorite games that we play in that one, this may be a little bit too pointed, but where I'm explaining individual exercises. I like it. My favorite one to play with young kids is I call it ouch. And the coach is in the middle of the field and there's 30 kids and 30 balls.

and the coach is just walking or running around the field, depending on the skill level, and they just shoot at the coach. And when they hit you, you just yell out really loud. You make a big show of it. Sometimes you fall over, and the kids love it. And they're learning to follow you.

They're learning to look up at you and kick the ball in that direction, right? They're learning to shoot accurately all while. Hit a moving target. Yeah. And they don't know it. They don't. It's like kind of the sneaky way to train kids to do all these little individual skills. But like Jesse was saying, it's one kid, one ball.

The ball, this is something that I talk a lot about when I train our rec coaches in the summer is like the ball ratio has to be better. If the ball ratio is screwed up, then you're screwing over 20 kids on the field. Like if you, like we all used to play when we were kids, it was 22 kids on a field, right? 11 v11 on a full-sized field. And a bunch of nine-year-olds trying to like run around and get the ball. Like, no wonder everybody was playing bunch ball. Total chaos.

Yeah. But yeah. One-to-one ratio. Yeah. Fix the ball ratio. That's one thing that we've implemented. This is like, of all the feathers in my cap, this might be the most, the one that I'm most proud of is in our rec program, I was able to convince the board to go to 7V7 only.

So we'll go from 4 v4 to 7 v7 and they play that until they're 18. It makes it easier to handle the resources because now we don't need as much field space. But again, it fixes that ball ratio. And when you're talking about grassroots players, you're not talking about kids who understand the intricacies of an inverting or an overlapping fullback anyway. So like let's eliminate that stuff and just put 14 kids on the field instead of 22, for example. And that would also, I mean, if everybody, you know, if U.S. soccer from on high mandated this, we're going to play 7 v7 until people are 17 or 18 years old, that would also increase the number of teams in every locality, right?

There be more teams, less travel, more accessibility for everybody. Because that becomes a real problem too when like all the good players are going, traveling every weekend in it from a town. And then you don't have a critical math. in that locale for that is available to people who can't afford to be on a travel team. Yeah. And I think this is what we've done here, right? One thing I want to be cautious of is like not being overly prescriptive for people, right?

Like 7 v7 might be it for us. But where Jesse's at, it might be 5 v5 or somebody might only have six players. Like that's, again, going back to the whole grassroots thing. If you have six players, the grassroots solution is to play three on three. Right. and just go with it. Like, that's fine. Just get the kids playing.

And that's all at a rec level. So with a revolution program, we run a little bit differently. It's all structured, lockstep with all the other clubs in the state. But, yeah. So, Kirk, what do you think is, I mean, we've touched on a few of the elements of this already, but let's get right at it. What is, what does the ideal rec soccer program look like? Yeah, so I, I, you don't want to be overly prescriptive.

Right, right. But I appreciate you trying to tease it out. For me, I think, I think the big thing with with rec soccer is that it's got to be worthwhile. Right. And going back to what Jesse said, where a lot of times people make fun of kids because they play rec soccer because the one time they went there, these club players, for example, it was total, it was just disorganization. nobody knew what was going on. There were players out there that had never touched a ball before, except for the five times that their number came up in the layoff shooting drill with the coach.

And so I do think it takes a little bit of effort from the volunteers that run it to make it worthwhile. And to me, that mostly just means reliable. You know that every Saturday you're going to have a game. You know that when you get there, the fields are going to be set up and that there's going to be another team that's there to play you. right? And so it does take some organization to make it happen. But then they also need to be focused on the right things. So beyond just the like the administrative organization you have to then teach them the right things. And so from three to five like we're talking about, it's all ball mastery. One kid, one ball, no exceptions, right? If they play one on one with some

pugs, awesome. That's great. If they play two on two, now we're like really getting somewhere for for me. And then six to eight, you start to add a little bit more. I would prefer if they played three on three, not four on four, but I'm willing to go with U.S. soccer on that one. And again, I think you really have to be selling it to the coaches and to the parents all along the way. Why it is that is structured this way? Because there are parents of seven-year-olds out there who are going to come and they're like, why don't we play 11 and be 11? Like, we should be doing that. This is what they watch on TV. This is, so it takes somebody or multiple people really within the organization to be selling

it to both the parents and the coaches along the way. And then 9 to 12 is when you go 7 v7 and you start to implement some more complex concepts. But I feel like those three phases are so distinct in what the kids need to develop that it's like a separate education that needs to take place. So a separate education for coaches and then, parents for three to five, and then the same thing for six to eight or six to nine, whatever, however you want to chop it up, and then nine to twelve. And then I think you have players coming out of a rec program at that point that can handle like you talked about bells, going positional play

or whatever, whatever style. Like we chose positional play because that's what I like and that's what I want to coach. That's what I want my kids playing. But you could, you could go with Brazilian relationship as far as I care. I don't care what you do, but have a curriculum, have something that you stick to, but if you don't have the bottom of the pyramid fixed, then you're going to have kids going into those programs with no idea what to do with the ball, right? Yeah, I mean, you can't teach somebody, I mean, just to stick with positional play. You can't teach somebody to Rondo if they can't control the ball, you know? Yeah. So we do it. When that, when you come up against that, right, you have to stay in a 4V0 Rondo for a long time, which is incredibly boring to

put kids in a square and say, pass the ball to the guy next to you. Okay. Now, pass it back. Oh, you didn't receive across your body. Now you're going to be corrected, right? So now pass it back and get it back again. Okay, now you need to be shuffling side to side, but there's no pressure. There's, so it's not, it's not a game for them. It's just like, I'm just standing here, getting yelled at, right? Yeah, that's a ball back. Don't like that. Yeah. Go ahead, Jesse. Yeah, so I just like to speak a little bit to that. Thank you, Kirk. I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Tell a story that I heard at that symposium this past weekend. in Minneapolis. And this is from one of the presenters. And he talked about being a first year

teacher in New York City public schools and kind of took this like boot camp type summer course to get, you know, those teachers ready for the classroom because they just needed bodies in the classrooms. And his entire first month, maybe in his first year, all he was wanted, all he was begging for from administration was like a script, you know, and just wanted just tell me what I'm going to say in this and then I'm going to say in this and then I'm going to say in this moment. And I actually think for a lot of our grassroots volunteer coaches, that's what they need. And I know like we're talking about getting away from this kind of prescriptive approach.

But I think that many of them are so far down the line of what, you know, the knowledge that the three of us have gained over the years and the fanaticism, some might say, that the three of us share in a positive way, that they just, they just have no idea where to start. So I think having that program, giving them the tools to say, this is your baseline, this is exactly what you're going to do on day number one, right? These are your cues, you know, making it like very succinct and straightforward. But I think that is something that we could try to develop and put out there for our coaches that just don't have a clue.

