How good is our youth program?

It is amazing the volume and quality of information available in the internet about youth soccer. Websites like SoccerRom, ASSA and USyouthsoccer bring practically all information a coach or interested parent would need.
Other day I found at SoccerRom an article written by Sam Snow, Director of Coaching Education for US Youth Soccer, excerpted from "Vision: Youth Soccer in America", which was written by the US Youth Soccer Technical Department staff. This document discusses the leading research regarding why children play organized soccer, and applies these findings to define developmentally-appropriate measures of success for youth soccer players. I strongly recommend you, as a coach or a parent, to read it.

Measuring Success in Youth Soccer
By Sam Snow

Too often in America, a professional sport model is used in measuring youth sports success. Youth soccer is not immune to this misapplied standard. For soccer, the situation is made worse by a desire of many adults to use measuring tools from other sports. In fact, it is maddening to many adults that soccer is not as black and white as with some sports in judging successful play. Many team sports played in our nation are statistically-driven and coach-centered. Soccer is neither of those!
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So, how can we measure success in youth soccer? How do parents know if the team's coach is doing a good job of teaching soccer to the players? How does the novice coach know if the kids are growing within the game? US Youth Soccer recommends the following short-term and long-term guidelines:

• Short-Term Measures
o Fun.
o Fair Play.
o Laws of the Game.
o Health and Fitness.
o Friendships.
o Skills.

• Long-Term Measures
o Commitment.
o Roles in the Team.
o Leadership.
o Tactics.
o Retention.
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Vision: Youth Soccer in America
by the US Youth Soccer Technical Department staff

…The analogy can be made to a youngster's academic development in preparation for work in the adult business world. While the child is in primary and secondary school, the corporate world measurements of success are not applied. Those business assessments are not yet appropriate because the school-aged student does not yet have the tools to compete in the adult business environment. The knowledge and skills to be a competitor in business are still being taught and learned. This holds true in soccer as well!
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Alright fine you say. So how do we measure success? How do parents know if the team coach is doing a good job of teaching soccer to the players? How does the novice coach know if the kids are growing within the game?

As a way to measure success, let's look at the facts provided a by a study by the Youth Sports Institute, on what players want from their sports experience.

TRUTHS about children and sports
• Fun is pivotal - if it's not fun, young people won't play a sport
• Skill development is a crucial aspect of fun - it is more important than winning even among the best athletes
• The most rewarding challenges of sports are those that lead to self-knowledge
• Intrinsic rewards (self-knowledge that grows out of self-competition) are more important in creating lifetime athletes than extrinsic rewards are (victory or attention from others)1
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