Soccer skills honed through winter program

April 30, 2014 · 0 Comments

By Jeff Doner

With the end of a brutal winter and the beginning of spring finally here, the King United Soccer Club is confident their players are ready for the 2014 season.
Throughout the winter, players have headed to the Country Day School Dome to take part in the indoor winter program to help get an edge.
“The program runs once a week and is running through right until the end of April, so basically we’ll hit the ground running in the spring,” said one of KUSC’s coaches, Tony Cipressi. “They’re going to feel more comfortable, feel in shape and ready to play soccer.”
Cipressi said the program started with the intention of at least getting 42 registered to break even, but that number soared to 83 registered kids for this winter.
Being a not-for-profit club, the boom in registration numbers led to extra funds to buy new nets, balls and other necessary supplies.
“It’s one of those things that we’re putting the money back in, making sure the players have fun and really at an affordable price,” Cipressi said. “For the amount of hours they’re getting in with this, it’s not like any soccer camp.”
Each session begins with the players taking part in the FIFA 10, which general stretch and warm-up specifically designed by FIFA for soccer players.
Then the players move through different activities and games to help them focus on something new each week.
“The main objective is to get the kids time with the ball, you know the whole theory that it takes 10,000 hours to make someone great at anything and this is the beginning for a lot of these kids and they need to enjoy it,” Cipressi said.
Frank Dacosta , another KUSC coach that helps run the indoor program, said program is two-fold in that it helps players and new coaches train.
“These are also coaching development seminars. What we provide is basically 12 weeks of sessions that they can ideally incorporate into their own sessions,” he said.
“One of the things that we hear from a lot of the coaches, especially the house league coaches, is they don’t have a lot of resources and they’re afraid to take on the task because they haven’t been taught a lot of things, so we thought how can we stimulate that and make them a little more comfortable. We thought this would be a fantastic scenario to help them prepare for the outdoor season.”
Dacosta said 18 coaches have gone through the sessions this season, which should also help the club grow and added that the need for volunteer coaches is high.
“They can see that’s it’s not about screaming at the kids, it’s not about being drill sergeants. It’s about working on one or two specific things a week and then just letting them play. That’s really the goal.”
In reaching that goal, the program is set up for the players to improve and for the coaches to see the best types of training methods to use in the summer season.
Last week, the players took part in small one sided games to help them get lots of time handling the soccer ball.
“I think fun is really the key for this,” Dacosta said. “At the end of the day, what we’re trying to develop is the passion for the game. We want them to be creative and try something different. We want them to go out and try things, have some success and then maybe you’ll try something else next time.”
The program has four weeks left before the outdoor pitches should be ready in May, but Cipressi added he is thrilled with the support the program has received.
“I think the fact that now we are really for the first time opening this up, from an indoor perspective, the facility is great, we have a great arrangement with CDS. It’s nice to see that the community is that interested in this program, because it opens our eyes up to next year where we can plan our indoor season a little bit more advanced or open it up to others. We definitely see now that there is a need and a market for it.”