I was reminded at last night's practice that the team is only 4, 5 and 6 year olds. After having success with new drills on the previoous practice, I figured I'd draw up a few more. I started with a game of 'tag'. The players that were 'it' needed to tag the other players stick heads. I figured; one this will get them running around at the beginning of practice, and two it would get them to start moving their sticks more. I feel that when they have a ball the just run with no awareness of the opposing team being able to get to their sticks. This went ok, but they started getting a bit crazy so we ended it after a short while.
Next i went into another new drill. It was basically monkey in the middle. It was four on one, inside a box. I let the four players run around and pass the ball to keep away from the 'monkey'. This quickly went bad, as they were paying no attention to the box they were to stay in and some kids were not really getting involved.
It was at this point I knew we needed to get back on track. I sent them off for a quick water break, and went back to more defined drills. More run to this cone, do this, run to next and do that type of stuff.
In the end, I think we saved the practice, but learned a valuable lesson. Keep things well defined, and don't leave 4, 5, and 6 year olds too much room for improvising.
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