The Great Soccer Guide for First Time Coaches...and Beyond: Coaching Fun, Healthy, Successful Youth Soccer for Coaches Who Never

Like any good community-minded parent, you want to help with your child's youth soccer program. But, you don't really know the game that well, you are busy, you aren't experienced coaching kids.... Here's a concise, comprehensive guide for new coaches who may have never played soccer and want to get started on the right foot (no pun intended). Written by an experienced teacher and coach, this book helps you appreciate the world's most popular sport, identify worthy goals for youth athletics, and gives concrete steps for working effectively with kids in practice and games. Most importantly, the author shows how to balance the values of fun and learning with pressures for competitiveness and winning. Full of wisdom and humor from someone who loves working with kids, the lesson of this book is simple: Focus on the right priorities-sportsmanship, personal development, teamwork, fitness, fun-and everyone is a winner, not just in spirit, but, you'll find, even in the results on the scoreboard.

Rick Gordon has a PhD. in Social and Multicultural Foundations of Education from the University of Colorado-Boulder, a MEd. from University of Minnesota in Political Science and graduated from Stanford University with honors in Political Science. He is Founding Director of Compass School, a grade 7-12 school that has scored highest on a national survey on Respect, Safety, and School Climate. He was Co-Director of The Critical Skills-Education by Design Program at Antioch New England Graduate School, where he also was on the Education Department faculty, and has worked extensively with schools and higher education on Service Learning (including editing the well received Problem Based Service Learning Fieldguide: Making a Difference in Higher Education). Rick co-authored Transforming School Climate and Learning: Beyond Bullying and Compliance, ran several small businesses, and had the honor of visiting thousands of classrooms as an educational consultant over the years. He continues to be involved in teacher development and facilitates courses in School Leadership in various locales. Rick has long experience in Experiential Education with Outward Bound and Interlocken, and has traveled extensively around the globe leading programs for youth. Rick played college and professional soccer, and continues his commitment to learning through sports as a coach of youth soccer and nordic skiing.