Ages 8 to 9

Objective: Learn fundamental movement skills and build overall motor skills in a fun environment. Continue to master the body and begin to master the ball.

LUYSA Soccer will:

• Make skill development the number one priority and ensure that it is well structured, challenging, positive and fun.
• Help develop fundamental movement skills before soccer specific skills are made priority.
• Emphasize overall development of physical capacities and motor skills to produce participants who have better trainability for long-term soccer specific development.
•  Introduce participants to simple soccer tactics.
• Help develop speed, power and endurance using many different fun games and activities.
• Help develop linear, lateral and multi-directional speed with the duration of repetitions less than 5 seconds; this corresponds with the first window of accelerated adaptation to speed in both males and females.
• Include strength training exercises using the child’s own body weight as well as medicine ball and Swiss ball exercises.
• Structure competition to address differences in training age and in developmental abilities (instead of basing it on chronological age).
• Have participants regularly rotate through all positions including goalkeeper.
•  Begin testing of participants in order to collect data for assessment purposes in the short-term and monitoring over all development progress in the long-term .
• Encourage participation in a wide range of sports and physical activities (4 to 6).

Outside of soccer the family should:

• Ensure that activities revolve around the school year and are enhanced by multi-sport camps during summer and winter holidays
• Participate once or twice per week if children have a preferred sport, so long as there is participation in many other sports 3 to 4 times per week to ensure the potential for future excellence.
• Three of those sport/activities should be swimming, gymnastics and athletics (track and field).

This section is an adaptation of Balyi, Istvan; Charles Cardinal; Colin Higgs; Steve Norris; Richard Way. Canadian Sport for Life, (Victoria, BC: Canadian Sport Centres, 2005), p 19-34