U6 Soccer Practice Session: Dribbling While Running
These three activities build on ball familiarity and help beginning players learn how to keep the ball moving forward as they run.
In this practice, you’ll teach the kids how to run with a soccer ball while they are moving forward. And it builds on ball familiarity.
It starts with a huge favorite — Red Light, Green Light. You can play Red Light, Green Light without a ball at first, and then introduce the ball. When you call green, they’re immediately dribbling while running with the ball. When you call red, they have to put a foot on top of the ball to stop it, which is a great way to see if they can keep the ball close while dribbling.
Next is Island Hopping. Players travel from one island to the other, while dribbling in a forward direction. The emphasis is to keep the ball within a hula hoop’s distance of the body. That’s a proxy for ball control. There’s also pressure in this activity, which encourages them to dribble while running — but you can always remove the pirate if players are getting discouraged.
After that, you can segue into 2 v. 2 to goals (attacking). Now they’re dribbling forward in a more game-like setting, with pressure — and they can shoot and score.
The goal for these activities, and for kids under age 12, is to be active and engaged for about 80% of the practice, with water breaks and brain breaks for the other 20%. If they can be active for that long, it’s a good practice.
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