Newsletter - Coaches Corner
Message from Zach Eddinger - october 2024
Change of season, Winter & Growth!
Happy November!
We are thrilled to announce our newest location! Vale West which will be playing out of the Cheshire/Wallingford area will have HS-aged teams playing under our banner this Winter and Spring! We are ecstatic to add this new location and the fantastic coaching staff that comes with them! Director DJ Pereira has been in the industry for a long time and we are thrilled he is a part of our team. Please feel free to welcome them when you see them. If you know anyone that wants the Vale experience in that area please have them reach out.
We are getting ready for our winter season. The coaches and directors have been talking about planning and what it looks like for player growth. There are many conversations on how we best use the winter to continue improving and growing. With controlling a facility we have a lot of options for our membership that help us get a ton more usage than other clubs through the winter. We will be playing other Vale teams a fair amount during this time, that happens a lot with us but is a very good opportunity to get touches and grow as players. I want to push each player to step out of their comfort zone this winter, work on being creative on the ball, and use the dribble to continue to solve and create problems. Have some fun and be willing to learn through failure.
Our facility is moving along nicely and we are hoping to have a warm winter that lets us continue to move forward. We should be doing some blasting work in the next 2 or 3 weeks and then leveling the sub-surface for the turf contractor to take over. All very exciting things. I find myself walking the job site 3-5 times per day, I guess it is a distraction, but a fun one as I feel like a kid with all the equipment on site. Please feel free to drive by when you are in the area if you want to see the progress.
Talking about growth, I want to reiterate that both players and parents do the standards courses - https://valesc.thinkific.com it may seem small but I assure you it is big. A good friend of mine and author John O'Sullivan recently posted this:
“Youth sports has become less a tool to educate children about sport and life, and more often a place where parents go to be entertained by their kids.”
This year for the first time I am coaching HS soccer, and specifically 2 of my children. What I have found is that I am so emotionally attached to the outcomes of the games. I get nervous for them, I get nervous for me, and most of the time it is about my ego. When we see the game as a tool to teach them about life that starts to go away. We don’t want to manufacture success for them and we don’t want to solve their problems. Sports have a great place in our lives and rightfully so. They can help teach us so much that will use the rest of our lives. Let’s let the sports hold that place.
If you want to read the rest of the blog or other great blogs from John, go here - https://changingthegameproject.com/the-adultification-of-youth-sports/
We continue to work to make Vale a special place to help the children that we work with grow and improve. They are going to endure setbacks and failures, that is okay. If we can help educate them on how to get good at hard moments and move through them they will be better because of that for the rest of their lives.
Yours in Soccer,
Zach Eddinger
Message from Zach Eddinger - november 2024
Burnout - It’s Real!
I love soccer so much that I think about it relentlessly. It’s an obsession that I have had from a very young age.
When I was 20 years old I played my last competitive game. I had just come off of my junior season in college. I was blessed to have played a lot of minutes going back to my freshman and sophomore seasons, trained all off-season, played in a summer professional development league with mostly players above my caliber, and pushed myself, HARD.
That Fall we had a fantastic season that culminated in winning the conference championship and going to the Sweet 16 for the NCAA tournament. In our last game, we went to penalty kicks and I was to be the 5th kicker. We missed our first kick so I never was able to take my shot. The pressure and the release of not having to take that shot was immense!
I decided I wouldn’t return to play about a month after that season was over. I did not play my senior year.
Anyway, that point of my career as a player was loaded with pressure, most of which I had put on myself, leading to me burning out. I wish, in reflection, that I could have enjoyed it more. That I saw the moments between the moments, the time with my best friends, the beautiful game that we were getting to play, and how much I would miss it.
This Fall I coached HS soccer. It was a great experience and something I am excited to do again. After this fall, I was burnt out, AGAIN. I had to win, I had to show the world I was a great coach and could figure out what so many others haven’t in high school soccer. I was nervous at every game and my ego was the main culprit. This led to me being exhausted, to pushing myself every day and to missing opportunities for growth.
We need to be careful to keep the joy in the game, the fact that it is a game, and the fact that it doesn’t define who we are. If you have a player who scores goals, do you ask them after every game “how many goals did you score?” What does that tell them about the person they are? It tells them the only thing important that they do is score goals.
There are so many great conversations that we can have about what the game teaches us. The pressures that can show up and how we deal with them. We need to be careful with the conversations and know that our influence is never neutral. The questions we ask, and the comments we make all guide the person our child is becoming.
This holiday season let’s acknowledge that burnout is a real thing. Not just in our players but in us the parents, we put tons of pressure on ourselves. We want everything to be perfect, our ego is in play just as much as it is for our children. Resist that ego and let yourself enjoy the moments. Reflect on traditions and start new ones. Take a break, give yourself space, and have patience. It is a great thing to model for your children!
Yours in Soccer,
Zach Eddinger