Yeah. And I would add to that that like the good news about the way you broke it up, Kirk, the three to five being just all one ball, one kid, and then six to eight, basically the same, one ball, one kid, let's do some 3 v3, 4 v4 if we can. That's not that difficult to pull off, you know? Like that's not rocket science. Most people can do that, can set up a practice to accomplish those goals if they just get a little nudge in the right direction.

You know, and maybe the nudge in the right direction is an actual script. like do this drill, do the, you know, have them play 3V3 as soon as practice starts. Kirk, you may disagree with that. But then,

I mean, I am kind of curious what you get, what you think of the play, practice play model. Yeah. So I think play practice play is a good place to start.

We don't run that with our club kids at this point. For us, it's more of, on the club side that is. It's a bit more pointed, right? So we will do. do some sort of Rondo.

And when I say Rondo, I mean like a 4V2, 5V3 type of thing, or maybe like a double Rondo where there's a transition moment in there. And then we'll move to an actual positional game where it's like 5 on 5 plus 4. Or a lot of times people call it the Man City of the Barcelona Rondo, the 4V4 plus 3. And we'll do that for 20 minutes. And then we'll move on to like a tactical application. So like the 4v4 plus 3, for example, if you look at it,

it. And this is like how I sell positional play to people. If you look at it, you'll see that the two along the base are centerbacks and the two neutrals out wide are fullbacks. And the one in the middle is a six and the two above that are attacking mid. So you're setting up a team to play in a four, four three, right? And they can possess the ball around four players with their three forwards up ahead. So all you're doing is a tracking pressure and playing the ball through. Right. So that's what I mean by like a positional game where it's like kind of an expanded. It looks like a Rondo. It smells like a Rondo, but it's a little bit more pointed.

That's the Tovo model, right? That's how Todd Bean does it. Maybe that's how 343 does it. Yeah. Yeah. It's all kind of the same thing. Again, I think Tovo is a little bit more accessible for like a grassroots club like ours where we're starting a little bit, where we're starting a little bit.

You know, we don't have players that like Jesse said come from a soccer culture most of the time. So we have to kind of warm them up to some of the stuff. And then we get into, we graduate them into the more complicated things and unopposed like patterns of play and all that stuff. That's like 3-4-3 has a lot of great stuff on that. So kind of choreographed attacking moves essentially. Yeah, yeah.

With that you rehearse and then, yeah. I want to talk about each of those trainings. But I want to just talk about my situation a little bit. I'm a volunteer coach. I'm sort of a de facto. like would be director of coaching, I guess, in that the commissioner of the league, also a volunteer. You know, he sort of tells me, you know, do whatever you can to try to help the coaches. The problem is Chattanooga's 20 minutes north of me.

So there's definitely a good culture in Chattanooga of soccer and like a lot of people who are really serious about it. And then Dalton, Georgia, which is 40 miles away, is like a town of like 35,000 or 40,000. That's half Latino. know, and just has an incredible soccer culture. That's, those are both nearby, but where I live, it's a desert, you know, like people don't know the game, the parents don't know the game, the volunteer coaches are generally not knowledgeable about the game or about, you know, sort of best practices for soccer development

at the ages of five, six, seven, eight years old. So the challenge here is, the challenge for me is how do I, what message do I deliver at the beginning of the next season and how do I deliver it? I don't know if I can get people to come out to the field with me, you know? Yeah. I don't know if I'm even going to be able to do that. So it's got to be, it's got to be like super precise, just a precision strike of information for some people who do not have a lot of time for it and don't, you know, they don't care, they don't particularly care about any of this stuff, you know, they're, they're just, they just want their kid to do something in the afternoon.

Bels, do you have like a, uh, online, like, place where you can stream some content or like some sort of podcast platform that you can use to deliver this message to people? I mean, I guess, but it's like preaching to the choir, you know? Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. It's a bit, it's just, obviously, but it's, it's hard. It's hard to sell people on it because adults don't want to be told. what to do. They really don't.

And when you're dealing with volunteers, um, you, you, you just never know if anybody, if they're going to be pliable to, to, to that message.

Um, I found that, the best way is, is to show them some charisma to go out to their practices and just like, hey, let me watch. Let's see.

Or if they know that you have a team that plays well, um, they, they might ask. Yeah. But it's, it's really tough. The number one thing for me, and even on the club side, is I will go to them and even if I knew it before, I will say something like, I just found this new way to help my

wingers understand their role. Look at this video. Tell me what you think and kind of make it a discussion with them and help them kind of have some buy-in. And then it's like I'm presenting them with the problem that I need their help solving. That may be a bit, a bit hopeful on my part to them, but somehow involving them in that conversation. I don't know, Jesse. So I think, Kirk, you hit the nail on the head. I think going bells, maybe this is something that you could try next season as actually going

to their practices. And maybe that's in week one, you have, you know, a lot of coaches in their teams that are going be in a similar space and that you can really kind of pop around and lead different parts of the practice. And then, you know, basically kind of be a mentor role for your coaches and just kind of, you know, show rather than tell them what you're exactly, you know, the vocabulary that you're using, you know, what are some like the main points they're trying to get across to the athletes and then how they can kind of check in to see if they've accomplished these things that we're trying to accomplish. Okay. I'm hopeful.

I'm hopeful. Jesse, what do you have to add to like the ideal structure for rec soccer? So I agree mostly with what Kurt was laying out as far as kind of that ball mastery at the younger level, you know, blending into kind of more of a full team structure at the ages, you know, as you get into the 68 range and above that, I would add. And this is this might be outside of our reach, but I think it's worth discussing that I think that we need more places where kids can play pickup. I think whatever that looks like in each community, we need to start to kind of develop that infrastructure. And there's there's there's money out there.

I tell you, there is money out there, especially when we start talking about some of the Tyler 1 schools that we have around in my area. There is, you know, government subsidies. There's government fundies. that there are grants to develop this type of thing, I would encourage anyone who's listening to this episode to reach out to your state organization today or tomorrow and talk to them about some of the ideas. Because once again, there is funding available. I wasn't aware of this until this past weekend. I talked with MSYSA leadership and was told, hey, there's actually stipends available for just exactly what you're looking for. And I had no idea. I had no

idea. There's a let's play program that they've successfully implemented in I think 50 Title I schools, which I'm going to try to roll out next spring when they have it available again. And this is basically an after-school program. So incorporating the elementary schools into it. They're always looking for something for the kids to do after school. Being able to roll out some of these programs with funding, which means you can actually pay coaches. Because once again, the state organizations are giving you the money to do so. To run these types of programs with some training for them as well is going to be put us all in a space where our kids are getting more touches. There is this kind of pickup environment of which I think is sorely lacking in this country, sorely lacking.

