Does the AYSO Coach Advisory Commission support this requirement that all AYSO coaches be age-appropriately trained?
Yes. Enthusiastically! Several years ago, AYSO National Coach John Ouellette assembled an advisory group made up of some of the best minds in the game. They studied the way in which players in countries the world over are developed, technically and tactically. From those sessions emerged decisions about the number of players on the field, the specific skills to be taught at each age group and the proper point at which to introduce tactical decision making. Today, the AYSO National Coaching Program, the only soccer training program in the country to be accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Coaching Education, is a bottom to top, incremental approach to teaching the game of soccer to kids. In 2005, the United States Soccer Federation published “Best Practices for Coaching Soccer in the United States,” a position paper on teaching the game that is essentially a mirror image of the principles and practices AYSO has advocated for years. The members of today’s AYSO Nati
