Goals.
These practice ideas can be used all at once, or over the course of several sessions, as you build on the complexity or the challenge. Importantly, the players are scoring goals and celebrating those goals.
An important point, for the two fields on the left. There is a space between the defenders ‘zone’ and the goal. This is to prevent them from standing in the goal and offering no challenge to the attacker. Rotations will also be key to help keep players motivated and engaged – they all want to take their turn in scoring goals.
A running tally on the number of goals, a leaderboard if you like, for an entire practice would be an excellent way to promote competition and eagerness to score/prevent goals.
Your attendance numbers and creativity with the way that goals can be scored should vary. In all of the examples above, you can add more goals, more defenders, more attackers and add challenges like first to X goals or a time limit to score the most. Any challenge will add complexity and excitement!
Comments
Do you have other ideas for this set up? Please comment below.
Do you have questions? Please comment below, because someone else might have the same.
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From Libby Rapolt, SF Vikings:
Hi Lee, I took this “players in boxes” progression to then be “Human Foosball” where the players are in horizontal channels : from the back, the goal offset from the line on 3 defenders in their 3 boxes, who attempt to break the line of 3 opponent attackers to find their 3 attackers , who have to shoot past 3 opponent defenders into a goal. Just like on the foosball table, there is no movement of the lines but there is cooperative passing, breaking the line, and dragging defenders to find an opening. To keep the game moving, I have a “countdown clock” where the team that takes possession at the back, has 10 seconds to shoot or turn the ball over to the defending line of the opposition. Ball always starts on the back line of the team which should have possession every time it goes out of play. We call it the “Ice Cream Sandwich” game because the lines of players are like an ice cream sandwich. The game works with health dept guidelines because there is no tackling and players are in their boxes.