And just more space to play. And it's just more exposure. Yeah. So one of my friends actually, I don't know if the fund is still exists, but he's a PE teacher at one of the elementary schools here. And he went through the, I think it was called the U.S. Soccer Foundation. And they installed a futsal court at his elementary school for free.

Like they paid for it and made it happen. His name, my friend's name is Brian. He did a great job like going through and finding all of it. I don't know how he came across the program or how he convinced them that like flagstaff, the place to do it, but he made it happen. So it kind of goes back to that. Like, if you're a motivated volunteer, you can make this happen. You can get your state association like we did with Revolution to sanction your,

it's like officially sanctioned your AYSO program. It just takes a bit of doggedness and determination on your part. What was the, you saw something about a presentation about something in Colorado at the symposium, Jesse, right? Something going on in Aurora? I did. I did. And this was called, this was during one of their lunch, learning lunch sessions or lunch

learning sessions, just short and sweet during lunch. After you ate, everyone kind of went around to a different table and got a short sales pitch, so to speak. And this was in Aurora. And they called it pick up soccer with a pinch of structure. And Aurora, for those, people think of Colorado and Denver as being pretty homogenous. but Aurora is actually a very multicultural community, strong immigrant population. So what they've developed is they've got three fields in the weekend evenings that are available under the lights.

And it's on a main thoroughfare. So the kids can get there by public transpo. It sounds like pretty easily back and forth for those that have an issue with, you know, accessibility and transportation. And it's like I just said, it's pick up soccer with a pinch of structure. They come in. It's a very low one-time fee, which I think is also pretty heavily subsidized in many cases for many of their players. And they come in and they sign up and they're just kind of directed to a field where they've got 77 going or 5v 5v 5 or 9v 11 or 11, depending on what the age ranges and what they're trying to, what the numbers are.

So I was really inspired by that. First off, you have to have the facilities, of course. But it was really fantastic. Yeah. How many people do they have work in those nights? You know, like, is it like five folks? That's a good question. That's a good question.

I'm sure that was mentioned in the presentation, and I do not remember. Too busy eating lunch. We do, if you don't mind, Bells. We do something similar with our club where we just rent out a school gym. So we train in school gyms through the winter when there's snow on the ground. but we'll rent one out an additional like Friday night. And I was skeptical. Like somebody,

one of our coaches came to me with this idea like, hey, I want to rent out a gym on Friday night. We're just going to do free play for the kids because we're always looking for that. We want them to be playing pickup. And they do it at school or whatever at lunch, but we wanted to give them another place. And I was like,

ah, nobody's going to come on Friday night. Nobody's going to bring their kid. And we routinely have 40 to 50 kids that just go up on Friday night. Their parents are there. we don't let, so the way we run it is there's one coach on the field just to supervise, make sure, you know, insurance with the schools and all that stuff. And the parents aren't allowed to be there. They're not allowed to talk.

It's just kids playing. And like they will organize, they'll play 5 v5 or whatever it is that they want to do. But I do think that's like a critical part of their development is like we can talk about all kinds of positional play and and club environments, wreck environments, but ultimately it's not enough. right there's there's other things that are needed to make those players really take the next step yeah i i i love that stuff i just wonder how and i also love what joy the people is doing in st paul i don't know if you're familiar with that kirk but um like the blow-up fields right yeah yeah

yeah they do that and they also it's just it's just free play all the time and there's there's somebody kind of supervising but barely and uh it's great you know the kids are i remember i've told this story on the podcast before, but I remember Jimmy Conrad came to play pickup there and he got megged by some 12 year old. They love to, they love to, uh, they just, I think he was just trying to meg Jimmy Conrad the whole time. And he begged Jimmy Conrad and Jeep Conrad was so mad. He was so mad.

You brought that up in the Jimmy Conrad interview, if I remember correct? I did. Yeah, I asked him about it. He, he, I don't know if he remembered it as clearly as I did because his eyes were red, bro. He was livid, right? See in red. So let's talk about some of these training courses. Okay, I got to stop here and say, hey, if the kid, if a five, six, seven, eight, nine-year-old kid isn't having fun at soccer practice, nothing else is going to work.

So we got to like, we got to, I know we all agree about this, but there will be people who are listening who maybe don't know that. We agree with that for sure. Yeah. We agree, right? They got to be having fun. Absolutely. That's a key thing. I mean, that's, you know, use sports across the spectrum, everything.

You know, participation rates are falling off a cliff. And that's it. We got to make sure that they're having a good time. Again, good news is ball mastery drills, the kind of the sharks and minnow stuff, the variations of that or ouch. Kids effing love that stuff. Yeah. They cannot get enough of it.

We play a game called Pirates. where it's not exactly like sharks and minerals, but there's like islands made of cones that the kids have to dribble from from one to the other when the volcano explodes. And I'm the shark in the water, you know, between the islands. And I kind of just, I don't ever take the ball from anybody, really. I just kind of make them change direction

and choose where they're going to go. The kids would play that for an hour every day. And it's so good for them. You know, they. So one thing that you said there, where you're adding like passive pressure, right? This is a big Corver thing, right? And so I think this is a great way to show that you can take like valuable and valid

training methods. So like passive pressure from Corver where they're teaching kids ball mastery and you're teaching them how to Croif turn or something like that, right? And you don't just go into a 1 v1 and say, figure out the croif, you do it through steps, right? And you have them pull it back unopposed. And then the first opposition that they face is passive like that. So I think that's a great example, Bell, of where you created this absurd game

where a volcano explodes and the pirates have to go to different islands, but you're adding passive pressure to them, right? So, like, you can come up with a hundred different things. One of my favorite things that I ever saw was when my kid was four, where we were living in Cleveland at the time, and my kid was in a, my oldest was in a wreck program there. And the coach had them dribbling around the, field again one kid one ball this is kind of one of those outlier coaches right and he the game was called T-rex and he basically said you're not allowed to use your hands and soccer and T-Rexes have

dumb stupid little arms right and all the kids laugh and so they're all running around with their arms tucked in and they're just running onto goals and shooting right and you're supposed to do a big T-Rex roar right it's it's silly it but it's again one kid one ball they're running around with T-Rex arms roaring. Like, and they're four. So good. Like, that's what you should be doing, right? And it's also this little lesson like, hey, don't use your hands because you have

stupid little T-Rex arms, right? Right. Jesse. Yes. I mean, I love what Kirk was talking about there. We talked about that passive pressure and just the idea. And what I, what he's referencing is, you know, is a term in education, at least it's referred to as scaffolding.

So this is an instructional practice where a teacher or a coach gradually removes. guidance and support as students learn and become more competent. So like you said, right, at the beginning of this activity, you know, I definitely try not to call it drills. I slip up every once in a while, but I still really prefer how very U.S. soccer of you, Jesse. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know, like letting them play with the ball, you know, one player, one ball in that, you know, non-pressure environment and then putting in that passive pressure, right, like you talked about. And then eventually, you know, inserting a defender when we feel like they're ready.

