“Sometime next fall my journey as a soccer dad will come to an end. My daughter, the second of my Black Watch Premier – BWP Football Academy trained soccer players, will play her final collegiate match. She’s been able to balance academics with the opportunity to challenge herself on the field
and learn the nuances of leadership and camaraderie.
She and my son learned a lot about the game of soccer and what it takes to grow and develop and challenge yourself as an athlete, and so have I.
So as my youth soccer experience comes to a close, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned, especially because our choice of soccer clubs—our choice of Black Watch was so important.
The first thing is that the quality of teaching your kids get, matters and a big part of that is what they get taught.
You might think that would be pretty similar everywhere but it’s not.
One of the things that brought us to Black Watch was that my kids learned to play the game right. They understood the why.
They both moved to Black Watch from other clubs and those clubs often looked similar on the surface. They played similar tournaments and were often equally successful—sometimes they even won a few more games. But Steve Freeman said to me: “If we’re winning every game, your kids aren’t being challenged enough. We’re not playing good enough competition.”
True. But I was also struck by how often their previous teams were playing a short-sighted version of the game. Short-sighted in terms of player development that is. They would allow or encourage players to do things that might cause them to be successful at U14 but would be a liability as they moved up in ages and levels.
Often they had very good athletes. A speedy player would take a heavy touch past the defender but be fast enough to get to the ball anyway. Or they’d carry the ball through three opposition players with 12 touches while the whole time a teammate in a better position had been waiting for a simple pass into space that would get the job done faster and better.
In the short run those plays might win a game for the team. Everyone would cheer. To a lot of the parents it was a good club because they were winning a lot of games.
But I found myself thinking: That won’t work when they’re 18, when everyone is fast, when they play against a team that defends differently. They’d won but players weren’t really learning to understand the game.
I asked my son once–he was captain of his high school team at the time, in part because playing for Black Watch made him understand the game deeply and he was able to lead tactically on the field—“When your teammates make runs off the ball, what percentage of the time do you think they understand why they are making that run? How often have they adapted their movements in response to what the opposition is doing?”
His answer revealed what I more or less knew: Most clubs train players to be skilled when they have the ball… but they don’t teach them to understand the game, especially the decisions off the ball that comprise the overwhelming majority of their actions in the game.
Do they understand pressure cover balance? Creating width? Third man running and how to know the delicate timing needed to stay onside? Do they know how to orient their body in a half-space? When and why to receive a ball side-on to preserve options for direction of play?
Often the answer is: No. And the result is players who look good—who occasionally even dominate-when they are young or when the competition lacks sophistication—but who struggle to adapt to the next level. A good coach, a good club, is thinking about that. Always. They are coaching players to be successful where they are going next.
Black Watch – BWP Football Academy does that. Yes of course players learn to improve their technical skill. But they also learn why and when to use it…
At my daughter’s first practice with Black Watch, Steve Freeman gave a master class on supporting position–how it changed when she was above, even with or behind the ball. She learned more in that practice about how the game was played at the highest levels than she had in 5 seasons at her previous club. And that sort of understanding was the first thing her coach noticed when she walked on campus as an unheralded freshman and was immediately slotted into the lineup.
When she first came to Black Watch – BWP Football Academy I should say, she had been mostly ignored at her previous club. She was tiny—the last to grow—and slow and was trying to play a team game where you give the ball to get it back with a dozen players who were hoping to get the ball and never give it up. She wasn’t flashy or athletic and no one rated her.
But Steve said, “She wants to play right. She’s going to do fine. I’m going to challenge her and sometimes she’ll struggle. But in a few years she’ll be playing division three soccer at a good school.” The club believed in her—and in my son—and took their development seriously every day.
Please don’t assume that the club your child plays for thinks that way. Many clubs don’t. We chose Black Watch – BWP Football Academy for the teaching and I’ve never regretted it.”
- Doug Lemov
In addition to being a soccer dad, Doug Lemov is an educator and a consultant who works with professional sports teams in the Premier League, and the NBA among other places, to optimize learning.
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