Youth Soccer Scrimmage Tips
Schedule and results of the fight:
We went to Lincoln last night to play a very fast and athletic inner-city team from a well-respected, well-established, and well-organized youth soccer organization. As many of you know I coach two teams, this was my 10-11 year old team, my younger team was on their own last night.
This organization doesn’t align with us age wise, so we chose to play their 11-12 year old team.
This is how we set up the scrimmage and how we did it:
You can get some valuable tips on how to structure a scrimmage by reading this entire post. We went to his field to play and warmed up for 30 minutes using our basic dynamic warm-ups and angled tackles. Then we go through our defensive runs and substitutions. We replayed our lineup against everything we could see, double tight ends, twins, travel, movement, etc. We then replay our soccer plays on the air and go through various of our adjustments. There were no special teams in this scrimmage.
The format for the scrimmage was our first team offense against their first team defense for 15 consecutive plays of football. Then their first-team offense against our first-team defense for 15 consecutive plays of soccer. Then we went second team offense vs. second team defense for 10 plays of football. Then second team offense vs. second team defense for 10 plays of football. For the last series, we played first team first for 15 plays again, both ways. We started all drives at the 30-yard line and any turnover meant the ball was reset at the 30-yard line.
Here’s how it went: We started on the ball, running our base plays. We used our no-gather wrist trainer system to run our plays while calling them from the sideline. This accomplished two things; accustom our children to calling the plays in this way and speed up the pace of the fight. Too many youth soccer matches drag on over and over again because a fast pace isn’t forced. We set the pace by going on offense first. We always got positive yardage in the 2-15 yard range for every play we made. We “scored” on the sixth play of the drive when our fullback charged into the open on a deflected play, 10 yards behind linebackers and the safety scrambled off the play when the opposing coach inadvertently blew his whistle when one of his defensive players tackled. one of our ball counterfeiters.
Gotta love single wing offense when it comes to cheating, the opposition head coach said something very sarcastic to his colleague who denounced, it was all we could do not to laugh. We handled the ball and also scored on a 15-yard spin play, so 2 TD in 15 plays of football, it’s not good or bad. We threw the ball only once in the opening series. The other team was very fast and physical compared to most youth soccer teams. We were outweighted in almost every position, so our sons may have been playing a little shy in the first series.
On defense, we started at our base and rotated our boys as they executed a variety of sets: narrow double fork, twins, double slot and travel. It was great for our children to see all these formations. The foundation of this team was the power wishbone we had success downhill by closing out with our base set. They then moved on to throwing the ball with short hook and slid screen passes to their sets of twins and stumbles. While they did complete a good percentage of these passes, none went more than 10 yards and we got a big hit to recover a fumble as well as an interception that forced them to start over. They didn’t score.
Our second teams didn’t do as well as our first team. We only had one negative yardage play, but we missed getting the ball in the end zone. I made sure each backup running back got the ball at least twice during this 10-play segment. We did not attempt a pass during this set. On defense, we gave up yardage but they didn’t score, as we intercepted right at the 10-yard line on a drive that probably should have scored. Our sons were playing hard but our seconds were significantly inferior to theirs as many of our substitutes are only 10 years old and 1-2 year olds make a huge difference in this age group.
After a short break and a pep talk, we emphasized that we wanted to get down to business during this last segment of the fight. We scored on the first play on a spurt sweep when they expected us to get back to our inside game. We had great success with all of our spin plays and traps as they were a very aggressive team. With his speed, we had no chance of straying into our weak side. Surprisingly, even against these bigger kids and a 6-man front, our wedge plays were very consistent as well. I was very surprised that only 1 of our 3 “no plays” worked. That is usually a “money” play against aggressive youth soccer teams. We shot the ball 4 times during this segment and I was very pleased to see the execution come together in our passing game. We scored a total of 3 times during this 15 play segment and were much more consistent during this part of the skirmish. Not bad for missing our first team center and having to play musical chairs with our fine offensive line.
On defense, we took our gloves off in the final series and did stunts on every play. We really put our kids to work and executed every trick we have in the playbook. We had at least 6 negative yardage plays and forced 2 more turnovers since they never crossed midfield.
Overall, it was a pretty successful fight, 5 TDs to nil, zero penalties, no injuries, and only one turnover, by a third-team running back. Remember when playing to have a game sheet of the things he’s going to execute and work on for both his offense and defense. The point of scrimmage is to work on the things you need to work on, not to win the scrimmage. Don’t get carried away for the moment like a lot of guys who coach youth soccer do, stick to your script and improve. Coaching youth soccer well means that this is the place where you are trying out kids in different positions and seeing how your cross-training of kids in different positions goes.
We have fought with this organization before and we trainers trade funny banter back and forth during the fight to keep the mood positive. We had pop for the other team and we asked their coaches for permission to hand it out at the end of practice. They were all smiles as we closed on a positive note and thanked them for allowing us to come play.