So I think that's something that we can also get across to our coaches and letting them know that we need to give them opportunities with the ball first without anybody on them. Because what that's going to lead to is what I call the boot it symptom and allow you, if I may, to tell a quick story about the boot at syndrome. So I was coaching last spring. I was coaching my son in the U7. rec division. And there was another coach and the opposing team who's only instruction. And once again, bless her heart, these are all volunteer coaches. Right. I get it. I'm not trying to put anyone on blast here. But only instruction to her team was booted. That's it. That's all it for the entire game. That's all you heard from the other sideline. And it didn't matter where the ball was, right?

And the problem with this, though, is it's quite effective at the U7 level because ball mastery is very challenging. at that age. So, you know, when the ball is getting in their box or anywhere on their side of the field, this boot it, right, is putting it onto our defensive side. And then all the players can run onto it. And then, you know, we're having to defend, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I was talking to my assistant coach about it who doesn't have a soccer background, but is absolutely fantastic. And I was just trying to explain him, like the principles of playing out of the back and why it's important and why boot it might be effective at the U7 level, but we're just not setting up these kids for success.

that phrase is banned on my sidelines like literally banned it's part of like welcome to my team here are some things that I that will not be heard on my sidelines but sorry the Buddha is a hot button for me yeah well those you know T-rex or pirates or you know we do another one called zoo animals I mean these are I honestly feel like you could just do drills like this the whole practice and it would be it would serve the the children perfectly well um but i do want to i think people listening might be if they haven't taken any coaching classes might be curious about what some of the yeah what some of the stuff offers and um so after talking to you uh kirk i took i'm taking the tovo

seven b seven class and um and it is really good i got to admit yeah it's it's awesome um But it is for, it's for kids who have already mastered the ball. Yeah. Pretty much. Like we're talking U10, U12. You may disagree. You think you can introduce this stuff at U8? The earliest we do it is U8 and U9.

Yeah. And it's possible. And it, again, it takes patience. And you might not be able to do it lockstep. You know, the thing that I love about the Tovo 7V7 course is it's like, here's a 12-week program that you can just run for 12 weeks. a couple years ago, I had a U-10 team, and we had trained kind of the whole year on like my typical thing. And then I found that that 7V7 course took it. And it was like the last 12 weeks

of the year. And I was just like, you know what? We're just going to do it. Like these kids are fine. We're going to do this 12 weeks of training. And it was like something fresh for them to do. And they, I mean, they loved it. They loved it. And again, we're talking about kids that are playing club so that it's at a higher level. And that's one distinction I want to make too, like T-Rex, pirates, sharks and minnows. All that is fun and it's good and it has a place. And at the grassroots level with young kids, you should absolutely be doing stuff like that. But if we are going to graduate, it can't just be, well, what's fun? What's fun for the 14-year-old kid? Well, if the 14-year-old kid is only involved for fun, then we're not talking about the next Christian Polisic, right? We're talking about

a kid who we want to help fall in love with a game and plays grassroots for the rest of his life, right? But you are at some point going to have to graduate them to more serious training. And I think Tovo is a great place to start. I don't know how you prefer that I go through these bells, but... Well, we can go through them together. I mean, a couple details on Tovo.

So Todd Bean, like you said, he's Johann Croft's son-in-law, located in Barcelona, I believe. He's on Twitter, and you can follow him there. It's $295.5 for the 7v7 class. So this is not a class that anybody who is a casual soccer coach is going to take. But, and I do, I agree. I mean, like, what you just said is totally true. It's, this is for, this is for more advanced kids.

And it's, it's about becoming, like, a real soccer player, you know, moving off the ball, scanning, choosing, you know, all the stuff that... Scan choose do. Yeah.

Scan choose do. Bell, is this curriculum relevant at the grassroots level for like what we're talking about with like we're talking volunteer coaches and such? I have not...

I don't... It's not relevant to my situation. I mean, it's relevant to me because I'm fascinated by it and I... Of course. And I have tried to introduce Rondo's

a little bit with the U-8s. and I am not willing to concede that there has been no success. I think there's been a little bit of success and there's been a little bit of a light bulb going off for some of the kids. I've done it very lightly, very little. But yeah, it's not relevant. For me, for me, we got to get to, we got to get nine-year-olds who know how to make a soccer ball do what they want first, you know?

Yeah. Can I go ahead. make a suggestion there. Sometimes when we go to Rondos or positional play, coaches want to go like, okay, well, we got to go to 4V1 because that's where you start, or 3V1 or whatever it is, right? And sometimes those games don't really make a whole lot of sense to the kids,

especially like at U8, if you can get them playing 2v2 plus 2, it's like for me, when you add an additional neutral or 2, or even 2 v2 plus 4, whatever it is where you have two kids playing in the middle, but they also have numbers along the outside where they're just like they know that if they're in trouble in the middle, they can play the ball out wide.

Like that's when those light bulbs start going off. Like, oh, there's a lot of pressure here in the middle of the field. I bet there's a player wearing a pink penny that's a neutral on the outside that I can play it to, right? And then we can get it back. So that sometimes those more positional games, like I made that distinction earlier, are a little bit easier for kids, especially grassroots kids to grasp.

again, not saying that like grassroots soccer should be all positional play. But that might be a place where you can start that's a little bit easier for them to understand Bells. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but to go back to answer your question, Jesse, like really what I, the question that is most pressing for me is how do we get the U6 coaches and the UA coaches who don't know that much about soccer to do a better job of just allowing the children to have fun mastering the ball? Yes. That's, to me, is like the pressing matter. But I do want to, I mean, I thought, I thought this tova class was great. And it would be, it for me, sets up like a sort of a vision for if you can get your grassroots kids, even at the, even in rec soccer to be able to master the ball by the time they're 10.

Yeah. You could totally, when I coach my daughter's U7B7 team when she goes up to U10, I'm totally going to try to do. what Tovo prescribes. Like, I mean, I'm not going to be a Nazi about it, but I'm going to, but I'm going to try, you know, because I think, because I think that would, that if you can do that stuff, if you learn how to combine, how to pass and move and, and play beautiful soccer with teammates, that is a, that is an addictive drug, you know, it is a, it's a wonderful thing to have your eyes open to. And for me, the thing is it can be done.

Like, there's no rule that says that kids can't learn things, right? In fact, it's the exact opposite. Kids will rise to whatever challenge you give to them most of the time, especially ones that are competing in sports. And there's a couple really good programs out there. Michael Carroll, who's on Twitter. I think he's now at Coach Mike or something like that or at Coach Mike SG1. He's part of this SG1 Academy in Houston.

And that program is incredible. I don't know if you guys have ever come across him, but I mean, he has U-7s and U-8s. Again, we're talking about people who come from a soccer culture, right? Their families are,

are, it's all soccer all the time. They've already mastered the ball by the time they get there. But these kids play 7V7 positional play. Like, if you watch them, you're like, why doesn't the U.S. men's national team play like this?

