How to Tell If Your Kid's Coach Is Actually Any Good
Almost every parent I talk to judges their child's coach on one of two things. Is the team winning, and do the kids seem to like him.Neither of those tells you anything about whether your child is getting better.There is a test that does, it takes about ten minutes, and you can run it from the sideline at the next practice without saying a word to anybody.
The shooting line
Here is a session I have watched more times than I can count.
The coach sets up a shooting drill. Twenty players form one line at the top of the box. One at a time, a player runs up, takes a shot, jogs off to collect their own ball, walks it back, and rejoins the end of the line.
Work it out. In a fifteen minute drill your kid might take four shots. Maybe five. The rest of that time is standing, walking, and watching nineteen other people.
Nobody is being negligent. The drill looks organized. It is quiet, everyone is participating, no one is sitting out, and from the sideline it reads as a productive practice.
Your child got four touches on the ball in fifteen minutes.
Why this is the thing that matters
Because touches are how technique gets built, and there is no substitute for them.
A player who gets two hundred touches a session and a player who gets forty are on different trajectories, and after a season the gap is not subtle. Neither kid worked harder than the other. One of them was simply in a better room.
That is also why I care so much about counting touches rather than hours when a player is training on their own. Same principle, different setting. Here you are pointing it at somebody else's session.
The ten minute test
Pick any ten minute stretch of a practice, ideally in the middle rather than the warm up.
Watch only your own child. Not the drill, not the coach. Your kid.
Count every time the ball touches their foot. A dribble counts as one touch per contact. A pass counts. A shot counts. Standing in a line does not count, and neither does running without the ball.
You do not need to be precise. You need an order of magnitude.
What the number means
Under 20 in ten minutes. Something is wrong with how the session is structured. Your child is spending most of practice waiting.
Between 20 and 50. Fairly normal for youth soccer in this country and still not great. There is a lot of room here.
Over 50. Good. Somebody is thinking about this. Small groups, short lines, more balls than players standing around.
Over 100. Rare, and worth keeping. That coach has built their session around the ball rather than around organization.
Run it twice on different days before you conclude anything, because every coach has a session that does not land.
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Four more things you can see without asking
Is there a plan? A coach with a plan moves between activities cleanly and knows what comes next. A coach without one improvises, and improvised sessions default to scrimmages and lines.
How many balls are out? This one is almost comically predictive. Two balls for eighteen kids tells you what the session is going to be before it starts.
Are they coaching, or refereeing? Coaching means corrections, demonstrations, individual attention. Refereeing means managing behavior and calling fouls while the session runs itself.
Who does he talk to? Watch whether attention spreads across the squad or pools around the four best players. That one tends to decide who stays in the sport.
Judge actions, not intentions
Every coach means well. I have never in my life met one who did not.
So intentions are not information. What a coach actually does on a Tuesday is information, and it is all visible if you watch for it rather than sitting through it.
And I want to be fair here, because a lot of rec coaches are somebody's dad who volunteered when nobody else would, and gets handed a roster and no plan and is doing unpaid work on a weeknight. The problem there is usually not the person. It is a system that asks a willing adult to do a job it never trained him for.
That changes how you should feel about it. It does not change what it does to your child's development, which is the thing you are actually responsible for.
Have the conversation before you leave
If the number is low, do not walk. Talk first.
Go to the coach and ask, without an edge to it, whether there is a way to get the kids more touches. Volunteer to help run a station so two groups can work at once. Offer to bring more balls. Most of the time the constraint is bodies and equipment, not willingness, and a coach who is given help will take it.
Then watch what happens over the next few weeks. Give them a real chance to change and see whether the change holds.
A coach who welcomes that is worth keeping even if the current sessions are thin. One who takes it as an insult has told you something useful.
And if nothing changes
Then you move, and you should not feel bad about it.
This is the part nobody says out loud, so I will. Evaluating your kid's coach is a selfish exercise and it is supposed to be. You are not grading his character or deciding whether he is a good man. You are asking one question, which is whether your child is still learning here.
When the honest answer is no, and you have given him the chance to fix it, staying out of loyalty costs your kid a year they do not get back. Enough thin sessions in a row and a player stops improving no matter how hard they are trying.
In the meantime, whatever the club is or is not giving them, the work they do on their own is fully within your control, and it is where most of the technique gets built anyway. The drills are all here and they do not require a coach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Count how many times your child touches the ball during a ten minute stretch of practice. Under twenty is a structural problem, over fifty is genuinely good. It is the only thing you can measure from the sideline that reliably predicts whether they are developing.
Those are two separate things and both matter. A coach who kids love is keeping them in the sport, which is not nothing, especially when they are young. It just is not the same as developing them, and you should be honest with yourself about which one you are getting.
Talk first, almost always. Ask about getting more touches into the session and offer to help run a station. Most coaches are limited by hands and equipment rather than by attitude, and a problem you can solve by showing up is cheaper than moving your child.
It is usually under-resourced rather than bad. Volunteers are handed a team and often no session plan or training, and the result is a lot of lines. That is a reasonable place to start, and it is worth knowing what it is and is not giving your child.
Lead with an offer rather than a complaint. "Would it help if I ran a second station so the kids get more reps?" lands completely differently than "they are standing around too much," and it gets you the same outcome.