Benefit for Project Play (www.projectplay.net)

When: February 16^th, 2008

Where: Fiddler's Green Irish Restaurant, 333 El Camino Real, Millbrae CA, tele# 650-697-3419

Time: 3pm till?

What: Irish Music by The Pub Scouts, raffle, food.

Donation: $100

Why: To have a great time and support a worthy cause!!!

RSVP Michael and/or for more information: michael@bodysouladventures.com or call 1800-641-0167 (+ 3 hours NY)

Coaching Corner: Attacking Exercises

These drills help players learn to make good decisions with the ball and attack quickly

By Paul Payne, NSCAA Academy Staff Coach  

Exercise 1: What's On

Organization: In an area from the top of the 18 to midfield, randomly place small goals with cones (5 yards wide) as well as other small goals made with flags. Place so that they are staggered throughout the area. Play 6 v.6 (can adjust size and numbers).
Phase 1: Have each team with two balls passing back and forth among them. Have players look to play passes through the flag goals while dribbling through the cone goals. Make sure players are aware of what is on in that part of the field--pass or dribble.

Phase 2: Play 6 v.6 with teams scoring by successfully passng through flag goals and dribbling through cone goals. Vision and communication is key so that players recognize when to take space with dribble or the pass.

Coach can set restrictions:

·                                 You can't go back through the same goal you just scored on.

·                                 You must alternate between pass goal and dribble goal.

Exercise 2: Box Game

Organization: Use 18 yard box (18x44). Place two five yard square boxes at oppostite ends of penalty area approximately 30 yards apart. Play 4 v.4 (can adjust playing areas and numbers).
Phase 1: Play 3 v.3 with a teammate acting as a target goal in the five-yard box that you are facing. Look for quick combinations to find the target player. When the ball is played into the target player, they must one-touch it to a teammate to score a goal. When that happens, the target player sprints to the opposite box and their team then attacks in the other direction. Opposing target player must exchange boxes as well. Vision, passing and movement off the ball is the key to be successful.

Phase 2: Same set-up, but when is successfully played to the target and one-touched to a teammate, any field player from that team can fill the opposite box. The target player from the team not scoring must switch boxes by sprinting to the opposite box. This encourages teams to counter quickly and play forward safely. Teammates must be aware of who can fill the box to take advantage of the counter. On the defensive side, immediate pressure is the key to denying the counter.

This installment of the Coaching Corner is a variation of an earlier Coaching Corner, and comes from the new book Soccer Skills and Drills, published by Human Kinetics. It comes from Chapter 8: Applying Techniques Tactically. For information on how to order a copy of Soccer Skills and Drills, CLICK HERE. 

Purpose: To practice quality crosses into all attacking spaces in the box.

Procedure: The space at the top of the box is added so that the crosser hs four possible crosses to execute: near post, back post, second six, or top of the box. Attacker 3 is usually a midfield player who will leave the space alive by staying deep until he or she sees the ball being pulled back. Like the other runners, the midfield player wants to arrive in the space at the instant the ball arrives.

Variation: Once the players are familiar enough with the types of services, spaces and timing of runs, the coach will add Defenders 1 and 2. The coach initially asks defenders to find a player early and mark that player. With three runners, one will be free, and the crosser tries to hit that space. The crosser has no concern with trying to time the runner. The crosser's role is to hit the correct type of cross to the appropriate space. The runner must time a run to arrive in the space at the same instant the ball arrives.

For drill animation, CLICK HERE

http://www.coerver-norcal.com/ (415) 460-9060

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COERVER SCHOOL OF SOCCER

PRESENTS

2008 SPRING BREAK SOCCER SKILLS ACADEMY

WHERE:

Ross School - Ross, Ca. (corner of Lagunitas & Ross Common)

(GYM & FIELD) **please bring indoor shoes and cleats

WHEN:

February 18-22 9-12pm Monday - Friday Ages 6-13

******great opportunity to get ready for tryouts! ******

or

April 7-11 9-12pm Monday - Friday Ages 6-13

CONTACTS:

Ron Benjamin 460-9060

INSTRUCTORS:

PRICE:

$175/week (checks payable to "Coerver-Norcal") *walk-ups add $10

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE REGISTRATION FORM

http://www.coerver-norcal.com/ (415) 460-9060

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA COERVER SCHOOL OF SOCCER

PRESENTS

2008 SPRING SOCCER SKILLS ACADEMY
and 4v4 MINI SOCCER

WHERE: Piper Park in Larkspur ( Dougherty Dr. / near Redwood High School)

WHEN: Mon's & Wed's in April & May - U8 - U14 / 4:00 - 5:30 pm

April 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28, 30 / May 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28

CONTACTS:

Ron Benjamin 460-9060 / 916-300-8884, Jason Werner 577-8893

INSTRUCTORS:

PRICE:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE REGISTRATION FORM

EMP

SOCCER SPECIFIC SPEED AND AGILITY TRAINING

Speed and agility are invaluable in the game of soccer. EMP training will help you maximize your speed and agility potential by teaching you proper sprint mechanics, improving your dynamic strength and power, and increasing your efficiency of movement on the playing field.

Instructor: Eva Popper, M.S., CSCS

SCU Women's Soccer Strength and Conditioning Coach

Played 4 years Division 1 Soccer for Pepperdine University

Each 1 hour training session will be divided as follows:

Dynamic Warm-up

Core Strength Training

Neuromuscular and Balance Training

Linear Speed Training

Agility Training

Cool Down/Stretching

Individual Training: $75 per session

Semi-Private Training (2 athletes): $50 per session

Small Group Training (3-6 athletes) $40 per session

Contact: Eva Popper

Phone: 650.208.6285

Email: empopper@hotmail.com

S.F. RECREATION & PARK SOCCER CLUB PRESENTS:

FRIDAY NIGHT 7 ON 7 SOCCER TEEN NIGHT

WHERE: GARFIELD PARK

AGES: 14 TO 18 YRS. OF AGE

TIMES: 7:30 PM TO 9:30 PM

 START DATE: 03-14-2008

IF YOU OUR INTERSTED COME DOWN AND SIGN-UP WITH A DIRECTOR:

1271 TREAT AVE.

SF, CA. 94110

415-695-5010

 CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FLYER

GRIT: PERSEVERANCE AND PASSION FOR LONG-TERM GOALS
By Angela L. Duckworth, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvaniay
Link to article: http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/kpub.nsf/v/21aug07

Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked...men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use."

-William James (1907), The Energies of Men, pp. 322-323
In 1907, psychologist and philosopher William James suggested that talents were different from the strengths of character required to fully exploit those talents. For his entire distinguished career, James was fascinated with why only a handful of individuals realize the limits of their potential while the rest of us fall far short of what we could be.

As a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, I have taken up James's question of why some individuals accomplish more than others of equal talent. My research suggests that one personal quality is shared by the most prominent leaders in every field: grit.
What is grit?

Grit is perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining both effort and interest over years and years-despite failure, adversity, and even just stalls in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course.

The idea that grit might be essential to high achievement evolved during interviews with professionals in a variety of fields unrelated to sports, including investment banking, painting, journalism, academia, medicine, and law. Asked what quality distinguishes star performers in their respective fields, these individuals cited grit or a close synonym as often as they mentioned raw talent. In fact, many were awed by the achievements of peers who did not at first seem as gifted as others but whose sustained commitment to their ambitions was exceptional. Likewise, many noted with surprise that prodigiously gifted peers did not end up at the top of their field.

Encouraged by these interviews, my colleagues and I developed a self-report questionnaire to measure grit. A version of this questionnaire is available at www.gritstudy.com, and includes questions about how consistent an individual's interests tend to be over the long-term, and how the person reacts to disappointment and failure. (The questionnaire can be faked in the sense that a person can easily "pretend" to be grittier than he or she really is, but in the context of academic research, there is no serious incentive to do so.)

Research Findings:
Here is a summary of our findings. In our first study, we found that grittier adults complete more years of education. Completing an advanced degree is a challenge for many individuals - the drop out rate from community colleges, for example, is by some estimates far higher than 50%. Grittier individuals also make fewer career changes over the course of their lifetime. One unexpected finding was that older individuals tend to be higher in grit than younger individuals. It is possible that we get grittier as grow older and mature - this is true of several personality traits such as conscientiousness.