Right. Like, it's like they are, they are doing exactly that, right? Exactly what so oftentimes the national team pretends to do on the global stage, like they're doing it against kids their age. So it can be taught in the right environment. And I think so Bell's like you and your director of coaching role there,

I want to be clear. I have no official title. Oh, what I'm not the director of coach. I aspire to be the director of coach. What's your organization? So you aspire. I'm going to make you the director of coaching because a lot of times like with these organizations, if you just say like, hey, I have a vision for this.

Let me be the, like, name me the director of coaching and I'm going to take off. Yeah, that's where we are right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's what I did with the AYSO board that was here. I was like, hey, I want to take this over. I have a vision if you'll let me do it. I think we can get the right people involved.

Name me the technical director and we'll get it going, right? And it's not about giving you, it's not about me like, oh, I'm a technical director. Like, it's a grassroots club. I get nothing from it. I'm not paid. So there's nothing for me in it. But other than like some sort of official blessing from the organization that like, okay, this is the direction we're going to take it.

Go. So if you want to be the director of coaching, I'm telling you right now, you can have it, Bels. Thanks, Kurt. Yeah, no, I think it's true. But in your capacity there, if you say, hey, I took this course and this is what I want our kids to be doing, that goes back to the question earlier of like, how do we get coaches to buy in?

Like, show them some video. show them what you've learned in Tovo and be like, hey, we can get there. If we can get kids mastering the ball, we can have our kids play like this and show them a video. That every parent is going to want that for their kid, right? So for me, that's probably how you do it in your specific situation. Yeah.

It's a long ways. It's a long ways down the road to introduce those concepts. But let's talk about, you know, go back to the U6, U8 level. It seems like that's where you want to go back to, Jesse, right? Yes. What do you think of the U.S.? You've taken several of the grassroots USSF courses.

What do you think of those? I have. So I've taken the U.S. soccer grassroots 4V4 online, the 7V7 and the 11v 11 in person, and I'm also signed up for a D-level course, which is a hybrid course, which begins in November. I think for like bang for your buck, you know, which is $25.

for grassroots course, I think that they serve the purpose for kind of like that target audience that we're talking about here. I don't see, you know, I haven't investigated the Tovo courses yet, but I can't think of a single parent. Even if we were a sponsor to the $295 price tag with my club, that would go through with that program for my volunteer coaches. It's totally, it's we might as well ask somebody to land on the moment where I live, you know. Exactly.

Exactly. But back to the grassroots. I think they're, you know, they're pretty repreditive, to be honest, especially because USSF makes you complete three of them before you can advance to a D course. And two of them have to be in person to advance the D course, too, right? Correct, correct. So I'm already screwed on that. I'm going to be up to five grassroots courses before that.

It's a lot of overlapping information. But I think that the thought process is right and that what we're all just talking about here, a new coach that's coming in for the first time that just has no idea that doesn't have the background that's intimidated by the game. You know, it's not a part of the culture locally, you know, where I live, where Bells lives. So it gives them a good snapshot of what they need to be able to do. Yeah. I found when I first took the 4v4 course and then I took it, I took the 4B4 in the 99 course.

I really liked them and got a lot out of it. But here's the problem, I think. And I agree, I think I agree that they do a good job of giving like someone who's uninitiated a good snapshot. But, you know, we talked about this off air a little bit, Jesse. But the, but the barriers to actually getting to that course are not insignificant. You have to take a 90-minute abuse course, like that, you know, highly focused on sexual abuse and mandatory reporting. Super important stuff, no doubt. a lot of it focused on high schoolers,

you know, the high school age scenarios. And so you got to do that. That's required before you can take any of the grassroots courses. And then that's the Safe Sport, U.S. Center for Safe Sport training. And then you also have to take a health and safety training, which is, you know, 30 minutes of just sort of basic stuff

about weather and concussions and cardiac arrest. And then you can take a grassroots course. And again, And I don't know if it's like landing on the moon level of unrealistic, but it's pretty unrealistic in my community to ask somebody to do those things. And I wonder how do you, how do you do it? How do you get people to take a grassroots class? Which I agree is useful.

But how do you get them to take it in at Calvert? So what our organization does is that we, if a volunteer coach signs up for one of the grassroots courses and pays the $25, they get a free registration for their child. And then that would continue as long as they're coaching. And we're not saying that we charge a lot of money for registration, but it's $100 for spring or a fall. And that would be something that would be compounded, of course. As long as they're coaching, they would still have that. You know, just to get the license the one time and then their kid is free as long as they coach. Correct. With the caveat that as their child moves through the ranks and starts to play at

with just more players on the pitch, that they would have to do the 4 v4 and then the 7 v7 and then 9 v.9 and then the 11 v. 11 if they're still within it. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. But I think that, you know, that has been an excellent carrot for our population. I agree with you, Bells. The two hours of pre-training courses before you can take the actual course can be cumbersome. But those topics are extremely important.

We're talking about safe sport, sexual abuse. we've seen what's going on in youth sports right now. So I think more education is always positive in that regard. So that's kind of one side of it. How about this, Bell? Have you ever thought about looking into where the trainings are offered and then trying to align one of your coaches' trainings preseason with one of these U.S. soccer grassroots course in person

that you would be able to help support in your community? That's a good idea. So do it. So have every, like try to make it so that all the coaches come to one in person training together with a U.S. soccer instructor. So you, so basically at that level, it's, it's not even U.S. soccer. It's whoever your state organization is. Yeah, yeah. Mine is MSYSA.

So yours would be different. And just reaching out to them and then letting them know, hey, these are the amount of coaches that will have. This is what I envision. Just reach out. And like those, that's one thing. One of my big takeaways is this past weekend. was like your state organization is there to serve you. You're a club, right?

That is their job. So, like, the more connections you can have with that state org and leadership, the better. So I don't want to kvetch too much about this. But the issue is, so when I was looking at, like, if I ever want to take the D-course, I have to do two in-person grassroots classes because I've only done the online ones so far. So I still have these two in-person grassroots classes to take. Allow me to interject. The in-person are worlds better than the online version.

I believe it. I believe it. But the closest one for me, I'm in Chattanooga. It's not a super small town. You know, 500, 600,000 people in the metro area. And the closest one for me is two and a half hours away in Cookville, Tennessee, way up in the north central part of the state. Or I have to go to suburban Atlanta, two in change hours drive. So, I mean, who knows when I'm ever going to get to the D license, you know?

it may take a while. Once again, I think reaching at your state org and letting them know that you might have this quantity of coaches that would be willing to take this in-person course and say, hey, let's try to, you know, roll it out. Fair enough. A lot of times the D courses are put on by specific clubs and then you can kind of like join it. So it's a club reaching out to the organization saying, hey, we have a dozen coaches that want to get their D license.

