September
24 2011
Mid
season DOC update
Congratulations to
CWSC for a great 1st half of the fall 2011 season !
Our teams and players are doing very well and CWSC is
continuing to build on our reputation within CUSL as a
competitive, technically based club who understand both
winning and losing with "professionalism". If you
are playing a CWSC team, you are in for a good hard,
fair battle.
I see our teams and players making significant strides
in improving our technical play as well as improving our
decision making and tactical reads during the game.
So to our coaches and trainers, keep working hard on the
goals and priorities and providing our players with the
technical foundation that is critical to being a
successful player in CUSL, high school and even on to
college.
A couple of items:
1. we still can accommodate guest training
sessions for teams so let me know if you are ready to
have a CWSC staff trainer help you finish your fall
season strong. So send me an email and we
will hook you up !
2. I am beginning our planning for the after-fall
season tryouts in November and need your assistance.
As we have done before, we will accommodate players of
any age that attend, but we specifically will target
those age groups in which a team or teams say they need
players to fill open roster spots.
- remember that you are committed to all
players on your roster for fall and spring. you
cannot replace or "cut" a player. only that player
can quit your team.
- so you need to be "inventorying" your
current players to assure that they are returning or not
for the spring so you can plan, and you can:
- EMAIL ME BACK WITH YOUR NEED.
I need an email asap from any team that will need a
player or players for the spring 2011 season so that we
will plan a session for that age group. That is,
any age group that is not needing players will not have
a designated tryout time on the November tryouts club
schedule. It will be 1 session per age group.
- No, I do not have the specific dates and
times set yet, but it will most likely be 11/12, 13 and
or 11/19, 20 unless I secure an indoor facility for
during the week sessions.......
3. I want to reiterate Lauren Stutler's reminder
about the codes of conduct and their importance.
It is critical that, as a coach, you assure the
codes are being adhered to. It would be great if
everyone "enthusiastically" supported and lived within
the codes but we recognize that is not the case.....
but either way, you are responsible as the coach.
And, to you I remind you that as
a coach, you are working in a fish bowl -- you
have players, parents, officials, other games all
watching and listening to you all the time. So,
make sure you would be proud of everything you say and
do !?!?!?! If you were videotaped and that
was shown on TV, would you be pleased ????
As always, questions, comments, input, feedback,
concerns, email me.
See you on the field, and at our tourney in a few weeks.
March 15, 2011
Thanks to all who attended
The Playing College Soccer and the Recruiting Experience
Workshop. We hope you found the information
offered useful. The material covered is available in the
table above. The following list the names and emails of
the panelists from Sunday night. Feel free to
email them with any questions.
Bill
Spraul at billspraul@zoomtown.com
Bryan
Warman at bryanw@fuse.net
Keith
Combs at keith.combs@zoomtown.com
Jinnee Enders at
jinene08@msn.com
Jackie Esterkamp at
esterkamp_1414@hotmail.com
Mindy
Cooper at
mscoop00@alumni.thomasmore.edu
If
you missed this great opportunity and have questions
about college soccer, contact
Bill Spraul at billspraul@zoomtown.com
November 1, 2010
Cincinnati West Soccer Club Player Training Program
CWSC is
proud to offer a wide array of multiple training
programs to our players to enhance and maximize player
technical development. Managed by the Director of
Coaching, the Player Training Program provides high
level training to both individual players and teams
through out the season. These programs focus primarily
on improving player technical skills but also include
tactical skills, all to supplement the tactical and game
skills provided by coaches, and most importantly, by
playing the game.
Training Guidelines
1. CWSC
trainers and coaches follow the CWSC Training Guidelines
for all training sessions. These standardized training
session outlines provide consistent training and
development opportunities for our players.
CWSC Player Training Priorities and Goals for 2010-2011
Soccer Year
For the
2010 fall and 2011 spring seasons, the following are the
Training Priorities and Goals for all CWSC players and
teams. Our Training staff and coaches will be focused
on these priorities during training sessions, player
development and matches.
Technical Training Priorities
1.
Improve Possession: the ability of players and team to
collectively maintain possession by making it a high
priority through combination play.
2.
Improve Speed of Play: the ability of our players to
make good and quick decisions, play 1 and 2 touch when
needed and play effectively when under pressure of time
and/or space.
3.
Improve our technical skills: players use proper
technique in game situations due to proper training
focus and play with purpose. All training sessions are
at least 50% technical skill-building training.
