The secret to beating teams that are more athletic than your team in youth soccer
Playing in space is the key term.
We’re not talking about playing soccer on the moon, zero gravity would force us all to rethink the game a bit.
“In Space” means playing with the distance between your players and the other team. If your team is bigger and more athletic and can handle players from other teams one on one, you want space, it’s your friend.
However, if you don’t have bigger and better athletes than the other team, space is your enemy.
Playing “In Space” means exactly what it says, putting your players with space between them and the opposition. If your team is made up of faster, bigger, and more athletic kids, they will dominate in one-on-one matches. That’s why you see teams with a lot of big, fast receivers do very well in “spread” offenses, where they isolate the weaker defenders very wide in front of these dominant receivers, of course you have to have a QB who can throw in these cases. If that stud receiver can carry the ball “in space”, he will have a chance to score in most cases.
On the other hand, most youth soccer teams don’t have the player who really dominates the league. Most of us are blessed with an average group of kids and some of us will have that odd group of kids who are smaller and less athletic than the teams we are up against. In these cases, you want to have as little space as possible between your children and the opposition.
Just think about your tackling drills, when you have a close quarters tackling drill, say a 1 square yard box, most of your kids, even non-athletic ones, can often do the tackling. But turn that tackling drill into a 20 yard by 20 yard square outfield tackling drill, how many of your less athletic kids can now tackle that drill? The same is true for blocking; very athletic children can make blocks “in space”, less athletic children cannot.
Less athletic teams almost always perform better by reducing their line splits, blocking, and double-shooting to have overwhelming numbers at the point of attack. Less athletic teams need to run traps and other close run plays like the wedge to keep more athletic teams at bay. Less athletic teams need to divert a lot of directions to keep the defense moving away from the play while they execute it between tackles. The kryptonite spinner series for the supermen of these squads. There are just some plays that MAKE NO SENSE against teams like this, sweeps, back passes, deep reverses, these will be negative yardage plays.
The good news is that with Single Wing Offense, less athletic teams can compete with very athletic teams. Often called “football in a phone booth,” spinners and traps keep very athletic teams from flowing hard to their base plays. Double-team locks, wedges, and jerks give your team numerical advantages at the point of attack so even the smallest or weakest linemen can succeed. Tight divisions, poor direction and throwing linemen help even very average running backs put up big numbers with this offense.
In 2002 we had a very medium sized back called JA with medium speed. For our 8-10-year-old team, he was 81 pounds, and when we ran our evaluation runs, he ranked sixth out of 25 boys. JA was a very obedient player, he was a patient runner, he was always moving his legs and always looking for an opportunity, but nothing special. In 2002 he played Fullback for us and only ran 2 plays that year, wedge and trap. He put up 31 TDs for us on FB wedge plays alone, of course we had a very weak backfield that year and he had a lot of carries. If we had had the revolving series, he would have done even better.
As for beating bigger or more athletic teams: In 2003, my 8-10 year old team from Omaha was undefeated in the league and put up some pretty flashy numbers. We scored at will, finished 11-0 and won our league title game 46-12 after leading 46-0 in the third quarter. Then we beat two league champions from other leagues who were 11-12 years old. In 2004 I started a new program in rural Nebraska in an area where the existing youth program had won something like 4-5 total games in 5 years before I got here. The first year there we had all the rookie players with the exception of 2-3 discarded in the bench warm-up from the other team in town. We only had one 100+ pound player at 8-10 years old. Slowly but surely we got better every week and by the end of the season we started to look pretty good. We played a very big and fast team from downtown Lincoln that year, the Salvation Army. They hadn’t lost a game in 3 years, we were outmanned, hulking, and had less speed, but we beat them like a nail-biter with a single TD en route to an 11-0 season.
Our biggest extreme overmatch win in 2005 against the Omaha Select Black. That 8-10 year old team chose from over 150 kids, had at least 5 kids over 150lbs, and hadn’t lost in 3 years in Omaha “select” league. They were a very aggressive inner-city team with a lot of speed and confidence. I on the other hand only had the 25 kids from the field show up, no cuts or picks and lots of younger kids on it. To make a long story short, we had this team for 4 TDS in the first half and we could have named the score. Needless to say, the team, their parents, and our parents were shocked. The good thing is that with this offense you can compete with anyone, the bad news is that once you do it’s hard to get more out of league games. The big inner city teams like the North Omaha Boys Club won’t even play us on their home fields, it’s embarrassing to be beaten by much smaller slower teams, I’ve been turned down twice in the last 2 years for extra games than we both play had open dates at the end of the season.
Single Wing offers some flexibility if you have that stud player you want to isolate “in space”. We added the mesh series in 2005 to accommodate a player that we thought would make sense to put “in space.” When we faced weaker opponents, the “mesh” series worked very well, no one could beat our stud. When we played equal or less competition, we had to go back to our narrowly divided offensive base to move the ball consistently.