All the requirements are met. It's like when I did my D license, I did it in Prescott, which is about an hour south in between me and Phoenix because of one of the Prescott clubs was hosting it. So it was a little bit better. A lot of those are hosted by the RSL Academy down in Tucson. So that's like a four hour drive for me. But I was able to find one this one time to go and do that. So it is a pain because you have to go in person. I think since COVID, they've kind of gone to even more of a hybrid when I was in the C.

course, it was kind of like, it was even more hybrid than it used to be. I think for the C, you used to have to go for an entire week at the beginning and then like six months of training online and then a week at the end. And by the time I got there was only a week in the middle. That was it. But yeah. Okay. That's helpful. I need to stop complaining and start doing something about it. It does seem like US soccer is making more accommodations to make this much more accessible and easy for folks to accomplish, which includes, you know, more locales, at least around us. Can I say something real quick about the state associations?

I kind of alluded to it earlier, but our club, depending on where you look at it from, if you look at it from, it's like the unobserved proton thing, right? It's like, if you look at it from AYSO, we're an AYSO extra program. But if you look at it from ASA, the Arizona Soccer Association, it's just a club, right? So we are registered with both organizations. We're affiliated with the local region here. That's how we keep our costs down. But then it took a couple years.

I'm not going to lie, working with the Arizona Soccer Association to get us, to get like their official blessing to be sanctioned by them as an actual club in Arizona soccer. So I just wanted to second what Jesse's saying. These are people who want to help. They want more kids playing soccer. we pay them $35 a head per kid too. So they want that money too, right? So there are ways to make things happen if you do just start reaching out.

Okay. This is not a paid advert by any means because we all know scuffed is commercial free soccer podcasting at its finest. But the Mojo app has been a real revelation for a lot of my coaches. They don't have that background and baseline in that young grassroots soccer. If anyone's not familiar with it, I can just give a really quick rundown. I'm not familiar with it. I'm not either.

I just downloaded it, but I don't know what it is. Check it out. It's pretty new on the scene. I actually had kind of like a sales call with one of the founders in the spring. And basically, you know, like most kind of versions right here, there's the free and the paid version. Right? You come in on the free and they're trying to get more subscribers on their paid. But there is on the free, which I am on right now, even though our club has,

has bought kind of like their organizational model, which I don't have to talk about. But the free model that anyone could download today, and I would encourage people to do so, once again, Mojo app, has loads of training. I mean, we're talking to high quality videos like shot in like the LA Galaxy Stadium. If I understand it correctly, one of the founders worked for ESPN or Disney or something, it kind of had that background and had those connections already. And one thing I love about the videos, they're short and sweet. They're really game oriented, like you talked about bells already. And at the end, they give just like three words of wisdom, right? Because it could be like, head up, you know, look for your teammate, move into space.

So these will be the three things that, you know, the coach is telling their athletes during that activity. And I talked, like I said, I had a sales call with one of the founders in the spring. and he said, look, this is totally geared towards the grassroots coach who's just getting off work. He's got a couple of kids. He's got a million things going on. He's driving to soccer practice with his kid in the back. And he thinks to himself, uh-oh, I don't have any of your doing. What are we going to do today? What are we going to do today? And it's like, boom, boom, boom. And even myself, somebody who's who like, who's a sicko? Absolutely. He's a fanatic of the game who devours everything I can. I find myself, at times because life often gets in the way.

You know, I've got the Mojo app in front as I'm driving. I'm like, all right, there's a couple of quick good ideas, things that I can implement today. Huh. So they have activity ideas. Call them drills. Just calling drills. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. For that are focused on ball mastery and stuff.

And it's like good, it's good stuff. Okay. It is. It is. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But like for what, for a free product first off and for what they're offering, I think it's a revelation. For once again, these coaches who just don't have the slightest clue about what they're going to do at practice today. And it gives them very specific instructions, you know, these games that are fun. And it's got the video, but it's got,

you know, like a lesson plan as well below it. But you can get everything you need out of the video if you need it. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's great. That's a great suggestion. because I think that I mean we've talked about it already a little bit but that the challenge that I face is how what message do I deliver what very brief message do I deliver how do I deliver it and I with the goal of just improving the trainings for U6 and U8 soccer players in my community and I mean anything that helps is welcome you know so I mean I have some ideas too about like sort of some prescriptive ideas is, but I don't know that we need to get into those.

Any other thoughts, guys? We have gone an hour and a half. We can probably start winding down here. Yeah. I think, I think if anything, this conversation has kind of shown me that there probably is a place for prescription with like these newer coaches, right? So Jesse just brought up the, the Mojo app, is that what it was called? Yeah, MOJO, yes.

Mojo Sports. or just in case there's other things called Mojo in the app store. Yep. Or Bells, you mentioned like we could get into it and we could go through all these things. And I mean,

it's fun to discuss ideas. That's what coaches love to do, right? I did this thing, right? And it was the best thing ever. And so we all love to kind of thump our chest about what we found. And maybe that's where the conversation goes eventually is how do we help together to push that out to people.

All right. You've talked to me into it. Let's do it. I've got two things, Bells, actually, to add. First off, I would say because like we're trying to, you know, create that culture and more exposure, something I have tried to do with my team is just encouraging the families to just watch some soccer. And because what I found, it could be in TV, that could be at a local college game. But, you know, there's a thousand games in one that you can find on YouTube and on TV in any given weekend.

Because what I found is my kids were coming in, my athletes, that's, They just didn't have any idea about, you know, the fluidity of the game, the structure. And I think, and my own son does because he's kind of a, you know, a sicko brought in by birthright. And so, but, you know, these families really don't and these children don't. So once they can kind of start watching where their game is available to them and starting to just kind of understand how the game moves and even just the rules of the game, I think that's going to, you know, once again, place more exposure and kind of. bring more folks kind of into the fold with that baseline knowledge that we're all talking about. Okay. Yeah.

I think if I have one takeaway from the whole thing, it's that it's all like all these conversations are good and they need to happen and like we have to have training environments for our kids. But like Jesse's hit on two big other components of like how players develop. And one is like is there are, is there a culture at home of the game and pick up soccer, right? Without those two, we could have the greatest club and greatest rec programs in the world. And it's not going to translate to what the ultimate goal is, right?

The U.S. lift in the World Cup. It's not going to be enough. We have to do those other things as well. But this is one of those other components that has to be right. We have to train children in soccer in a way that makes them love the game. Because we're not going to have the culture at home in the next 20 years where I live. you know, it's just not going to happen. And it's not, we're not going to have a pickup culture in the next 20 years where I live.

It's just not going to happen. These kids have to love soccer and then, you know, those things have to materialize later. I mean, there's just, there's no quick way, quick route to it. You're talking more about generational change. Yeah. Right now, basically. But I think, you know, what we've been able to discuss today, I think are some short-term fixes, which we're all looking for.

