End of Season Party

Reminder that our End of Season Soccer Party will be tomorrow afternoon (11/15) at 4pm at Woodys.

Please bring your clean soccer jersey and shorts to the End of Season Party at Woody's on Saturday. Shannon Hathaway will turn the uniforms in to the Kirk on Monday. Otherwise, you'll have to return them to the school office and ask for your uniform deposit back at your convenience.

Also, posted below you'll is a video that Joel Hathaway shot at one of our recent games:

NO PRACTICE TODAY!! OCT 7th

Given the weather, the mess of the field, and the colds that many of us have, Coach Nichols and I have decided to cancel practice today (10/7/08).

Enjoy the week off, we'll see you Saturday!

Thanks,
Coach Smith

Pictures on Tues Sept 23rd @ 3:30

Pictures at next Tuesday's (9/23) practice. Please be there as close to 3:30 as you can. We will have practice after the pictures until 4:45 p.m. I sent a form home with each of the boys. If you don't have one let me know and I'll see if I can scan one in and send it as an attachment.

Snack Schedule

Here's the Snack Schedule - I removed your phone numbers so that they wouldn't be plastered all over the web. You can refer to your phone chain, however if you need to call and switch with someone. Thank you Snodgrasses and Johnsons for putting this together!

September 6 Snodgrass

September 13 Allen

September 20 Banks

September 27 DeJager

October 4 Hathaway

October 11 Johnson

October 18 Smith

October 25 Tipton

November 1 Nichols

November 8 Snodgrass

Please bring enough snacks & drinks for 10 players. Allergies? Inform Coach Smith for it will be posted on the soccer blog.
Contact Crista Johnson if you have a conflict with your date.

Goalie Punts

Goalies check out this video on punting...and then PRACTICE IT! ;-)

Number one error I see young players making is TOSSING the ball UP before punting. The right way to punt is to let the ball roll off your fingers and DROP to your foot. This will help us advance the ball up the field.

By the way goalies, I encourage you to watch all five videos by Mark Wilson of United Soccer Academy - they are quite good. Simply go to Expert Village and type "soccer goalie" into the search box.

OK here's the punting video...

How to Play the Game of Soccer : Punting: Goal Keeping Tips & Moves: How to Play the Game of Soccer -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Shooting

One of the things I intend to do with this blog is to offer some helpful tips and instruction to reinforce what we do in practice. There a number of helpful instructional videos online and I'll try to point you to some good ones here regularly. This video is from Expert Village and is one of a series done by a soccer coach named Tim Boucher from LaSalle Academy in South Bend, Indiana. This is a helpful video on shooting the ball, something I hope we do a lot of this year. Notice the four things that we emphasized in practice:

1. Non-kicking foot planted next to the ball
2. Head Down
3. Point toes so that you kick with the laces
4. Follow Through

How to Kick a Soccer Ball -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Schedule Posted

The Schedules are posted online. This link will take you to our schedule. The West County CYC advises that we check the schedule throughout the season as schedules can change because of rain, etc. You can check our schedule week by week by doing the following:

1) Go to the West County CYC Website,
2) On the right select Soccer Schedule & Results - 2008
3) Click Go
4) Click on Team Schedules
5) Pull down to 3BD - KDS - CHRIS SMITH

You can use this to check other schedules too, if you've got other children on other CYC league teams. By the way, out of Divisions A-G ,we landed in the "D" division, which is much closer to where we belong.