In a second study, grittier college undergraduates earned higher GPAs than their peers, despite having slightly lower SAT scores. More generally, we find in all of our research that grit is either inversely related to measures of talent or not related at all. In other words, we do not find that the most able individuals are always the ones who stick with their commitments over the long haul. This implies that talent and grit are not tightly yoked--it is quite possible to be talented and not gritty enough to succeed, just as it is possible to be gritty but not adequately gifted. Probably it takes very high levels of talent and grit, and since these qualities are independent of each other, we should expect only a few individuals to have the highest level of both.

School is challenging in some respects, but these initial findings encouraged us to seek more demanding contexts for testing the importance of grit. At West Point, we found grit to be a better predictor of which cadets make it through the first summer of training (aka Beast Barracks) than a summary measure of cadet quality used by the West Point admissions committee. At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, grittier competitors outranked less gritty competitors, at least in part because they studied longer and for more years than did their same-aged counterparts. Finally, in a study of novice school teachers, grittier teachers raised their students' standardized test scores more dramatically than did their less gritty counterparts.

Implications for Elite Performance
In my view, achievement is the product of talent and effort. This may seem obvious, but what may not be so clear is that effort is not just not intensity, but also consistency and duration. It's fairly easy to observe that some individuals work harder than others at a moment in time. As an example, consider two children learning to swim. Assume that both children are equally talented in sports and, therefore, improve in skill at the same rate per unit effort. Assume further that these children are matched in the intensity of effort they expend towards their training. Duration and direction of effort, on the other hand, are described by the number of accumulated hours devoted to training and, crucially, the decision to deepen expertise in swimming rather than to explore alternative pursuits. Our findings suggest that children matched on talent and capacity for hard work may nevertheless differ in grit. Thus, a prodigy who practices intensively yet moves from swimming to the track to yet another sport will likely be surpassed by an equally gifted but grittier child.

How does grit relate to other psychological variables known to predict achievement, such as self-efficacy, optimism, and intrinsic motivation? One possibility is that the propensity to pursue long-term goals with perseverance and passion may be determined in part by these other traits. More research is needed to tease out these relationships.

In a study of the childhoods and training of world-class pianists, neurologists, swimmers, chess players, mathematicians, and sculptors, Ben Bloom noted that "only a few of [the 120 talented individuals in the sample] were regarded as prodigies by teachers, parents, or experts." (p. 533). Rather, accomplished individuals worked day after day, for at least ten or fifteen years, to reach the top of their fields. Later, work by Florida State University professor Anders Ericsson confirmed that indeed at least ten or twenty years of deliberate practice could not be circumvented for those who aim to be the best at what they do.

My conclusion is that in every field, grit may be as essential as talent to high accomplishment. If substantiated, this conclusion has at least two implications: First, young athletes who demonstrate exceptional commitment to their goals should be supported with as many resources as those identified as gifted with prodigious ability. Second, we should encourage athletes not only to work with intensity, but also with stamina. In particular, we should prepare our young people to anticipate failures, misfortunes, and even occasional boredom. We might point out that excellence in any discipline requires years and years of time on task. There is simply no substitute.

Mexican Olympic team to play Australia at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The San Jose Earthquakes, together with the Federacion Mexicana de Futbol (FMF), and Soccer United Marketing (SUM) announced today that the Mexican Olympic team will play against the Australian Olympic team on March 2, 2008 at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland at 2:00 p.m.

"We are very excited to be involved in this game" stated David Alioto, Executive Vice President of the San Jose Earthquakes. "We continue to work on our commitment to bring international soccer matches to the Bay Area. This continues our efforts to serve the Hispanic community as well."

This game will serve as preparation for the Mexican Olympic team prior to the 2008 CONCACAF Men's Olympic Qualification where they will compete with other CONCACAF teams for two spots in the Beijing 2008 Olympics to take place this summer.

The Mexican Olympic team coached by soccer legend Hugo Sanchez is expected to bring top stars such as goalkeeper Guillermo "Memo" Ochoa, Luis Angel Landin, Pablo Barrera and Cesar Villaluz.

The Australian Olympic team will also play with its top players as they prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Australia qualified to the Olympics after a 1-1 draw against Korea in the final game of the AFC final round of the Olympic Qualifying.