And kind of on a more macro level, what are some, things that we can start to attack in our own communities and kind of bring to the bring to the table to just you know once again you know raise that baseline up just just a few yeah yeah two two things I wanted to mention so so my my my my prescription for coaches in my area would be yeah let's do the 3v3 or you know up to 3v3 when they come on the field because kids kids love that and it's a good way to just get things started uh then sharks and minnows where I'm chasing them around applying a passive pressure in their half. In just a half of half field,

they're just trying to stay away from me and not let me kick the ball out of bounds. I never do. I never kick the ball out of bounce. I just keep passing. You're nicer than I am. When I play that, I definitely, I rip a couple out depending on the circumstance.

I shouldn't say never. I do. If one kid gets a little cocky, I'll knock him out. Oh, yeah. And then he becomes a, and then he becomes a shark. And then everybody,

all the minnows die immediately because that kid goes after him hard. Of course. Then we go to zookeeper, which is two cages on either side of the goal in the corner. They all get to say what animal they are. I'm the zookeeper. I stand in the goal. I fall asleep. As I fall asleep, they escape their cages as they have to go up to midfield and round a cone

and make it back to one of the cages before I kick their ball out of bounds. And I wake up and I yell at them. I said, how did these animals get out of their cages? And they just go crazy. And then they dribble all over. And they love that game. They love it. Only add one thing to that one, Bells.

And I think I've seen this in your notes and something that you've thrown out there. Any of those games in which the athlete or the child can stop and take control of the ball inside an enclosed space, I think is really important as well. Yeah. Oh, that's crucial in all of these drill. Well, not the first one, but in Zookeeper and Pirates, you have to stop the ball with your feet inside the square. that is your safe spot. Yes. Because kids will want to dive on the ball or dribble right through the space.

Oh, we're just blasting right through it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. That doesn't, then you're out. You have to become a shark if you do that. And then we just do a lot of 1B1 attacking drill. One pass, one kid passes to another kid. And they both have a goal behind them.

And then they just go at it. And they love that. And then by that time, practice is almost over. You can scrimmage a little bit. or that seems like a plan. I know that plan would work for the kids in my area. I think it would work for most U6s, most U6s across the country. I just don't know how to get other people to do it.

So I've got some new ideas, though, thanks to you guys. Absolutely. 3-4-3. You know, Gary, Gary Clibing gets a lot of, you know, maybe well-justified schick for his, for his schick online. He's a very argumentative guy. But I do think that that, I took the seven free training, like little training modules.

So I didn't pay, I didn't pay yet. I might yet, Gary. Don't worry. But I did the seven free ones and they're good. It's a lot like the Todd Bean stuff, except like you discussed earlier, Kirk, a little bit more of like the choreographed stuff, maybe a pass into zone 14, a layoff to a different player.

and then a pass into the Man City zone and then a cut back. So they want to like teach the kids these patterns so that when the game, when they get into the game, they're like, oh yeah, I can pass it here. And that's a little different from what Todd Bean would. Yeah. So like the Tovo V1 course, right?

There's not a whole lot of like tactical application of it. Right. It's you go from Rondo kind of like I described our practices to a positional game to a training game, which is like my favorite one I'll give it real quick is a 5 v5 in the middle with keepers and big goals and then four neutrals. So you have effectively both teams playing in a 4-3-3 when they have the ball. And when they don't, it's 6 on 11, right?

So like that, for me, like, maybe that's 6 on 10. I don't know, doing math on the fly. It's all right. So I'm an idiot. So like that for me is a great place for like kind of a grassroots club to start. But as the kids start to get more serious and the teams, get more sophisticated. You do have to teach them patterns of play. You do have to teach them, this is a way that you can break down this low block or whatever. This is something you can look

for. And that's when you start getting into like the false nine, for example, he comes in and he lays off the pass, like the ball into zone 14, like you mentioned, right? And it's a layoff here. And then the fullback can overlap. And you have to rehearse all that beforehand. This is where my military experience speaks to it, right? Everything in the military is choreographed. You walk through on a sand table and then in an actual training environment. And then you go to war and you do it. Yeah. That may be too strong of a metaphor for people.

I apologize as if it is. But the 343 course is legitimately great. What I love most about it is that over time, more and more is layered in. So like you do it, and this is a great business model. So kudos to Gary. Gary's a great guy. If you talk to Gary one-on-one, he's fantastic. I love the way he sees the game.

I love what he's fighting for. I want somebody to hold the line, right? And that's how I view Gary. And he and Brian have great curriculum. So year one is, you know, you'll get a bunch of curriculum that you can use. And then year two, another layer is added on. And year three and year four. And I think I'm on like year, I think I've maxed it out.

I think year five is the last one where it talks about player profiles. And now you want to start thinking about what are your attacking mids look like? What skill set do they have? if you're playing this style of play, what is a striker need? What is a centerback need? So there's always something new for you to go for and to learn. And this is something that a lot of very successful coaches have used

and implemented around the country. It's something that you can do too. If you find yourself coaching a club team and looking for resources, this is a spot where I would start is the 343 curriculum. So, Gary, I'll take my check in the mail. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think it's hard for some people. Like, they're like, they're so mad at how Gary is on Twitter that they can't even hear the name 343 without getting triggered.

But I, but I do. It seems like a useful training to me, what limited experience I have with it. But I think for all intents and purposes from today's conversation is that, you know, the three of us and people of our ilk need to be, you know, invested in these types of trainings and courses, whether it's the Tovo, the Gary, U.S. soccer. and then be able to kind of disseminate that knowledge to our volunteer coaches in a way that befits them, you know, that honors their values and the communities in which we live and more importantly is going to make that connection with them. I can imagine, I mean, what do you think of Malbex, you know, saying that to the, saying that to my volunteer. We're going to start with Malbex, all right?

That's what I was driving at with you, like, taking the role for yourself, Bells. Like the fact that you're taking these trainings and can have that vision, like, take that role for yourself and then you go evangelize to the people around you. Like, I think, I think that's the model. Yeah. There's a real, there's a real filtering process that has to go on. It's like a cross-cultural experience kind of. Yeah, can we close with a little bit of humor?

Sure. Okay. I've got a pitch for both of you. All right, for a new segment on scuffed. And I ran this by Bells briefly earlier. So he gave me the thumbs up, which is great. So new segment pitch. All right.

And this is called working title, youth soccer coach's corner. All right. Okay. Blatent rip off of Bill Simmons podcast, his bit, parent corner. But that's fine. So, and it's basically just talking about like our experiences. It could be our own children or it could be our athletes, kind of in the youth soccer realm. I'll go first.

If you guys don't want it, I'm just kind of springing this on you. If you don't have a story, that's fine. But I'll go ahead. Exactly. I'm sure you've got plenty of ammunition spells. So, all right. So mine is about my son. So his name is Julian.

