Preparation – Have a look at the straight-forward set-up for this drill below. All you will need is the kids to have a soccer-ball each and a coned off area big enough for the amount of kids you have to dribble around comfortably.
Explanation – You begin by telling the kids that this game is called ‘don’t crash the car’. Get the kids a soccer ball each and get them close to you. The object of the game is not to crash your car. – “What do you think the car might be?” The kids will respond eventually with the soccer ball.
Drive in 1st gear, 2nd gear, 3rd gear, 4th gear – supercharged Turbo engine racing!
– “How do you think we could crash our cars?” By dribbling into other people or falling off the edge of the cliff (outside of coned area).
The first command you give is:
Play Traffic Lights
– ‘Green Light’ ~ this means the kids dribble their soccer balls around without bumping into others or going off the cliff edge.
– ‘Red Light’ ~ the kids stop dribbling and put one foot on top of the ball and remain still.
– ‘Yellow Light’ ~ the kids will assume this means go slower however it means go faster whilst still keeping control of the soccer ball.
– ‘Honk you horn’ ~ just for fun but the kids love it. Get the kids to sit on their ball and honk their imaginary car horn and make loads of noise!
– ‘Red light Turn’ ~ the kids know that red light means foot on top of ball. The turn comes when they roll the ball behind them and follow the rolling ball. This is coaching them to do the drag-back turn.
– ‘wind-screen wipers’ ~ the kids stop, put one foot on the ball and move the ball from left-to-right.
– ‘Gas station’ ~ tell the kids that we’re running out of gas and need to find the gas station. Get the kids to dribble over to one corner of the area and on your command the kids will do toe-taps on the ball which is pumping gas into the cars.
– ‘Car wash’ ~ all of the cars are filthy dirty and need a clean. Get the kids over to another corner of the area and get them to wash their cars by knocking the soccer ball with the inside of both feet from side-to-side.
– ‘police chase’ ~ this ones great. The coach is the police-officer who tries to steal the kids soccer balls. The kids try to evade you, will do the red-light turn to face away from you (change direction) showing them that it could work in a game.