The Earthquakes will play their 2008 home opener on Saturday April 12, 2008 against the Chicago Fire and Cuauhtémoc Blanco. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. PT at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland . There will be a two game discounted package available for the Mexico and Chicago games and it will go on sale February 1st online at sjearthquakes.com.

Tickets for the Mexico game will go on sale Friday February 1st and can be purchased by calling 1-800-225-2277, online at sjearthquakes.com or by visiting your local Raley's Tickets.com outlets. There will also be a Visa pre sale online at sjearthquakes.com from January 28th through January 31st. Ticket prices range from $15 to $50. Groups and suites are also available by calling 1-877-QUAKE01.

The San Jose Earthquakes are a Major League Soccer expansion franchise and will begin playing in April of 2008. Season tickets for the 2008 Earthquakes season are on sale and can be purchased by calling 1-877-QUAKE01 or online at sjearthquakes.com. 

Mission Youth Soccer League will like to invite you to their 18^th Annual Soccer Season

2008 - 2009 Soccer Season Pass will be used

AGES:

GIRLS: U-6, U-8, U-10, U-12, U-14, U-16

BOYS: U-6, U-8, U-10, U-11, U-12, U-13, U-14, U-15, U-16, U-19

OUTSIDE TEAM FEES: U-6 THRU U-14 / $ 550.00 PER TEAM

U-15 THRU U-19 $ 650.00 PER TEAM / 3 MAN REFERRE PER GAME

START DATE FOR LEAGUE: JUNE 21, 2008

U-6 THRU U-10 RECREATIONAL:

ALL PLAYERS WILL RECEIVE AN AWARD AT THE END OF THE SEASON

U-11 THRU U-19:

1^ST AND 2^ND PLACE AWARD ONLY WILL BE GIVEN PER DIVISION

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION: MAY 31, 2008

In order to complete the MYSL registration, you must provide us with a copy of your Golden Rod and all player passes as well as a check payable to MYSL.

Practice Field Reservation Forms Our On-Line: www.sfgov.org

Please coaches of the MYSL make copies and give out to teams, players, coaches, other leagues, sport shops, restaurants, etc. The more teams that join the better our league will be.

For more information, please contact: Jose Guzman / CELL: 415-678-9955 OR OFFICE: 648-8049

All CYSA teams thru Northern California are invited to come and play

Need A Coach For Your Team?

 Jose Ortiz
1205 Geraldine Way #3
Belmont, CA  94002
Cell (650) 290-2134
Ortizj85@yahoo.com
_____________________________________________________________________

            When I was 18, I got involved as a volunteer soccer coach in an after school soccer program at San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD).  I assisted in coaching high school kids in a recreational soccer program for at-risk students.  I also did community service by volunteering in various cultural events, community meetings, and assisting in academic school field trips with the SMUHSD. 

            After, I joined the San Andreas Youth Soccer Organization (SAYSO) as a soccer coach for young kids.  In the fall of 2004, I was assigned my own team in SAYSO. 

            In 2005, I signed up for soccer coaching courses and received the State Diploma from National Soccer Coaching Association of American (NSCAA).  In 2006, I attending another coaching course and received the Regional Diploma from NSCAA.  Also in 2006, I continued taking coaching courses and received the F License from the California Youth Soccer Association (CYSA). I received my Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) in 2006 as well. 

            In 2007, I continued taking coaching courses and received my State and Regional Diploma for Goalkeeping Academy from NSCAA. I continued attending courses and received the Advance Regional Diploma from NSCAA.

        Now in 2008 I signed up for the National Diploma from the NSCAA and passed with a "Good Pass" (GP). I currently continue to be a part of SAYSO staff. 

 TEL: 415-831-2700 FAX: 415-831-2096 WEB: HTTP//PARKS.SFGOV.ORG

Year Around Soccer Clinics

At: Garfield Park
1271 Treat Ave.

Tuesday's & Thursday's

4pm to 5pm Girls and Boys Ages: 3 to 6

Wednesday's & Friday's

5pm to 6pm Girls and Boys Ages: 7 to 9

For more info, See Director
Or call 415-695-5010

The BRASILIAN FUTEBOL is a skills development tool that can be used by players of all ages at all levels...
Click here to download the .pdf for more information.