Tactical Training Goals
1. We
defend as a team - every player defends and we defend
to win possession.
When
our teams win possession in the defensive third, we
maintain possession from defense thru the midfield to
the forwards.
2. We
attack as a team. We use possession and combination
play to build our attacks and involve the midfield in
the attack.
CWSC Training Staff
CWSC’s
Director of Coaching has recruited and assembled an
outstanding training staff of experienced and expert
trainers. CWSC’s training staff includes former and
current college and high school players, former and
current college coaches, former and current high school
coaches and other experienced long-time soccer
educators. The Director of Coaching and CWSC’s training
staff provides the following training programs:
Team Training
Most
CWSC teams use a team trainer who provides technical
training to the team and players either once or twice a
week. A few teams are trained by the coach as the coach
is also a qualified, experienced technical skills
trainer for the club.
Guest
Trainer Program
CWSC’s
guest trainer program is a unique and innovative player
training program that places experienced CWSC trainers
with teams for specific individual team training
sessions during the season, providing CWSC’s players
with a wide array of soccer perspectives and new
training methods.
Specialized
Field Player Training Sessions
The
SFPTS provide supplemental, targeted, more intensive
technical training sessions for individual CWSC players
during the season. The sessions combine CWSC players
from throughout the club and target specific technical
needs, such as
- Improving Speed of Play
- Maintaining Possession Under Pressure
- Striking and Creating and Converting Goal
Scoring Opportunities
- Defending in 1 v 1 Situations
Goalkeeper
Training
CWSC’s
training staff includes multiple keeper trainers who
provide weekly goalkeeper-specific training to enhance
CWSC goalkeeper technical and tactical skills. The
weekly sessions are in progression and focus
specifically on keeper skills.
The Edge,
Speed and Agility Training
CWSC
has partnered with Rex Currin’s The Edge Speed and
Agility Program to provide special off season training
opportunities for CWSC players and teams.
Bill Spraul
Director of Coaching
CWSC
June 1, 2010
I am sorry this is l
belated, but I want to say thanks to each of you on your
vote of confidence in me as the club's Director of
Coaching. I am excited to be
able to continue to work for and with our players,
parents, coaches, teams and
you as the board in providing a high quality, high value
soccer environment and
product. The two year contract is outstanding and
I also of course appreciate
the increase in compensation. :)
We have a great program that provides a needed, valuable
alternative to players, coaches and parents who are
looking for competitive select soccer with the big club
benefits without the nameless, faceless big club
approach. I hope that we continue to be that
alternative, and as we have said so many times, we don't
want to be the biggest, dont want to be the best at all
costs, we want to be the best for many -- and, with over
700 players this spring, we are meeting that challenge.
Thanks again for your support and confidence. As
always, please let me know of
concerns and ideas you might have for programming, etc.
Bill Spraul
your Director of Coaching thru June 2012.
**************************************************************************
August
2009
Director of Coaching Update
New to the DOC links are the updated CWSC 2009-2010 Training Goals
The training goals are very similar to last year's program with minor
adjustment. As well, I have also added Tactical / Match Play Goals for this
year. These goals are to provide you with focus and priorities for your tactical
training and match play to build on the technical priorities.
You will see in the new Tactical Goals section that there is a focus on using a
more intentional build-up thru possession for attacking opportunities. This is
not to say that we don't want our teams to take the quick counterattack when its
available. Yes we do. Rather, this is to focus on the fact that sometimes we
do too much "poke and hope" attacking -- poke it forward long, and hope that
one of our players can run to it and go to goal. We want sustainability and
possession in the offensive 3rd, not just a long ball, and then we are back on
defense again....
As always, your comments, input and debate are welcome. :)
Some of our coaches have
expressed interest in discussion about CWSC recommended
systems of play. I strongly encourage the age group
coaches and trainers to have regular discussions about
tactics including systems of play. Sharing positive
and negative experiences is an excellent learning
experience. And, of course I am always ready, willing
and interested in discussing tactics, systems of play,
etc . with you and working with your teams to be even more
successful.
My recommendations concerning systems of play are included
in the System of
Play
link above. There are no right and wrong answers here.
There are teams at every level of competition and age group
that use a wide array of systems of
play and are successful. I have outlined the most
common systems of play at
6 v 6, 8 v 8 and 11 v 11 and a few
general comments about each. Obviously,
there is much more about each
option. Books are written about each system of play
and others. This is intended to be a guide for our
teams and coaches, to provide a point of discussion and to
provide our coaches with the Director of Coaching’s
recommendations and direction on the subject.
