Cheering Section

How

When you are on the sideline, you have to remember that it isn’t just what you say, it’s how much. It’s easy to get excited and you have to balance your enthusiasm. You should be aware of how much you are cheering from the sidelines. Your child isn’t the only one who hears you, and an overly enthusiastic parent can be very embarrassing.

In order to give encouragement you need to separate effort and outcome. Encouragement is not dependent on the success of any given play. If a child misses a pass you focus on the effort not the success or failure. It’s not that players can do nothing wrong. They can and they will. Encouragement has nothing to do with the ‘right play’ or the ‘wrong play’. That’s coaching.

Right and wrong is also a hard thing to judge. You can’t say what’s in a player’s mind. You can’t see what the player sees. There are countless variables involved as a ball simply rolls across a field. The point is it’s hard to say if something a player did was wrong. Correcting mistakes or styles of play takes time and evaluation.

A team will lose the ball and regain control of it constantly during a game. You could say that soccer is a game of constant success and constant failure. You can make a choice about which one you choose to see.

There may be times that the coach can explain a certain situation where she wants parents yelling something. For example, during a corner kick the coach might want all the parents telling the players to “Mark Tight!” or “Stay with your Checks!” Make sure you talk with the coach about it. You don’t want to say things that conflict with the coach’s plans.