"Wait..what's a goal kick?"

The other day one of my friends on my collegiate soccer team asked me if I could help do some goalie trainer with her U-9 girls’ soccer team.

When I got to the practice and began teaching them basic skills, I didn't realize how some girls are more coordinated than others, so I quickly realized the drills I was going to do with them wouldn't work for everyone.

This got me thinking. As a town, during camps and programs, why don't we develop players early when it comes to certain positions? For example teach every player the proper way to pick up the ball, or the proper technique to catch a ball in the air, or how to punt or take goal kicks. Like field players who are taught how to pass and shoot I believe that developing a skill set for certain positions will help develop true athletes, not just players. Their coordination would improve and the young kids would be more adept to pick up basic skills, such as catching and throwing.

“I try to work with the girls on all types of skills, but it’s hard because I’m the only coach and it’s tough for me to work on everything, especially when I do not have a background in goal keeping,” coach Lauren Gonyea said.

As a child, my brother would always play catch with me, if it was with a baseball or football; I was developing hand-eye coordinating skills at a very young age. This helped me later in my sports career in basketball and lacrosse as well as soccer. Learning those skills at such a young age allowed me to adapt to whatever sport or position I was playing. I believe that if all children were taught basic skills from day one it would make for all around better athletes.

This idea can be applied to other sports, not just soccer. Sports such as hockey, football, baseball etc. all have their unique specific positions, like goalie, pitcher, kicker, punter, quarterback etc. If at a young age we developed our youth with multiple skills I think that would build better programs as well as better athletes.

“This is such a vital age for the development of athletes, so we like to mold them to certain positions and just work on that but were seeing that they need to be able to play multiple positions if they want to continue to grow and develop,” assistant coach Leigh MetCalf said.

In my experience being a three-sport athlete in high school, I realized that the best team's we faced were the ones who started developing athletes at a young age with various skills. Especially at the high school level more times than not, a team with more athletes on it will beat a team with just players who are skilled in one position. Athleticism at that level is what make players become more coachable and creates better players.

When I first arrived at the practice, my teammate introduced me to her players, and said I was the goal keeper for Plattsburgh State. She asked the team of about 15 if anyone wanted to try goalie, most screamed and ran away (nearly sarcastic there). But then there were the three brave kids who stepped up and decided they wanted to try out the position. As the practice went on, turns out they loved the position, and they loved learning new skills. The drills I was doing were basic, we didn’t even get to the fun stuff of dives or anything like that, but the girls had a blast. At the end of practice they begged me to come back again and teach them more.

I strongly believe that if all these girls started doing these drills, it will help all of them to become better athletes, which ultimately in-turn will allow them to become better soccer players in general as well.