As always, feel free to contact me and discuss, debate and
share ideas as there
is no universal answer to these types of tactics issues.
*******************************************************************
May,
2009
Director of Coaching Update
First and foremost, I am
pleased to be completing another year as CWSC’s Director of
Coaching and I am equally pleased and excited to be
returning for next year as well. As you can see from our
website, we have continued to build our training and
development programs for our teams and players as CWSC
focuses on providing the best of these opportunities to ALL
of our players. I emphasize all -- at CWSC every player
and team is important to the CWSC training staff and I as
the DOC, not just the top teams that tend to get the focus
and resources at other clubs. We understand that the over
600 players in our club all deserve to benefit from our club
and our experience and expertise.
This has been and
continues to be an exciting time for the teams and players
of Cincinnati West Soccer Club. This past fall and the
current spring season, CWSC teams are again having excellent
success on the field. At CWSC, we don’t measure success
just by the team record -- we also measure it by player and
team technical and tactical development. We challenged our
teams to focus on our 3 training priorities this past year
and we have seen exciting and significant improvement in our
club play as a result. Our coaches and training staff have
done a great job, but we also know that its our players that
have done the most work, and I am very proud of every one of
our CWSC players.
CWSC players have a wide
variety of training programs available from the Club and the
CWSC training staff. Through our innovative Guest Training
Program, our teams benefit from the expertise of our CWSC
training staff, supplementing and enriching the work of our
team trainers and coaches. Our coaching and training staff
adhere to our CWSC Training Guidelines providing consistent
training techniques for all of our players. Our weekly
Goalkeeper Training Program has become a mainstay of our
training program, providing CWSC with the best group of
keepers in CUSL. Special player training opportunities such
as the Winter Player Training, the Specialized Field Player
Training Series, the CWSC/CCU Mini Camp and the CWSC Players
Summer Skills Camp in July are outstanding additional
opportunities for CWSC players to build their skills. Many
CWSC teams implemented winter indoor training programs to
supplement their player skills training. And, there is
more to come in the future as we find ways to help CWSC
players reach their potential.
As we prepare for our
club tryouts in June for next year’s teams, we will again be
challenging our players and teams to achieve even better
success next year. If you haven’t done so recently, look
around our website, see what all we have to offer and join
us at tryouts to also become a member of our exciting,
growing soccer community. CWSC provides an outstanding,
competitive program, focused on players and teams without
compromising quality, soccer training and development and
also teaching the life skills of soccer including
sportsmanship, team work, playing hard and playing fair.
*******************************************************************
August, 2008
Letter from the Director of Coaching
I am excited to be
returning, and in a permanent capacity, as CWSC’s Director
of Coaching for this coming year, 2008-2009. Thanks to the
CWSC Executive Board for the opportunity and I am looking
forward to continuing to work with our outstanding teams
and players in continuing to improve our play, our technical
and tactical skills and learning life skills through the
game of soccer.
My primary role as DOC
is to provide technical and tactical assistance and
resources to our players, coaches and teams. Below are some
of the tools and resources that CWSC and I provide for our
players.
As many of you know, I
am passionate about Cincinnati West Soccer Club and CWSC
soccer. I believe that our unique club model is one of the
primary reasons why we are one of the best select soccer
programs in the area. Every season, not only do we return
almost every player, we gain more teams, players, coaches
and families into the bigger CWSC Family. Once you
experience CWSC soccer, you are hooked. We provide
opportunities to train and play at all levels in different
environments, while understanding the importance of our
roles as coaches, teachers and role models. CWSC’s emphasis
on teams, competition and yet being family friendly are
significant benefits as well. CWSC is the best of both
worlds – we provide the look, feel and results of a “big
club” while offering all of the added benefits of being in a
club where we know our players and teams and can focus on
each team and player.
Included on this
Director of Coaching link are several resources for our
coaches, trainers, players and parents. As well, we provide
these resources on our club website so that potential
players and teams can also easily see our focus and what we
do for player and team development.
Whether you are already
in CWSC, or just checking us out, feel free to contact
CWSC’s Director of Coaching , Bill Spraul if you have any
questions or would like to also become a member of CWSC, or
even to become a part of CWSC’s training staff.
See you all on the
pitch !
Bill
Spraul
Director
of Coaching
CWSC
billspraul@zoomtown.com
*******************************************************************
February
19, 2008
Above are two links to documents
for you to use this spring as references. I hope that these are
helpful to you as you begin to prepare for the spring season.