All right. instead of Julian because he's almost six. He was born in Medellin, Colombia, where I lived for my job as an elementary educator in international schools from 2015-2020. Bells, you and I have talked about Medellin briefly, and what a lovely city. It is. Amazing city, amazing country. So, you know, we're both bilingual.

I've always spoken Spanish exclusively together since day one. So anyhow, he's a great kid for the most part. But like many children his age, bedtimes can be rough, can be a drawn-out process. So, you know, a test of will is a chess match. So recently, what I came to this realization the other night is that we've unwittingly assumed the roles of ref. That's me. And then the player subbing out in the final five minutes of a one-nil game. That's him.

All right. And Julian has absolutely embraced his comable heritage being from Colombia. The time wasting is just creative, persistent. And the only thing really missing is this, you know, the elevated. hand clap to the imagined spectators witnessing a spectacle. It starts with all the classics, right? I'm hungry, right? I'm hungry.

Well, I'll tell you a platinum, right? I'm going to give you a banana, man. I want another libo, porfiz. Yeah, no, papi, yeah, leh, we already read three, chutz, amigito. Yeah, yeah's time. All right, we already read three books. All right, we're going to continue.

Tengue to get al-a-a-e, et cetera, et. So I've taken to giving him, like, the classic ref move now, where I'm putting my hand on one shoulder, right? And with the other, and I'm showing you this because we're on a video, with the other, I'm kind of, you know, extending towards the bedroom, right? Extending, I'm giving him that move in the evenings. And the only thing missing for him now, and maybe this will happen tonight, I can only be so lucky, is for him to, you know, when I put the hand on the shoulder

with the eye contact, you know, is for him to go down in a heap clutching his hammy or something, right? That I'm pleading for the trainer to come out with the magic spray. But his commitment is truly impressive. If it wasn't, you know, 30 to 45 minutes past bedtime on most nights, I would really tip my cap to him. Yeah. So what I got from that is that Jesse is raising the greatest conca capper ever,

that will ever play for the U.S. national team, right? You just got to wait 13 years for Julian to make it through, right? I can't wait. But the underlying point that all, you know, all, three to six year olds are conca caffers at heart when it comes to bedtime. Oh yeah. Is, man, 100% true. I don't have anything that funny.

I did. My kid, my oldest kid, my nine year old, or he's not nine, he's eight. He's not a sports guy. He plays soccer. He didn't want to play soccer this fall. And then he decided at the very end of the summer he was going to play for a different team, not the one I coach. I coach my daughter's team.

and I was like, great, I got him signed up. He was a late registrant. He joined the team. He doesn't try very hard. But it's okay. He's out there. He's getting some exercise and some social skills and stuff. But on defense, it's an absolute disaster.

The coach continues to play him as, I mean, I'm not getting involved with the coach on the tactics or anything. It's 7B7. They have two kids playing sweeper, basically, you know, just waiting at the box. and then it's just a huge gap and then it's a mess anyway my son gets roasted every time he goes on the field he's not even in the universe of what is happening you know and um i'm totally cool he's a great kid of course uh very smart but there was a text from one of the texts from one of the moms that went to the group text that said somebody has been bullying two boys have been bullying my son um calling him short, deaf, and blind.

He's not any of those things. He's maybe a little short, I guess. But this kid's also like one of the best players on the team. And he happens to be my son's defending partner in the back. So like I've wondered how frustrated he gets at my son because he's like, you know, he's out there just battling hard all day. And Gideon just watches the other thing. I mean, he doesn't watch, but like he's moving in slow motion.

So I went to my son, and I was like, so did you call, just sort of spraying it on him? Did you call Liam short, deaf and blind? And he's like, I did not call him short. And I did not call him blind. I did call him deaf. And I'm like, well, how did that happen? And he said, he accused me at the Chick-fil-A playground of calling him blind. And I did not do it.

It must have been somebody else in the playground. And then they were arguing about it at practice the next day. And the kids put his fingers in his ears and Gideon said, what are you deaf? You can't hear anymore? You know, because they were arguing about whether my son had called him blind. So anyway, I thought about it more. And I was like, the reason this kid is mad at you is because you don't try very hard

on the soccer field. And that's the root of this. So it was a good opportunity to be like, hey, buddy, I think there may be something going on here. where like he doesn't appreciate having to defend with you. I didn't say it exactly those words, but something along those lines and, you know, maybe you could try a little harder.

And he's like, yeah, that's probably true, you know, which is a huge concession from him. So I don't know. That's my youth soccer story. I love it. I've got faith in Gideon. Onward and upper. It'll be fine.

Just not. He's not going to be the next national team player, I don't think. I do have one. one. Yes. It's one that I like to share. It happened probably three or four years ago, my oldest, who plays on that 2010 team that I referenced.

I came to practice late. So I work in the operating room in the hospital. A lot of times I'm going straight from there to practice, sometimes in scrub, sometimes not. And I got there. My wife had to bring him. And he was like 25 minutes late to practice. So that Saturday in our game, he sat out the first 25 minutes of the game.

And when I got home, my wife was really upset. Like, hey, why was he sitting out? What was going on? Did he, you know, did he have a bad week in training? I was like, no, he was 25 minutes late to practice on Thursday. So he sat out for 25 minutes. And she goes, well, yeah, but he was late for me. Like, that doesn't seem very fair.

And I said, yeah, it doesn't seem fair, does it? Like, it did not go well. Like, I thought I was so clever for saying this, like, coming up with this perfect punishment and like, less alert, like this opportunity to teach my wife, like, get him there on time. I can be there on time and I've come from surgery. It did not go over that well. Wait, why would she, why would she 25 minutes late again? I plead the fifth on that. I have no idea. Right. Okay. But he happened to be late and yeah, that was my opportunity. I enjoyed that creative solution, but I could also see how your wife would take Umbridge with that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, me essentially being like, no, no, it's not fair that you got him there late. You are, you are 100% correct. Yeah. was took for sure. All right, let's get out of here. Thank you. I'll put links to you guys to, well, definitely to Kirk's Twitter in the show notes

and make sure you can find him. How can people find out about Flagstap Revolution? Counterpress. So, I mean, you can follow the counterpress underscore. If you're not an MLS or an LafC fan, it's not for you.

I'm telling you that right now. We'd love to have you, but it's not for you. But more importantly, flagstaffrevolution.org is our club website. There is some curriculum on there on like position guides and basic philosophy that you are more than welcome to look at and use however you see fit. Please reach out if you have questions about how to run your club program. But I'm here to help. Awesome. Awesome. And Jesse, do you want people to find you or not?

Yeah, I usually try to keep a low profile these days. Find them in the American Outlaws section. Exactly. That's typically where I lie. So look for me there. Okay. Hey, thanks everybody. Thanks both of you. Appreciate the generous use of your time. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.