The way he handles issues within the team is instructive his early reliance on seeking out competitors rather than skilled players is ironic given his later recruitment of dazzling players like Crystal Dunn, Yael Averbuch and Tobin Heath and his tendency to get to the airport right before the flight takes off would drive me absolutely insane. The Man Watching: Anson Dorrance and the University of North Carolina Women’s Soccer Dynasty (Tim Crothers) is a lively look at the former national team coach and longtime (lonnnnngtime) coach at the University of North Carolina. See more of my fellow Dukie’s work below and check out our podcast interview.īeyond Bend It Like Beckham: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer (Tim Grainey) surveys the global women’s soccer scene after Parminder Nagra skipped out on the wedding to hit that free kick. You’ll see Allie Long battling it out in a New York men’s futsal league, and you’ll meet players in Africa whose pro paychecks changed their lives. Under the Lights and In the Dark: Untold Stories of Women’s Soccer (Gwendolyn Oxenham) shows what players all over the world have been through just to play at the highest possible level. Parenting Young Athletes the Ripken Way: Ensuring the Best Experience for Your Kids in Any Sport (Cal Ripken and Rick Wolff) shatters the myth that Hall of Fame baseball players think kids should be single-minded robots trying to make a travel team at age 8. The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (David Epstein) takes the “10,000-Hour Rule” through a thorough but engaging reality check.ġ01 Ways to Be a Terrific Sports Parent: Making Athletics a Positive Experience for Your Child (Joel Fish and Susan Magee) offers some guidelines for raising a good kid and not just an athletic demon. Depressing read, but something you should throw at a coach who insists on making your kid do too much, and it has a bit of U.S. Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids (Mark Hyman) was cited in Single-Digit Soccer. It’s basically a catalog of burnout. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (Paul Tough) isn’t a sports book, strictly speaking, but it talks about learning to deal with adversity, one of the life lessons we’re supposed to be instilling in soccer. Farrey, a longtime ESPN reporter, went on to direct Project Play, which is aimed at increasing access to youth sports across the board. Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children (Tom Farrey) traces the decline of recreational sports as an unintended consequence of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978.
(All of these books are cited in Single-Digit Soccer.)Ĭhanging the Game: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes, and Giving Youth Sports Back to our Kids (John O’Sullivan) is the cornerstone of an ongoing project in which O’Sullivan, an accomplished coach, tries to bring a counterweight to the stereotypical overbearing youth coach. Single Digit Soccer: Keeping Sanity in the Earliest Ages (me) mixes memoirs and everything I’ve learned about U10 soccer and below into an informative, entertaining (hopefully) take on how to be a parent, coach or administrator at the grassroots level. Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Soccer (Lindsey Blom and Tim Blom) is cute, using fun nicknames for player archetypes to guide coaches through some of the situations they’ll encounter.
Related to that: Great Soccer Drills: The Baffled Parent’s Guidehas a few useful suggestions, and it’s not quite as baffling as the drills you’ll find from coaching organizations. The general principles, though, never change. Soccer mandates, and the advice on heading also has been superseded. Youth Soccer recommendations on small-sided games that are now seriously outdated, thanks in part to the U.S. Or maybe Clark should write an update now that he has retired from coaching.
The Baffled Parent’s Guide to Coaching Youth Soccer (Bobby Clark) was sitting around my house when I first started coaching in the late 2000s, but it seems to have disappeared. The categories are: Youth Soccer, Youth Sports, Women’s Soccer, Soccer History, General Soccer. (In other words, if you buy from most of these links, I’ll get a little bit of money, but if you follow a link to a book I wrote, I just get royalties, not Amazon Associates money.) Amazon does not allow “double-dipping,” so the links to my own books are not coded for monetization. Note: The links here benefit me through the Amazon Associates program.