These plans follow established practices and guidelines from out
trainers, other soccer experts, and the USSF licensing program
and most importantly, they work. They work in providing a
consistent, positive, productive, effective and successful
training, development and learning environment for players and
teams -- what we all should want for our players.
Some of you may see this information as very basic and many of
you already are
following these principles and plans already, but having all of
our teams
trained in a more consistent way will improve the overall
training experience
and effectiveness for your players and teams, and bring better
consistency to
our club.
Our guest trainers follow these guidelines, and the guest
trainers and I are
available to help you establish and build training sessions that
are built
around these guidelines. During the season, we will
share training ideas and
tips for you to consider.
As always, your questions, comments and input are always welcome
and
encouraged.
Finally, for now, get your guest training requests in. Its
not too early, as
the more notice we have the better we can accommodate your
request and the guest trainers' schedules.
Bill Spraul
Director of Coaching
CWSC
*******************************************************************
February 2, 2008
Click below to fill out a request
for a Guest trainer.
Email request to Bill Spraul
Team Guest Trainer Training Session Request
This spring,
CWSC is implementing our CWSC Guest Trainer Program. This
program will allow a team to request a guest trainer who will
then come on a specific individual practice night and conduct
the team’s training session that night. The purpose and
goal of the program is
not
to reinvent your team, completely overhaul your team’s skill and
ability or, on its own, take your team to the “next level”.
Obviously, an individual training session will not do that.
This program is to provide your teams with an additional
resource to help you take your team to the next level.
The purpose
of the Guest Trainer Program is twofold:
- To
expose your team and players to another soccer perspective
and provide them with a training session with another
expert. There is great benefit to occasionally
exposing your team to another perspective, another soccer
voice and seeing and experiencing a possibly different
training method. Using a guest trainer can re-focus
your players and typically reinforce with your players the
very things that you are focusing on with them.
-
To provide
our teams with an option should you need “coverage” for a
training session due to an absence by the coach or
trainer.
We have
assembled a team of over 20 experienced trainers who are
available to provide guest training sessions this spring.
Some of these folks are current coaches and trainers with our
club, and we also have some additional resources specifically
available to our club for this program.
The Guest
Trainer Request form is available on the club website to request
a session.
Note the
following guidelines for the program:
-
Requests can now be made. Use the request form on the club
website.
-
Sessions are available to be conducted when spring team training
begins in March thru May.
-
You will be notified via email when your session is scheduled.
-
The club will pay the guest trainer not the team having the
session.
-
The guest trainer will conduct the entire training session.
He/she is in
charge of the training session.
-
Coaches are asked not to participate in the session unless as
requested
by the guest trainer.
-
If available the team’s coach and trainer should attend the
session. A
responsible adult from the team must be in attendance.
*******************************************************************
January 14,2008
Just a quick note to say
that I am excited to be our club's Interim Director of
Coaching for this spring season and I am anxious to get started
and see you all
on the soccer field in a couple of months !
I want to thank the Executive Board for their support and for
providing this
opportunity. Just as important, I am thankful to the Board
for providing the
DOC resource to all of our over 600 players and 50 or so teams
this coming
spring.
As most of you know, I am very proud of CWSC and our success in
our short 5
years of existence and so I look forward to continuing to be
able to help keep
CWSC moving forward and growing and improving the play and skill
levels of our teams and players.
As Bill Mitchell outlined in his announcement, my major
priorities as your
Director of Coaching are:
- Provide a visible presence to our teams and players.
You will see me at team practices as I will be spending at least
1 night a week at team training
sessions, rotating locations and days of the week, not to run a
particular
team's training session, but to be available and assist any team
on that night,
and to of course, talk soccer....
- Support CWSC teams and provide feedback to our coaches.
You will see me at CWSC team matches on Sundays and maybe at a
local tourney and provide you with post-game feedback that can
assist you in coaching and training your players and team.
- Provide additional training for your team/players.
Along with our club
keeper training program, we are developing a club trainer
program that will
allow all CWSC teams to access and use a guest trainer from time
to time to help improve your players' skills and abilities.
- Provide on going technical and tactical assistance to our
teams and players.
So, stay tuned for more information as we all start to get ready
for a great
spring season. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have
any questions or want
to talk soccer.
Finally, if your team is in need of a team trainer for the
season, please let me
know asap so I can assist in finding someone for your team.
See you all soon !
Bill Spraul
Director of Coaching
CWSC
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