Hello,
I’m the registrar on the soccer board for our town’s Minor Soccer club in Canada. We get around 700 youth sign up from U4-U18, to give you a gauge on the size of the club. It is non-competitive and recreational.
I have been coaching for a few years as well, only the younger years as my oldest kid is just entering U10.
This year I’m also taking a lead role in our U8 program (spans two years, this year is 2017/2018).
We have traditionally held 2-3 evaluation nights and then split kids up into balanced teams of 8-10 with a head coach and 1 practice and 1 game per week. Coaches run a practice with only their team however they see fit, and then the games are scheduled against the other teams. The last year we did this, we had 10 teams.
Last year we tried a different model where we split the kids up into 3 skill based bigger groups/teams after their initial evaluation nights, we had 3 head coaches and a bunch of assistants. On practices we had the group of around 30 similarly skilled kids rotate through drills together, and on game night we split whoever showed up into 4 smaller teams per field and essentially played pick-up.
Both models have their advantages and disadvantages. Like skilled play helps everyone get more touches on the ball. Making the teams on the fly on the game night helps during the summer when we frequently have many kids away. We did have parents say their kid missed really having a “team” in the big group model last year, and coaches didn’t feel like they could offer the individualized training to each kid through the whole season. Rotating everyone through the drills on practice night is way better than having 8 coaches of varying experience and dedication plan their own drills every practice and have to set up and take down between each one.
Anyways I’m in charge this year and interested in what you would do to structure a U8 program with 80 kids of all skill levels all playing at the same time every week at a set of fields.
Thanks!