What's up this week? This week our focus was settling the ball on punts. A few weeks ago we did settling so this week will be essentially the same thing but instead of one of us throwing the ball, it will be punted. We had a special guest join us to do the punting. This celebrity guest was none other than Fuller Kate's little brother, Seger Holt. Shout-out to him for being so helpful in the process of making this week's video! How did this competition work? Setting up this competition was at first daunting because we were afraid that it would be hard to get good punts to settle every time. This problem was solved though because Seger was very consistent at punting. Fuller Kate and I (this is Ella by the way) agreed that if Seger so happens to give us a bad punt, we can just redo it. We also decided that each of us would get seven tries and whoever had the most successful settles out of seven was declared the winner. After the ball is punted, it can only bounce one time before we had to make first contact with it. Our first touch had to be a controlled one in order to settle the ball successfully. If there happened to be a tie, our original plan was to go into a rock, paper, scissors, shoot competition but Seger decided it would be best to just continue the way we had started until someone messed up. Why is settling the ball on punts important? Settling the ball on punts is important because when the goal keeper on the opposing team punts, you as a player have to know how to make a controlled first contact with the ball in order to gain possession. What this means is that when the ball is kicked super high in the air, like during a punt, it is incredibly difficult to make contact with the ball without it bouncing off of you and to someone else. This is why soccer players have to know how to control that first touch because once you have control you can settle and begin dribbling without the other team getting the ball. Hope you enjoy this week's video! Video Link: https://youtu.be/2iL78CPZ9nc?feature=shared
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What's going on this week? This week our focus is headers, my personal favorite! (This is Ella writing the post by the way) You may be asking yourself, why does she like headers? I enjoy them because most people are afraid of them, especially newer and more inexperienced soccer players. This is because if you do a header the wrong way, it will end up hurting pretty bad. Injuries during headers usually happen when a player makes contact with the ball on the wrong part of their head. What are headers? Headers are exactly what they sound like. In soccer, if the ball is coming to you in the air, you can hit it with your head to direct it to where you want it to land. Sometimes it's best to hit the ball away from yourself, especially if you're on defense. When hitting the ball with your head, you want to try to aim for it to go in the general direction of a player on your team. I know this sounds obvious, but many players just hit the ball away without considering where it's going to end up. This often results in the other team getting possession of the ball. What makes a good header? When hitting the ball with your head, you want to hit it with the top of your forehead. That's the toughest part of your head, so it doesn't hurt as bad. Where people run into trouble is when they hit the ball with the top of your head. I can speak from experience that it doesn't feel great! A good header is also a controlled one. It takes practice, but once you learn to aim your headers it becomes way easier to get them where you want them to go. Stop talking! What's this week's competition? This week's competition will be structured similar to our settling competition (competition three). Each of us will get ten tries to aim their headers in the direction their partner calls out. For example, if Fuller Kate was my partner, she's throw the ball in the air and say, "Right". I would do my best to aim my header to the right side of the field. Like last time, if there is a bad throw the person doing the headers gets a redo. The person with the most correct headers out of ten tries wins! Check out this week's video to see who wins! Video Link: https://youtu.be/2Oc0vUh2hMk?si=oskkzGmnlFDX2SMq What's up this week?
This week our focus skill is settling. This is a super important skill for all soccer players to know because it could mean winning or losing the game. What is settling? Settling is a skill that is usually used during 50/50 balls when the ball is kicked super high in the air and it could land near anyone. When 50/50 balls happen, a player should run to where the ball will land and within about two touches get the ball under control. If they don't get the ball under control, it could end up bouncing off the player to an opponent. It is also important to settle the ball in about two or three touches. This is because if you take too long to get the ball under control, there will probably be a player on the other team coming at you to steal the ball. What are the competition rules/setup this week? This week's competition will be set up to where we each get ten tries to settle the ball with two touches. The person who isn't settling will be the one to throw the ball to the person settling. If the person settling does this correctly and within two touches, they get a point. The goal is to see how many you can do correctly out of ten. If there is a bad throw, you get a redo. Just like last week, the winner will get a medal for competition two and will get to have a photo shoot with their medal and the cool sunglasses. What's the plan next week? We hope you have enjoyed watching the videos so far and keeping up with who's in the lead. Next week we plan to work on another skill: headers. Watch this week's video to find out who wins! Video Link: https://youtu.be/sbByk-iGoTE?feature=shared What's up this week? This week, our focus was footwork. We did activities like toe taps, penguin walks, and L-cuts (footwork drills) to get ready for the mini-competition this week which will be held on Friday. What are toe taps, penguin walks, and L-cuts? Toes taps are exactly what they sound like. They are a footwork drill that requires a player to have the ball in front of them and they tap the top of the ball with each foot. You do this over and over again while trying to let the ball move as little as possible. Penguin walks are a drill where a player puts the ball between their feet and kicks it between their two feet. This almost looks like a penguin waddling, hence the name penguin walks. The last drill, L-cuts, is by far the hardest footwork drill we had to do. This drill requires a player to move their foot over the ball to move it behind them. Then the player uses that same foot to kick the ball to the side where their other foot is, making an "L" shape. This will all make way more sense in the video. Why Footwork? Footwork is a super important part of soccer because it deals with ball control. If a soccer player doesn't have good ball control, it makes it very easy for them to dribble too far ahead of themselves which enables the other team to easily steal the ball from them. Footwork and ball control can be very hard skills to learn which is why we want to get a head start before this soccer season begins. What are the competition rules? The rules of this first competition are simple and will be explained in the video also, but here's a quick run down.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/s8lFkACMVeo?feature=shared
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AuthorBoth of the authors are very competeitive so this will be interesting! Archives
December 2023
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